In 1941 the Soviet Volga-Germans became victims of reprisals and were expelled from their places of residence, from their homes. Many of them were resettled in Kuragino District. Some dozens of them are still alive and are able to tell us, which tortures and mental anguish they had to take upon themselves in the name of victory. On the first farm we visited, not far from the village of Marinina, there live two sisters – Anna and Rosa, maiden name Mosman(n). There were eight children in their family, five brothers and three sisters. During the war they were all working for the labour army, but not all of them returned home. Three brothers died, when they were young: they perished on the camps of hunger and hard labour, which outreached their strength. The appeals to get ready for leaving to the labour army were brief and cruel. In their new places of residence they were intentionally scattered all over the defined areas and were to work hard whereever they were needed. They had hardly overcome the shock about the outbreak of the war and their compulsory transfer from the Volga, when they were already forced to get prepared for the labour army. How terribly helpless they werein this situation! For none of them was able to speak Russian sufficiently. They fetched away both strong, healthy women and elder men, separating children from their mothers. The children began to cry and run after the cars. The orphaned little ones were either taken in by relatives or put in children’s homes.
Anna and Rosa were at least lucky in this respect. They had no children of their own yet. However, Rosa had already got married – to Yegor Petrovich Koller. However, they sent him to a different camp. Two years later she heard that her husband had starved to death in the camp. An eye-witness later told her that he had, in fact, been entirely under-nourished and that those yet able to work had taken off his clothes after his death to get themselves some additional rags to wear. And this is what Rosa Lavrentievna reports:
- In Kuragino they forced us to get on barges. They acted very hard and inhuman on us. I found myself some unoccupied space and set down my wallet. Instantly, I was chased away, because the place pleased another woman – she was an acquaintance of the man, who had taken us to Krasnoyarsk.
There we kept waiting for eight days. And then we went up all the way to Ust-Port, to the very north, by barge. In Ust-Port we started our barracks’ life and undescribable hard labour. We had to catch logs from the frozen up river, pull them out of the water and lay them out on the banks. All around us there were labour armists, too – Russians, Letts, Finns. Tattered and torn and hungry. How can one eat one’s fill from a ration which merely consists of 150-200 grs of bread, when one has to work that hard? Only once a year Rosa received a letter from her mother. The children used to play “postman” with the incoming mail. Those, who were able to read, took away the letter destined for him. Those, who were illiterate, remained without news from their relatives. Later we were transferred to Khatanga, where Rosa was fated to work for the fising industry. Life became slightly easier, for the usual food ration was now completed by fish – one had to steal it though.
Nowadays, Rosa Lavrentievny lives in a place, from where she can see the farm when lookig out of the window.
There was another pile yet, even higher than the farom building itself. It consisted of dead bodies, which were kept there throughout the whole winter. Only in the spring, when a special commission arrived, these corpses were buried in mass graves, which were levelled by abulldozer afterwards. Under its weight arms, legs and heads were ripped off the bodies – and got mixed with snow and soil. The sight was very hard to bear. It often happened thatone had to sleep beside a dead person. And it was so terribly cold inside the barracks that the blankets were grown over by snow in the morning in the true sense of the word, for the roof was full of holes. The prisoners were not distributed any clothes.
- Come over here, young beauty! Take these laced shoes! – By these words the brigadier, a Tatar named Sharypov, reached out a huge pair of American ankle boots to Rosa. He would only give out garments to those, who were prepared to share the bed withhim for one night. However, he found no women who wanted to. The women sewed and knitted, thus earning a couple of kopeks with the locals, in order to somehow survive .
