In Memory of Georg Gerk

 This is an example of what a typical file looks like of someone in the Soviet GULAG.  It is the file of an older brother of my grandfather, Georg Gerk.

I wrote about Georg in a previous post.  This past week we received an official copy of his labour camp file.  Imagine....after all these years...through the wonder of technology, we now have a copy of a secret file that authorities of the day never dreamed would be made public!

My previous post about Georg stated:

Georgiy Georgievich Gerk Was born the 27th of December 1897 in the village of Josefstal, near the Volga River in Russia.

He was an older brother to Paul Gerk, my grandfather.

Married 6th of January 1916 in Josefstal to Kristina Rausch. They had 4 children, Georg born 1916; Jakob born 1927; Johannes 1929 and Elisabeth born 1937.

Georg had moved to the Caucasus area of Russia in order to work and provide for his family.  He was, as all Volga Germans, caught up in the mass deportation of Russian Germans to Siberia and slave labour in August of 1941.

Here he was sent to the Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Then he was transferred to the “Chelyabmetallurgstroy” (Chelyabinsk Metal Factories) - a mass labour camp that had over 40,000 prisoners.

As was the case with another brother named Jakob Gerk, and written about here, our family had no details about his death.  Just one of the nameless victims of communism who was lost in Russia's vast Gulag.

But, alas, there is no photograph of Georg Gerk.  I have recently found some of his grandchildren who have emigrated to Germany and asked them if they have anything.  I will post the response here.  In the meantime, all we have left is a complete set of fingerprints as part of his GULAG file.

A copy of the complete file can be found here.

All that remains of a life lived.

Our family remembers this hero.