He was born in the hamlet of Nikolaevo, Altai Region, in 1953. It goes without saying that, due to his age, this man interviewed by us could not tell us anything about the mechanism of resettlement and peculiarities of life before the deportation. V.N. says that everything was just the same as with all the others: the received the order, they were exiled and they left... At first his family was deported to the Altai Region, afterwards to Kazakhstan. In 1955, after the freedom of movement, the right to select a place of residence of their own was given back to them, they left for the Saratov Region – back to their historic home district, where they were living for about 8 years. Then they left the place again and thus happened to get to Siberia. Three years in succession V.N. travelled to the Saratov area and even made up his mind to stay there forever, but in the end he was gravitated to Siberia again. From today’s position it is difficult for V.N. to reason and judge about rightness or incorrectness of the deportation of the Volga Germans to Siberia. «Who knows, whether this action was inevitable or not, I wasn’t in his shoes; I was already born here and grew up in this place»…
My mother was a true German, my father Ukrainian. And I, who am I? What kind of a German am I? I am a cross bread, heaven knows, who I am. I am not so closely connected to the nation in question, but some German traditions have been preserved before and are still being preserved today (my wife is a German). This mainly concerns the traditional German cooking: Krebli, Resbrati, Schmorbraten, Schnitzel.
V.N.’s sister lives in Germany; she moved there from Kirgizia. However, V.N. is not in touch with her, contacts have quietly come to a dead stop, although they did not depart in disagreement. I have the impression that they are afraid that I might ask them for help. Maybe they fear that I might leave for Germany, too? I do not need anybody here, what for? And form e, in general, there are no bad or good nations, they are all the same. But I say that the Germans are the most quiet, the most law-abiding nation. Moreover, the Germans stand out due to their cleanness and diligence. This is my opinion about the older Germans; the younger ones already belong to a completely different generation, they behave in completely different ways. There was once a German teacher; he left for Germany, and he took his wife, his children, all relatives with him, so that he is now unable to return. There he now „collects cigarette butts“, while here in his Siberian village people knew him, demonstrated respect for him. Here everything was quite simple: he just went over to his neighbor, asked him for something, had a little conversation with him… But over there, in Germany, you have to wait for an invitation first, even in case you wish to see your own relatives.
The interview was held by Anastasia Davidova.
(AB – remarks by Aleksei Babiy, Krasnoyarsk „Memorial“Organization ) Ninth expedition of the Krasnoyarsk "Memorial“ Organization and the Pedagogic College in Yeniseysk, Vorokovka-Kasachinskoe-Rozhdestvenskoe 2014 .