The war came to an end, but many years were yet to pass by, until Rosa Lavrentievna was finally released. In Khatanga she got married to a man, who had also been a forced labourer for the trud army. She herself spent 14 years of her life in the labour army. It is strange to say that the entries in her time book do not start with the year 1942, but only as from the year 1949. Those coarse fishermen’s boots, which rubbed the skin of her legs until blood came out, sometimes cause her agonizing thoughts still today, and then her beautiful grey eyes fill with tears. She also well remembers the head of the industrial depository, Shdanov, who felt pity for the poor fisherwomen. Whenever he got there, he used to join their meals, eating fish soup with them, listening to their worries and troubles of everyday life and trying to help them as much as he could. “I am a human being myself, and I want to live; but you are human beings, too, and you have to live, as well!” – heoften said. Rosa Lavrentievna is very surprised that she survived and even reached pension age, although she went through such a hell. Her pension amounts to 90 rubels. She is grateful to that, and it seems that this sum is even enough for her to live on.
… Anna Lavrentievna had to saw wood in Bashkiria during and after the war. She stood in the snow up to her neck. You shovel away all the snow around the tree and then you and your comrades have to saw the trunk into pieces, - she tells us. Many women were killed by falling trees. The labour armists received clothes consisting of wadded trousers and cardigans, but they were usually exchanged against foodstuffs soonafter. Their feet were wrapped in rags, woven by an old man. During her stay in the labour army Anna Lavrentievna lost one of her eyes. She had not managed to jump away and make way for a falling tree in time. Every day she prepared 5 cubic meters of timber. If you do not fulfill the norm, they won’t give you any food. Once during a heavy snowstorm, they did not leave for work. For that reason the foreman chased them out at nighttime, when the blizzard has slightly calmed down. They had to line up on any occasion: in the canteen, when they were distributed food, in front of the bath house and when leaving for work. When they received the news that the war was over, Anna said to the old man, who was waving the rags for their feet: “Get going, grandfather, I will soon go home. And I want to show them, how I protected my feet from cold”. However, the camp authorities made nopreparations at all to release the prisoners. She was forced to fell trees in Bashkiria for another 5 years.
Afetr the war she got married, gave birth to four children and brought them up. She had been working for the trudarmy for more than 10 years, but doesnot receive a single kopek of pension. She was awarded a medal instead – “For heroic work during the Great Patriotic War”. She is dreaming of a pension of at least 20 rubels per month, enabling her to buy bread and sugar.
Both sisters had children, grandchildren are already growing up. They visit eachother every day. And they received a postcard from another sister who now lives in Germany. A beautiful picture postcard from Germany, indeed, and, obviously, the living conditions in Germany are not too bad, as well.
- Wouldn’t you like to go to visit your relatives there? – I as k the two sisters. – The years of humilitations are over, after all, and the politics of perestroika now enable people to go abroad for a short trip or even leave forever.
- I only have one home country – the Soviet Union. This is where my home grounds are, the home grounds of my mother. I never ever thought of leaving for a different place to live. Nevertheless, I do not condemn those, who go away. Today, we live under bad conditions, while they lead a good life over there, but, maybe, sooner or later, it might be the other way round. We have not always had bad times; things will improve here again one day,- Rosa Lavrentievna replied in a steady voice.
- And where can one leave to, when one’s children live in amixed marriage? Russian daughters-in-law, the son-in-law a Tatar. The county in which we live, is the home grounds of our children, too. We are not talking about the taste of cheese and sausages here or there, - Anna Lavrentievna says.
I was deeply impressed by the patriotism of this woman, who, like many others, had to go through such a hell. She is going to spend the last years of her life in the Soviet Union. Her heart has slightly warmed up in the course of time. She has already brushed away all doubts. which many other people still have in these dreary days. They told us the wisdom of life. And in this very moment I recall the words of an acquaintance, who intended to emigrate to New Zealand or America.
- And who is going to love Russia in bad weather?” – I asked him when he took his flight ticket.
- You are going to do that, - he answered.
Now I know that these old German women, who I affectionately embraced when saying good-bye, will help me with this love.
O. Nikanorova
“Lenin’s Precepts”, 1990, No. 149
“Spring does not die”.
Borrowed from materials of the district paper “Tubinsk
News”.
Abakan, 2005