THE FATE OF THE Volga Germans has been on my mind since young girlhood. Then, long ago, I heard an incredible story from two teenage sisters – a tale so bizarre and wonderful, it rivaled the best fiction tale ever prevaricated.
All my life I carried with me this daunting tale of two Volga German women, their mother and aunt, who had been imprisoned in one of Stalin’s gulags where they had been slated to die. They had the heroic fortitude to walk, in the midst of the Siberian winter, into the wilderness of the Taiga, where a native, probably a Yakut, rescued them, passing them on to other tribal members until they could safely be smuggled out of the country.
During my lifetime I noted with astonishment that Stalin’s genocides
– in numbers much greater than Hitler’s murderous outrages, were mostly ignored by the world press; or, if addressed at all, were treated with unbecoming gentility.
It irked me that the genocide of numerous Russian minorities, assessed at perhaps twenty-two million people – no one knows the correct count – should be forgotten by the world only because it had been carried out under the Marxist philosophical banner of elevating the living standard of the factory worker and the farmer. An enormous amount of those killed were exactly these tillers of the soil and the minor bourgeoisie for whom the worker’s paradise supposedly had been created.
I traveled to Russia, searching from Saratov down the Volga for Volga German villages – most no longer exist. Katharinenstadt, now named Marx, still stands – its beautiful churches, especially the Lutheran church
– defiled and in decay. I met Professor Igor Pleve and he kindly presented me with a signed copy of his latest work. In Moscow I met the head librarian of the Volga German Library, a motherly, passionate woman who in two hours gave me a crash course on the most important materials to study for such an endeavor. Besides Pleve, she suggested a long list, containing foremost James W. Long, Fred C. Koch and Jacob E. Dietz. These books were the sad archives of broken lives – eminently daunting and exactingly precise.
When I told friends and family fifteen years ago that I would attempt to write a coherent story of Volga Germans, the announcement was greeted with pity and ill concealed derision.
“No publisher in the world will touch this subject. Who is interested in a theme of bygone history that did not make the headlines when it happened the first time around?” said some. “Who cares?” asked others. “If you want it printed write something with sex, violence and gallons of blood – that sells.”
Oh, I agreed that my undertaking smacked of eccentric, stubborn individualism; however, I knew there had to be Volga German descendants with an interest in their antecedents. These were the people I believed would care about my story: people who had heard tales of the hardy, stoic people who had abiding faith in God – their ancestors – who had persevered against the greatest odds; who were robbed, disowned, deported to Siberia and killed by millions under Stalin.
I hope that despite all odds the books will be widely read, thereby allowing the Center to prosper and grow, becoming a place where the history of the Russian Germans will be kept alive and vividly remembered forever.
S. I. W.