Anastasia Nikolaevna Duka, Municipal Educational Institution – Bolshekosulsk general-education Secondary School, 10th term
Project leader: Tatiana Viktorovna Khalinina, history teacher
My grandmother, Anna Kasparovna Duka, has been working as a school teacher in Bolshekosul for over forty years. She taught Russian and literature. She often tells us, her grandchildren, about the fate of her parents, our great-grandparents: Sofia Genrichovna and Kaspar Kasparovich Wilhelm, who became victims of repression at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. And this is how everything happened.
On 28 August 1941 the Autonomous Siviet Socialist Republic of the Volga-Germans was liquidated. The entire population was subject to compulsory resettlement. It was the end of the short history of this territory, which had been founded within the RSFSR only in 1924.
It happened exactly 65 years ago. My great-grandfather Kaspar Kasparovich went to work by bike. He was working for the machine and tractor station as a tractorist. Soonafter, he returned home, as white as a sheet. He said to his wife: “Sonia, go and get the children ready; they intend to deport us. We will have to leave in 24 hours”. One can only imagine how the parents must have felt about such incredible news. They had four little children. Due to her excellent capacity for remembering my grandmother is still able to recall many a situation or episode of that time. In the evening of this awful day father went to collect them from the kindergarden. He told them that they would now have to leave this place, but that they did not know where they would be taken to. Their mother was crying all the time, she talked about drowning all her kids in the river Volga. My great-grandfathers were very diligent people. They had just erected a new house, but had not yet succeeded to plaster the walls. All the green moss was still visible between the splices. They owned a lot of cattle: a cow, a calf, sheep, pigs and ducks with numerous tiny ducklings. They were forced to leave everything behind. They just took along some clothes and foodstuffs for the trip.
The family was loaded ona freight car. It was a very long train ride, often interrupted by endless train stops. During one of the stops great-grandfather deboarded the waggon to get a water melon for the children. But the train, unexpectedly, started to move again. Great-grandfather had to hurry up. When bending down to get the melon, all the identity papers and other documents he had taken along fell out of his pocket. There was no time to collect them. He had to leave them with the melon plantation.
The family was deported to Bogotolsk District, to the village of B-Zavod, where they were housed in a very small room attached to the kolkhoz office building. The locals in B-Zavod behaved quite human towards the resettlers – they tried their best to help them with what they could. The children of the resettlers and their contemporaries began to teach themselves languages: the German children learned Russian, the Russians – German. They pointed their fingers at some object, calling its name in both languages. Thus, various mnemonics came off, such as: stol – table, ryba – fish, rukomoinik – broom. This childrens’ game somehow helped them to adapt themselves to the unknown surroundings and all the new conditions of living.
Kaspar Kasparovich was working for an organization called “Zagotskot” (“Supply of cattle”; translator’s note).
One dark night that was a loud knocking to be heard. Great-grandfather opened the door of their little room. Three men came in. The wore short leather coats with shoulder straps; they ordered him to get ready and go with them. My grandmother recalls his last words:” Well then, we will not see eachother again”. He looked glass-eyed. They did not see him again.
After Kaspar Kasparych’s arrest, Sofia Genrichovna relocated with her children to B-Kosul. Some relatives lived there. Four families lived in the small hut. They had nothing to wear , no food. Sofia Genrichovna did not find a job, for she had no passport to prove her identity.
It turned out hat there was not enough space in the hut to accommodate them. However, there were stables behind the house with an adjacent attic. Great-grandmother and her children moved into this building.
At that time you would find all kinds of people; some of them would even throw stones at the resettlers, calling them “Damned fascists! Get you gone! See that you get to your Germany!”
They did not know, after all, that they were in no relationship at all with Germans in Germany, that they were true Russians – though with German roots – who had earlier lived along the Russian Volga and were all born in Saratov Region, in the village of Krasniy Yar.
In 1952, when grandmother was 16 years old, the head of the commandant’s office, which was housed with the village Soviet , asked her to go there to have her fingerprints taken an register her as “enemy of the people”. She refused to go, feeling that something awful was going on. She decided to insistently offer resistance. She was called three times, but she would not go. Finally, the commandant appeared at home holding a pistol in his hand. He said that if she did not go immediately to have her fingerprints taken, he would shoot her. and only then grandmother set off for the commandant’s office. Grandma Anna Kasparovna remained registered with the commandant’s office as an “enemy of the people” for 5 years, from 1952 till 1957. Every week, on a fixed day, she had to report, thus proving that she had not escaped.
Without a certificate issued by the commandant she was not even allowed to go to Bogotl on foot to buy bread.
In B-Kosul they sold bread in a shop, but kolkhoz farmers would not receive any.
The resettlers went through the woods collecting berries, which they then used to drag over the ties of the railroad line up to Bogotol. They did this in entire secrecy, fearing that someone might see them. They sold the berries and bought themselves bread, which they carried all the way back to the village – without shoes. They arrived at home with burning soles of foot. The yput their feet into a washbowl, poured in cold water and kept sitting until the burning pain was over.
Great-grandmother died in 1984, so that she did not succeed to learn about her husband’s fate. Only after the breakdown of the Soviet system grandmother learned about her father’s fate (copies of the documents are available).
Thus, my grandmother has grown old, too. In her younger days she had always been fighting for her human dignity. All her life she has been working honestly and diligently for the collective good, for her fatherland. She never meant any mischief and always attached utmost importance to teaching her students the good.
This is my grandmother Anna Kasparovna Duka, teacher of the village school.