In 1979, at the age of 18, I took some time to interview her about her life in Russia.
I kept those recordings and digitized them years ago. In hopes that they will always be available, I've placed them here as well.
Funny, there are scores of additional questions I wish I had asked her....but in those days we never dreamed the USSR would collapse, and archives thrown open.
I'm just so happy we can still hear her voice after so many years.
The call I thought I was prepared for....the call I was in denial about.
Let's face it. No one can ever really be prepared for THAT phone call you get from a Doctor.
I was out walking when it came. I can even show you on the mountain where I was standing when it came.
A year.
Quite frankly, as I write these words, I never thought I would still be here.
Now a year has gone by. I survived my surgery. My first test has come back showing no recurrence. No spread. It will be a process I go through every 6 months for the next 5 years.
So what did I learn? What was it all for?
I wrestle with that. I'm not "out of the woods", I realize that.
I am trying to number my days. Does my life count? Did it count? How can I change what I need to change for the future....a future that I can't assume is there?
These are my thoughts in the night.
This was a labour of love....our grandmother's were sisters...and we both had listened to all their stories as we grew up.
On my many trips to Russia, I was able to compile a large archive of historical documents from former Soviet archives....all dealing with the history of our little village.
Now out of print, the book has been made available online thanks to special permission from Lora Dreiser, Alex's widow.
I post this for posterity here.
Years ago my grandmother gave me this envelope with some family pictures from 1946. I later asked my Aunt Mary why they had never made them into prints, and I was told it was because everyone in the family hated them. I'll never forget the look of polite horror when I presented my Aunt with an enlarged copy of one of the pictures. She was very polite.
1946. My Dad was almost 13 years old. My grandmother does not look well, but that is not surprising given how many times both she and my grandfather ended up in hospital with serious health issues. All relating to their life in Russia and what they went through...revolution, civil war, uprisings and famine and disease.
Anyways, there next to the title "Vorsitzender des Standesamtes", or "Chairman of the Registry Office" is the signature, in Russian, of J. Dieser.
J. Dieser is Johannes Dieser.
This means that this is the signature of my great-grandfather.
My grandmother's Dad.
Sadly, he himself will pass away from complications after surgery in 1933....during the next great famine in Russia.
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| Vorsitzender des Standesamtes or "Chairman of the registry office" "J. Дизер" - J. Dieser |
I was hunting for a Church.
Not just any Church. This was Saint Clements Catholic cathedral. I had heard that it was still standing. I was curious...but there were other reasons.
Saint Clements was the Church that my grandmother and her Dad (my great-grandfather) had attended in the summer of 1925. They were both in Saratov to pick up my grandmother's passport...the document that would allow her to leave Russia and join my grandfather in Canada.
While in Saratov, they had both attended Mass in the cathedral.
We were staying at an old hotel, the Hotel Volga, located on Kirov Avenue. The street had become a pedestrian walkway, and there was talk about changing it's name back to the original, "German Street".
I set out on my quest...it really didn't take long...it was just a few short blocks from where we were staying.
But there it was.
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| The facade had been changed...the twin bell towers had been taken down, but the front had remained. |
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| Examining the side of the building, you could make out the actual original architecture of the Church. |
You can even make out where the original stain-glass windows once were, now bricked up.
It was moving to go inside the former Church. The lobby filled with theater vending machines. Knowing that my grandmother and great-grandfather once stood where I stood.
"Stalins Vandalism" they call it. Efforts to declare the building a historical site and examine the possibility of restoring the Church have been ongoing. It is felt that the building cannot be restored to its former glory. But it stands as a testimony to the past...and man's attempt to erase that past.
I am so glad I took the time to complete my quest.
Artist Viktor Hurr gets it right. 80 years ago today, the entire Volga German population was deported to Siberia.
That's right. Close to 400,000 people sent to Siberia and slave labour thanks to the Communists of the USSR.
Indeed, anyone of German descent throughout Russia was sent to Siberia.
That dear friends is how my wife came to be born in Siberia. Her parents and family sent away, just like that.
My great-grandmother was among the deported. Two of my great uncles will perish in the GULAG as well.
We remember.
On the way, which was 12 – 13 days, they kept us in barbed wire prison camps under military guard towers. They put us in two storey barracks, where we worked day and night almost naked and shoeless on the trees. In the camp were 13 barracks, but there was one bathhouse. People from only one barracks could go to the bath at a time and for sanitizing clothing. One evening we had to go to work. The bath house didn’t operate during the day. All 13 barracks had to go and eat for 13 days without disinfection.
We were first fed 600 grams of bread, then the rations were reduced to 500 grams. We had to go to work at 6:00 am. There was also only one small kitchen in the camp. In the morning, we had to wait 3 hours to get soup from this kitchen. To get soup fed to all the Trudarmiya people, the first barracks had to get up at 3:00 am to go to the kitchen.
At 6:00 am we went through the gates under a strict count of everyone in the brigade. The counts had to be given to the office. We went to work under guard. It was 5 km to the site of construction. The rest of the people worked on dirt excavation, digging trenches 3 – 4 meters deep. It was winter work, and the temperature went to 40 below. The ground was frozen and the tools, like shovels, picks, mattocks, were iron and they broke.
The brigades were told how many cubic meters they had to excavate per day. If the brigade didn’t excavate as much as they were told, the “desyatnik” [brigade leader] would not give them the note, and without the note from the desyatinik, the brigade would not be allowed back in the camp in the evening. Literally after a month people began dying along the road on the way home in the evening. We had to leave them lying along the road in the snow until a cart pulled by a horse could collect them.
The brigade wouldn’t be allowed back in the camp until the watchman knew how many people were left. He would ask where the man was, and we would wait until they brought him. That is how people began to die.
