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Between 1941 and 1952, more than 1.2 million German people were rounded up, mainly along the Soviet Union's western borders, and dumped thousands of kilometers away in eastern and central Siberia or in the Central Asian republics. Volga Germans:
Sept 1941 400,000
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| The Journey:
The Germans were forced onto train convoys of cattle wagons and shunted off to Siberia and Central Asia. They had been encouraged to migrate to Russia 175 years ago but now the Soviet authorities decided the Germans were collectively guilty of spying for the enemy. The inhabitants of the autonomous Volga German Republic were among the first to go. From September 3, 1941, 400,000 Volga Germans were removed to Siberia on board 151 train convoys departing from 19 different stations. Some 20,000 NKVD troops and huge quantities of rolling stock and other resources were diverted from the war effort in order to shift vast numbers of old people, women and children to distant lands quite unprepared to receive them. The consequences were devastating. Some families were given as little as five or ten minutes to pack up their belongings and food for the trip. No food was supplied. Tens of thousands are believed to have died during journeys which lasted up to two months. In some cases, bodies were left in the overcrowded cattle wagons for weeks on end. In others, they were thrown out beside the tracks. Most estimates indicate that close to 40% of the affected population perished. Many of the transfers took place in winter. Those who survived the journey often found themselves with inadequate clothing, no shelter, and no means to support themselves in temperatures as low as -40C in Siberia. Their movement was restricted to a limited zone always a few kilometers short of the nearest town. |
| Back To Germany:
The penalty for straying was 15-20 years of hard labor in the Gulag camps. People found themselves doing totally unfamiliar work in utterly alien surroundings. Urban people were set to work in the mines and forests of Siberia. Under Khrushchev, in September 1955, various restrictions were annulled but not fully implimented to Germans utill 1964. Under a special arrangement with the German government, Soviet Germans were allowed to emigrate to Germany but this permission to return to their homelands only occured after the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. By the end of 1995, 1.4 million had moved to Germany, and a further 1.2 million are still living in in Kazakstan, Kyrgystan and the Russian Federation. |
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