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Irma Kondratevna Scherer

Born in 1928 in Alt-Warenburg, ASSR of the Volga-Germans. As from 1941 she lived in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Beresovsk District, as a forced resettler and as of 1942 in the Siberian settlement of Nikolskiy, Taimyr Region. She worked for the fishing industry and as a cook for the district school, which was attended by kolkhoz caders. Today she lives in Dudinka.

- ... We left our village with the very last party of resettlers. I recall that my mother went through all the rooms, that she flattened the bedspreads, jolted the pendulum of the big long case clock, to say good-bye to every single object she now had to leave behind. In one of the rooms there was a huge heap of red apples from the recent harvest. Hence, I associated the smell of my parents’ house for evermore with the smell of ripe apples....

We arrived in Siberia on the 15 October 1941 – the day of my 15th birthday. We had been on the way in freightcars for more than a month. 20 families had to share one waggon. Many were taken ill during the trip, many died. We were taken to the Beresovsk District, to the village of Gorbi, Krasnoyarsk Territory.

In August 1942 they sent us to the far north. Nobody gave any explanation about where exactly they were going to take us and for what reason they intended to so. In Krasnoyarsk, at „Yenisey“ station we spent a whole month waiting for the next steamschip to arrive. We had to live there under the open sky, directly on the riverbank. During this time some authorized escort accompanied us when we marched off to work in some war plant.

Finally, late in September 1942 our steamer „Josef Stalin“ arrived in Dudinka. We were asked to disembark within spitting distance of a fish canning factory. I got to the small settlement of Nikolskiy. Other Germans and a number of Letts lived and worked here, as well. In October the brought another contingent of Finns by the very last ship, before the river began to freeze up and navigation had to be suspended till the next spring. We founded the „Polar Star“ cooperative and started fishing. Daid Bier (Birr?) was appointed chairman of our cooperative.

Together with the little children I was housed in a baracks. However, many people were forced to build their future dwelling themselves.

There is one incident, which remained deeply imprinted in my mind. A young twenty-year-old woman died leaving behind a baby. Her mother did not know how to save her little grandchild. In order to lull the little one she finally determined to give the baby her breast. And all of a sudden, as if by a miracle: milk ingorged her breast. Afterwards, all people who lived in the baracks with her used to leave a small part of their own daily ration for the surrogate mother; they wanted to make sure that she got enough to eat, that she was able to feed the little one for some time. The little girl survived. although there was a high mortality rate among the people!

For the rest of my life I have been preserving a feeling of deep gratefulness and respect towards the local residents, who helped us to overcome those hard times. In exchange for tobacco they gave us meat and fish , thus saving us from starvation. I am sure that many more people would have died in our little settlement, unless the locals had been so thoughtful and helpful.

I furthermore recall the brigade leader of our brigade – Aleksei Vereshchagin. He protected us, the disenfranchised, whenever he could from aggression, verbal attacks and accusations of the authorized officials. He even refrained from sending us fishing in bad weather; he always tried his best not to humiliate us or hurt our feelings.

The forced resettlers were particularly adversely affected by visits of two plenipotentaries -
Engelson und Mikov, who were characterized by permanent grouchiness and cruel behaviour. They kept an eye on us at every turn. They would not permit us to take a little fish for our families, they even used to have a look into our cooking pots to see for themselves that there was no fish inside. One time they almost beat up a 12 year-old boy to death, because he had stolen just a tiny quantity of oats. The feeling of hunger was present all the time. And this was exceptionally agonizing for the children.

In 1948 it turned out that we would never return home. Many young people had started their own families, and I got mattied to my compatriot Heinrich Yegorovich Root. Children were born: two daughters and two sons. My husband died in 1964; afterwards, my mother, Maria Yakovlevna Scherer helped me to raise and educate the children. She had become a widow herself quite early. My father died in 1930. My mother had to bear the entire burden of exile, all mischief and grief on her shoulders. How many friends did she have to bury, friends, who had left this world much too early, due to hunger and exessive strain! How much grief and misfortune had she been forced to go through!

Department od Culture and Art of the Administration of the Taimyr Region (Dolganes / Nenzes)
Museum of Local Lore of the Autonomous Taimyr Region.
„Museum Messenger“. Issue 1.
Dudinka, 2001


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