At the end of 1945, at the end of the war, the Trudarmiya was finished. But then came the “spetskomandatura,” [Office of Special Populations] where we all had to be listed. They read to us and gave us a decree of permanent exile to sign where every month we had to report to the special office. We were forbidden to leave town without permission from the special office. Without permission, we could not even go to the railroad station, which was 3 kilometres from town, or to the next town, which was 15 km away. In 1965 the special office was eliminated, and we were given passports without the notation of “special population.” But we were forbidden to go to our homeland. Then it was determined that we had no claims on our home at our homeland.
In 1971 I went to my homeland, to my village of Josefstal. There wasn’t anything at all there. The village was completely liquidated. I found my father’s large wooden house in another village named Novo-Nikolaevka, which earlier was Marienfeld. It was turned into a club, and was locked. Many villages in our republic have been completely liquidated today.
Those villages which still exist are in sorry condition. We Germans were removed from the special population, but that special population gave us obstacles and under the special population department there were Germans who were not allowed to get any work. For example, we worked temporarily for one steam electric station, and attached to our factory was a permanent steam electrostation. Because this big electrostation worked all the time, they closed our temporary station and tore it down. All the bosses and technical workers were all transferred to the big station, except for us Germans. They didn’t give us any work. They wouldn’t let us work at the electrostation, but moved us from the factory. Only now are German workers given responsible positions at various factories.
My memories about daily life.
I spent my childhood in Josefstal, I studied in the village 4-year school, which was also in Josefstal. After school I worked on my parents’ farm. On October 24, 1929, I married Barbara Gerk, born 1909 in Josefstal. Her maiden name was Dieser. Until 1929 I farmed, then in 1930 I joined the collective farm, which sent me to courses at the tractor school. I completed courses at the tractor school in 1931-1932, and at the end of 1932 I went to the courses for the tractor brigade. At the end of 1933 I was drafted into the Red Army, where I was sent to school for junior commanders. I finished the courses with the rank of sergeant I served in the cavalry units until the beginning of 1938, when I was then chosen as the chairman of the collective farm where I worked until the end of 1939. Then I was chosen as the brigadier of a tractor brigade until the deportation in 1941. I was deported to the Omsk oblast in September 1941. At the beginning I worked as a combiner, then worked at a machine tractor station, as the brigadier in charge of tractor repair. On January 20, 1942, I was mobilized into the Trudarmiya, and went to work at the aluminum factory in the northern Urals. First I worked as a mechanic at the diesel electrostation, then I was transferred to the steam station as the master for repairs of the turbine department. From 1945 to 1953 I worked as the head of the turbine shop. In 1953 I was transferred to the aluminum factory where I worked as a master of repair work. I worked there until I retired in 1971.
In 1937 we had our daughter Valeria. She died at the age of 15 months in 1938. In 1939 son Volodya was born. Our second son, Eduard, was born in 1941, and he died in Siberia in 1942. When we were taken into the Trudarmiya, my family, mother, wife, and two aunts remained in the Omsk oblast at the collective farm. Later my brother Gottfried took my family to his place, because he lived in a different region 130 km. The move was made in February, on sleighs pulled by horses. On the way our second son Ewald contracted pneumonia and he died at the age of 16 months. In 1943 I was sent to the Omsk oblast section for the Trudarmiya, where I picked up my wife. My mother and son stayed with my brother. In 1946 I built a home in the city of Krasnoturinsk and brought my mother and son to the Urals. We lived there until August 1974, then we moved to Uzbekistan, to the city of Angren where we have lived until today. (Written Summer, 1989)
(Thanks to Rick Rye for his translation)
My recollections about the suffering of Soviet Germans during de-kulakization, collectivization, deportation to the Trudarmiya, and the komendantura, beginning in 1929
At the end of 1929 and beginning of the 30s, de-kulakization and collectivization began. Who were the “kulaks?” The workers in the villages, the farmers who worked day and night in the fields and who took care of their livestock so they could improve their village lives. Thanks to their tireless work they began to live well. But the other peasants who were not kulaks also had two horses and one cow on their farms were soon arrested and sent to jail. Their property was all confiscated, even the clothes they wore. All members of the family were sent to the northern Urals and the Komi ASSR in the north. Then in the forests the men were united with their families. They were given [sleeping] pallets, axes, saws, shovels. It was in the winter and the guards said that they could use these tools to make their own living quarters. The guards took over what had been built. They threw the pallets into the fire. Some began to live with their families, including children and the elderly.
Then they began to build barracks. Most of them died from starvation and the cold, especially children and the elderly. Then the criminal collectivization began. They forced all the farmers into collectives, seized all the livestock and the farm inventory. They gathered the livestock in groups during the winter, and because of the bad cold and the bad food, most of the livestock died during the winter. That next spring the collective farms didn’t have enough livestock to plant the crops. Then the collective farmers took their own cows away and added them to the village collective in order to have enough for spring planting.
All the churches were closed and the clergy was sent to prison. Churches were used for warehouses, clubs, and dance halls.
Then in 1931-32, they began to replace some of the horses with tractors and the planting went better. Harvests weren’t too bad in 1932 and they gave the collective farmers a little grain for their labours. Then in the winter it was taken away from them because they said they didn’t have enough for planting in the spring. There was famine among the collective farmers and whole families died. They rationed food to 500 grams of bread per woman. In the spring they gave the men ten years prison for keeping grain during the spring planting. Most of them never returned. Then in 1937-38, repressions began again. People were arrested and sent to prison even though they were not guilty. Again, none of them returned.
Next up: Deportation & the GULAG (Thanks to Rick Rye for his translation work)
