I would like to thank you for the very important, useful and even absolutely necessary work you have done in the past and obviously intend to continue in the future. I was born in a place called Straßburg (a former German colony), Razdelyansk District, Odessa Region on the 24.12.1935.
In 1944 Hitler’s troops forcibly evacuated the entire German population from our colony to Germany. After the end of the war Stalin’s militiamen said they wanted to repatriate us: they deported us, also by violence, in freight cars, from Germany right into the wide spaces of Siberia.
We left Germany on the 28.09.1945 and reached Kansk in the Krasnoyarsk Trrritory on the 01.01.1946, which means that we were forced to stay on this unheated train for a period of three months, in the middle of winter. Due to the iciness, ill and weak people died away like flies; they were hastily buried in the snow all along the Transsiberian Railroad.
I lived in Kansk until 1957 being permanently controlled by the commandant’s office.
The same year I finished my studies at the technical school of construction engineering in Kansk. Afterwards, I began to work as a master and foreman in Krasnoyarsk until 1959, in Temirtau, Kazakh SSR till 1977 and in Tallinn till 1989. My mother died in Tallinn in 1988, and in 2002 her mortal remains were moved to another grave in Stuttgart (Germany).
My father died in Stuttgart in 1997. I am now 68 years old, my wife is 63. We are both on pension.
Good-bye,
Viktor Schwan.
The letter (Russian version) first appeared on the website (guestbook) of the Krasnoarsk „Memorial“ Organization on the 09.01.2004.