[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Re: Deportation of Germans to Siberia

[richard benert]

Karl has referred to me as the "unofficial deportation expert".  The 
emphasis is surely on the "unofficial".  And I'm no expert.  I've just read 
a bit more of the German sources we have available, and I hope to try to 
distill any stories that exist into something that will give a semi-rounded 
picture of what happened in 1915-19.  For that reason, I want to thank the 
good people who have taken the trouble to send their family stories.

Actually, quite a few expellees were sent to, or through, Stalingrad 
(Tsaritsin).  Just yesterday I read two of the "Chronicles" on Jutta's 
UpstreamVistula website, and both of these families (from Poland) were sent 
to that area, one of them to Tsaritsin, the other through it down the Volga 
to the Astrakhan area.

The June 1916 list of expropriated properties in the Zhitomir newspaper 
applied only to parts of Volhynia under Russian control (so far as I know). 
Actually, the Expropriation Decree of February, 1915, applied to all German 
properties within 60 or 100 miles of the western border, and this included 
many properties which in 1916 were under German or Austrian occupation.  Had 
the Russian counter-offensive gone farther west, there might have been more 
such lists in other newspapers.  Perhaps there ARE other lists which haven't 
been found yet.

Dick Benert

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Karl Krueger" <dabookk54 at yahoo.com>
To: "Gilda J. Patterson" <gilda.patterson at shaw.ca>; 
<ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 24, 2005 6:41 AM
Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] Re: Deportation of Germans to Siberia


> Gilda - It seems virtually all we know about the deportation of WW I is 
> from stories collected from those who experienced it as your grandparents 
> passed this down to you. I have tried to feed Dick Benert any info and 
> stories as he seems to have become our unofficial deportation expert in 
> this field. My grandmother told my aunt similar stories. You can just 
> imagine the frustration and despair your grandmother felt as they were 
> forced from their farm months before the harvest could be made.
>
> By way of clarification, I should say that if your family lived in present 
> day Poland their farm may have simply been destroyed by the war. My father 
> remembers as a boy returning after the war and having to completely 
> rebuild the farm. He said literally nothing was left standing in this 
> region near Lublin.
>
> The lists you heard about on this thread were further east near Zhitomir. 
> That was likely something compiled in this region and not generally 
> applied to all regions where Germans were deported. I find it interesting 
> that your grandmother was by Stalingrad as I have not seen that location 
> yet among the many reported in EWZ records. Generally it seems most 
> Germans were transported along a train route further north passing through 
> Samara and Saratov and going further east towards northern Kazakhstan.