More on Russian-German Gulag victims

Below is another memory book entry regarding ethnic Germans who perished in the Viatlag camps. Between 1938 and 1956 a total of 2,309 Germans, mostly Volga Germans, perished from hunger, disease and shootings in the Viatlag complex. Of this number only 540 were ever convicted by Soviet courts, the vast majority, 1,487 were special settlers and members of the labor army. Another 282 died while still under investigation before being convicted (Berdinskikh, p. 394). The single greatest year for mortality was 1942 with 1,185 deaths among ethnic Germans in Viatlag (Berdinskikh, p. 398). This year also saw 2,265 Russian-German deaths in Bogoslav, 302 in Tagillag and 925 in Usollag (Krieger, pp. 145-146). A recorded total of 11,874 Russian-Germans conscripted into the labor army died in NKVD camps during 1942 (German, table 4, p. 180). Some of these victims have been identified and their fate has been published in various memory books such as those for Viatlag. Mikhail Suprun and Aleksandr Dudarev were attempting to assemble a memory book for the ethnic Germans in the camps and special settlements of Arkhangelsk Oblast before the FSB confiscated their research. On 20 March 1949 there were 11,275 Russian-German special settlers in that region. Among this group were 809 Russian-Germans deported as kulaks during the early 1930s, 9,300 forcibly repatriated from Germany in 1945 and 1946 including 385 that had joined Andrei Vlaslov's Russian Liberation Army, 835 mobilized into the labor army, and 295 non-Germans sent into internal exile with German family members (Zemskov, pp. 127-128). Documenting the indivdual fate of these men and women is an important historical project which the Russian government currently seeks to make illegal.

Bezel

Albert Viktorovich

Born 1901 in city of Kamyshin (Pushkin Street, Building 20) Stalingrad/Volgorad oblast (Rossiia), German, citizen of USSR, white collar class background, education – 4 grades (Krasnokutsk gymnasium 1916), non-party, book keeper, white collar worker (chief book keeper city housing administration and reconstruction office), lived in city of Engles(?) Volga German ASSR, married, 1 child (son), convicted, sentenced in January 1941 by Supreme court of the Volga German ASSR under article 109 UK RSFSR (abuse of his official position, violating financial discipline) to 6 months forced labor with deduction of 25% of salary, sentence served in place of residence, served in RKKA (28 May – 10 October 1941, technical-quartermaster 2nd rank, active army, Western front, 320th artillery regiment), removed to reserves and exiled as a “person of German nationality”, place of settlement (from 17 November 1941) – Rossiia, Krasnoiarsk krai, city Minunsinsk, Lenin Street, building 160, labor army man, mobilized 25 January 1942 by Minunsinsk district military command, arrived in Viatlag 16 February 1942 from Krasnoiarsk, used for book keeping work in the financial section (12th lumber preparation detachment),confined under guard 16 July 1943 by chekist-operative section of Viatlag after being accused of “counterrevolutionary crimes” (“anti-soviet agitation”), sentenced 29 January 1944 by Special board of the NKVD USSR under article 58 point 10-2 UK RSFSR (“anti-soviet defeatist agitation”) to eight years of deprivation of freedom, started sentence 16 July 1943, was to finish sentence - 16 July 1951, died 25 March 1944 of tuberculosis of the lungs and alimentary dystrophy of the third degree, 12th camp point, station Ima (branch No. 15), rehabilitated 13 October 1989, archive personal file - No. 2515-m. (Reproduced in Berdinskikh, pp. 360-361.)

Sources:

V.A. Berdinskikh, Spetsposelentsy: Politicheskaia ssylka narodov sovetskoi Rossii (Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2005).

A.A. German, "Mobilizovannye sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD i na khoziaistvennykh ob'ektakh drugikh narkomatov v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny," in Stranitsy Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny (k-60-letiu pobedy): Doklady Akademii Nauk, No. 3, 2008.

Viktor Krieger, “Einsatz im Zwangsarbeitslager,” in Alfred Eisfeld, ed., Von der Autonomiegrundung zur Verbannung und Entrechtung. Die Jahre 1918 und 1941 bis 1948 in der Geschichte der Deutschen in Russland (Stuttgart: Landsmannschaft der Deutschen aus Russland, 2008).

V.N. Zemskov, Spetsposelenty v SSSR, 1930-1960 (Moscow: Nauk, 2003).