Born 11.09.1924
Place of birth: Ukraine, Odessa Region, village of Großliebenthal.
His father, Gotlib (Gottlieb) Roller, was a farmer. There were five children altogether: three sons and two daughters. Gottlieb was the youngest. He lived in this village till the 20th year of his life. He finished 10 classes at the secondary school in Saratov, where the children were taught three foreign languages at that time: Ukrainian, French and English; until 1937, however, German was the language used during classes. All subjects were taught in German (by the way, Gotlib Gotlibovich has an interesting German-Ukrainian accent: he pronounces some words with a strong Ukrainian accent or even exclusively uses Ukrainian words, other words are just spluttering out in perfect German. It is obvious that Russian is not his mother-tongue – A.B.).
His mother starved in 1934. His father was arrested for being in a possession of a letter which had been written abroad. Gotlib Gotlibovich never saw his father again. He never became a member of the Young Communists’ League. The husband of his elder sister was a Russian.
After 1937 three people from Großliebenthal left the village to receive an additional vocational education.
Gotlib was 17 years old when the war broke out. Throughout the whole war he lived under occupation. Romanian and German troops were already marching into the region as from the second day of war. They did not notice any mass executions in the village; only once a woman and a man, who, under Soviet rule, had been working as NKVD informers were executed.
In 1944, when the Germans began to withdraw, they took G.G. Roller, as well as many other “Volksdeutsche” (ethnic Germans; translator’s note) with them to Germany, to a place called Wartekol (Warthegau?) on the Oder. They were transported by train or horse, many even had to go on foot. Before leaving they bundled up foodstuffs which would last for about a week.
Afterwards, they were deported to Poland. They did not have to work there, but received a daily food ration: tinned food, stewed fruit, jam, 15 grms of meat and a loaf of bread for three people, and those who had children received a little bit more. They stayed with Polish families overnight.
When the Soviet troops marched into Poland, the “Volksdeutsche” were deported once again. Before boarding the train they ha to take off all their clothes to have them disinfected by superheated steam and undergo some delousing procedure. They were also taken to a bath-house. The trip all up to Krasnoyarsk lasted 40 days and nights. The waggons were equipped with plank beds, one of the waggons served as a toilet (? – A.B.). Once a day they prepared some kind of a soup from flour and various additives – if available. There were no women on the train; they had already been dropped off somewhere in the Ural Mountains.
In Krasnoyarsk everything was ready to receive the deportees. When they arrived they were immediately taken to a quarantine station (for 13 days); afterwards they were assigned to work in camps. G.G. Roller had to load and unload goods; he did this job until 1946. They were kept like prisoners and had to sleep on two-storey plank beds. Early in the morning they left for work. They used to take their food ration with them, but later the representatives of the camp administration said: if you have done a good job, you will receive a sufficient food ration. After the war they were allowed to write letters to their relatives again.
He was working in Krasnoyarsk for one year. In 1946 they were loaded on board the steamship “Feliks” (Dzerzhinskiy? – A.B.), which tok them to Yeniseysk – this happened exactly on G.G. Roller’s 22 birthday.
All men were accomodated in the Yeniseysk friary. The stayed and slept there for two days and nights and then set out for Sharkovo on foot. A whole regiment of deported people was sent to this place. The wheather was fine that day. When the officer read out the lists specifying who was to be sent where, it turned out that Gotlib Gotlibovich had been assigned to live in Volchik Bor. When the reached the defined place they were shocked: it was all barren land. There was no house, no shed, not even a simple dugout to live in. Thus, the decided to dig out “trenches”. They covered them with branches and twigs and went to get some hay from the local residents. They lived there, until they managed to assemble a couple of poor huts from pieces of wood and other appropriate materials. However, this could only be temporary. It was just impossible to live under such housing conditions. Gotlib Gotlibovich tried to find out from the children who lived in Yalan, whether there were other Germans in their vicinity. In fact, this turned out to be the case. Roller and his friend soon approached awoman. They took along their food ration and shared it with her.
Once a month the commandant came over from Volchiy Bor; the deportees had to gather and get registered. It never happened that someone tried to escape. The names of two commandants are known: Oreshnikov and V.I. Borsin.
Their job in Volchiy Bor was to fell trees and then raft the trunks on the river Kem up to Ust-Kem.
At that time G.G. Roller was not in possession of any personal papers.
In Ust-Kem Gotlib took up employment with a sleeper factory. All deportees received clothes: jacket, felt boots, work gloves, caps.
As from 1950 they were even paid wages.
All his life G.G. Roller has never been absent from work. He has always been listening to his conscience.
When we asked Gotlib Gotlibovich, which kind of feelings he had when visiting the Odessa Region again, he said that his feelings had been quite strange, for there were almost no Germans left in the village.
Now G.G. Roller has two daughters, four grandchildren and four grand-grandchildren.
Interviewed by Olga Yakutina and Liubov Shangaraeva
(AB – comments by Aleksei Babiy, Krasnoyarsk “Memorial”)
Fourth expedition of history and human rights, Ust-Kem 2007