Commemorative candle. The Taimyr Region during the years of political repressions. Memoirs.
Born in the Volga Region in 1921. Like all Germans, she was deported from the ASSR of the Volga Germans together with her familyto the Krasnoyarsk Territory in 1941. From there she was forced to leave for the Taimyr peninsula in the summer of 1942.
In the autumn of 1941 we arrived at the Bazhenova meat and milk sovkhoz in the Kansk District, Krasnoyarsk Territory; on the 2nd of August 1942 we were transported to Krasnoyarsk, loaded on board the steamship „Spartak“ and taken all the way up to the north. On the 6th of August 1942 our ship moored near the settlement of Potapovo, Dudinka District. There our families, with all their children – 500 people altogether, were dropped off on the naked, unsettled riverbank. It rained during the night. Someone set off, in order to find some nearby barn or horse stables (he at least found a store room for vegetables). Thus, the people removed to this place, just in order to have shelter for the night and not stay in the open. Later a man named Gusev appeared (I cannot recall his first and father’s name), who ordered us to built dug-outs. While evyrbody was engaged in the construction of these “underground huts”, a raft arrived, which was loaded with timber and saw log, suitable for the building of houses. Hence, everybody was asked to go there and unload all the building material from the raft. These activities were supervised by the afore-mentioned Gusev. Later the place became known as Potapovo construction site management of the Dudinka district construction site office. In January 1943 the head of this very office, comrade Zhelestov, arrived, and – in accordance with Directive N° 1 dated the 10.01.1943 – I was appointed accountant of the Potapovo construction site management. On the 10.10.1943 I got the position of a bookkeeper and on July 20 was dismissed by my own wish. I found myself a job as accountant with the Potapovo fishery cooperative. In June 1948 I again left this post by my own wish, since I intended to leave for the Altai Region. My elder brother had happened to get there after his time in the labour army. Upon recall of the Altai regional MVD we left Potapovo, in order to reunite with my brother.
I was responsible for the upkeep of my mother – Yekaterina (Katharina) Petrovna Schneider, my sisters Augustina, Yelena (Helene), Irma and brother Viktor (born in 1925); he worked for a Russian kolkhoz farm. Like all Germans, we were kept under the supervision of a special commandant’s office. To my knowledge, in our settlement of Potapovo, situated in the very north, there were no labour armies.
I have to pay for all expenses concerning the search for documents and confirmation letters, which prove the fact that I was kept under the supervision of a commandant’s office, myself.
Elsa Genrichovna Manankova
Alma-Ata, 12.12.1991