Mass media report lots of things about Volga-Germans repressed and persecuted during the Great Patriotic War; however there are different views on the subject, as always. Some feel sympathy for those who suffered this lot and deplore the regime at that time, others, in contrast, try to justify such cruelties. due to the fact that many of these unfortunate people came into our region via the river Yenisey, their fate was deeply engraved in my mind so that I still recall many details today.
The year 1942. At that time our family lived on the banks of the Yenisey, in Dubrovinskiy Street N° 48, and I still remember the scenery, when they guided Germans from the Volga Region through our street into exile. There were approximately one dozen of motorbusses frequently driving in town, but none of them was working by means of a gas-powered petrol engine. Nonetheless the Germans were transported by aurobusses and finally asked them to leave the bus in front of a 3-tons lighter, which moored at the landing place of the Krasnoyarsk Northern Sea Route Administration; later, this area was part of the urban port territory.
In those years nobody gave much attention to occurrences around him; everybody was concerned about how to make ends meet for himself and his family, how to survive. The lighter I mentioned above accompanied the motor ship „V.Kuibyshev“, where my father Pavel Yakovlevich Taskin was working as a captain, to the north. He did not like to talk about those events at all; hence, I learned many details only by conversations with Konstantin Fedorovich Selesnev, the responsible mechanic.
Among the Germans there were only very few men, most of them were women and children. They were placed straight in the cargo compartment, where wooden beams and various sawed materials for the building of houses at the new place of residence were stored. The people were accompanied by an operative authorized NKVD representative named Nezhninov. He was armed and wore a uniform. The only answer he gave to all imploring appeals and questions was – I got my orders and I have to execute them.
Those who were allowed to disembark in a village were not as badly off as those, who were forced to get off the ship on the naked riverbank. Thy had to unload the ship, pile up all the building material for the future houses along the embankment; and then they were distributed saws, axes and foodstuffs for the first period of their stay in the new place. The disembarkment was organized by menas of lists, 20-30 people at a time; they had practically no warm clothes, which turned out to be a real tragedy. There was an unimaginable yelling and howls, as if the people were trapped on a sinking ship, while you hear the SOS emergency call over the air – save our souls! .
And there was nobody to help them at that horrible time. Summer drew to a close, the steamship casted off and continued its voyage further in a northward direction, and standing at the rear you could see the flames of the fireplaces for a long time yet. Not all of them will survive, but what can we do about it – we are at war after all – these are the thoughts of the inland sailors, who try to exculpate themselves.
At that time the enemies were grimly fighting at the front, the German troops were advancing Stalingrad. In the nearby rear our observers and signal officers gave notice of the noise of engines of raiding aircrafts at nighttime. Propaganda was working in a very persistent way, whenever they could, they would terrify and stampede us by spreading rumours about aggressive landing forces, saboteurs and spies, which had serious effects on the people not only at that time, but, in my opinion, still nowadays.
One of the participants of those incidences was Grisha Kazanovskiy, who was working as a helmsman on one of the ships running on the Yenisey at that time. This quiet, close-lipped man contemporanously served in a brigade as a soldier in one of the sea landing brigades. The brigade was very concerned about the fact that they were ordered to land in a place in the Saratov area, where German spies were said to be parachuting. They surrounded the territory, scoured for the enemy and – found absolutely nothing. Local Germans working in the fields, as well as commanders, confirmed that they had seen parachutists, but they were not willing to divulge any of them. The information was passed to the comman center and discovered that aplenty of similar news had already been reported to them before.
Finally, the whole matter ended up in Moscow, people there were well-schooled in such things. The fifth column in the rear – this was a deadly danger, like a knife in someone’s back. And this was the crucial factor for the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to give the order to deport - within 24 hours – all Germans who lived in the Volga German Republic, adults as well as children, and resettle them in Siberia, Kazakhstan and other remote areas of the country.
We tried to calm ourselves when hearing such reports tantamount to legends and find an explanation for all the cruelties, which our state had approved. Either they would .... us, or we would have to .... them.
Today it is very difficult for me zu recall the past, I very well comprehended that all the cruelties which happened at that time are, in actual fact, unjustifiable. They may not even be justified by our „sacosanct“ victory.
Igor TASKIN, veteran of the Yenisey steam navigation
„Krasnoyarsk Labourer“, 22.09.2011