"Russians were arrested for God knows what, and Germans even more so."
How the descendants of Germans forcibly resettled to Ivdel preserve the memory of their exile and their parents
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Russian Germans were forcibly evicted from villages in the Volga region and frontline regions, where they had lived for centuries, and conscripted into labor armies far from the front. Soviet authorities viewed them as potential saboteurs and spies. High-ranking officials feared they might defect to the enemy. One of the destinations was Ivdel, a small settlement in the northernmost Sverdlovsk region, where "enemies of the people" began to be exiled in the late 1930s during the Great Terror. Here, the exiled Germans felled trees and worked in mines. After the war, many remained in the city, built entire neighborhoods, started families, put down roots, and lived there for decades. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of them repatriated to their homeland.
Journalists It's My City and "NotMoscow Speaking" traveled to Ivdel to speak with descendants of Germans whose parents or grandparents experienced the resettlement, and to learn how German settlers influenced the city and how the townspeople preserve their memory.
On the evening of February 7, 1942, a train arrives at Ivdel station. Mobilized soldiers are being escorted off it. labor army Germans. The Soviet government sent them to Ivdellag, a remote camp in the northern Urals, in the snowy and frozen taiga. Along the way, they visited a transit camp in Tyumen and worked two days in logging camps in Omsk, sleeping in unheated barracks on wooden bunks.
Tired and cold, angry and hungry, with lice in their hair, they march under escort for thirty kilometers to the now-defunct village of Utenino in the Ivdel district. There, the Germans will harvest timber from the Lozva River and fell the trees. Along the way, people weaken and fall, involuntarily halting the procession. Some are tempted to kill them, but others pick up the exhausted ones and carry them further into the taiga.
"The guys were ready to shoot anyone who sank down on the road in exhaustion. Only the unity and honesty of our men prevented this: they carried them until they came to their senses. By the first stop, there were already up to 30 of them [the exhausted]. In all, this procession contained up to a thousand mobilized Germans. Sometime in the early morning, we arrived at Utenin's camp—a 'zone' surrounded by a two-meter-high wooden fence, with watchtowers at the corners," recalled Theodore Gies, a Volga German forcibly resettled to Ivdel in 1942, in his memoirs.
82 years later, we come to Ivdel at the same station to talk with the descendants of those same resettled Germans, among whom was Theodore, the school teacher of German.
As you approach the city, the landscape becomes more defined—Ivdel is located in the northern Sverdlovsk region, 500 kilometers from Yekaterinburg and near the Ural Mountains. Once considered the "capital of colonies" of various types, the city can now, ironically, be called the record holder for the number of prisons closed in Russia. From the Ivdellag system, which in 1951 counted 57 camp divisions, only one correctional colony No. 63 remains.
Our guides in Ivdel are Valya Anufrieva and Vladimir Konishevsky. They are relatives of German descent. Vladimir is a colonel and the head of the Federal Penitentiary Service hospital, where staff from local prisons were treated. His niece, Valya, was born in Yekaterinburg and works in the cultural sector.
Before heading into town, Vladimir collects drinking water from a pump near the train station. He says it's the cleanest water in Ivdel. The northern rivers, including those flowing past Ivdel and Lozva, a city of 14, are polluted due to frequent discharges from a copper and zinc mine. Many homes here have yellow, foul-smelling tap water.
Ivdel itself is divided into four districts: Ivdel, Ivdel-1, Ivdel-2, Ivdel-3 (the timber mill), and the village of Gidrolizny. There's also a small area where Germans settled, nicknamed "Berlin" by locals. These districts aren't contiguous, but rather scattered and separated by considerable distances.
As we're leaving the train station, I notice a "Fucking Crisis" sticker on the rear window—perhaps that's the perfect phrase to describe modern Ivdel. Two of the remaining three prison colonies have closed, significantly reducing the number of jobs. The timber processing plant and the old hydrolysis plant, which provided employment for many Ivdel residents, are now ruins. And according to Vladimir, the hospitals are short-staffed, so people are going to other cities for treatment.
The town's salvation is that Gazprom still exists, providing employment opportunities for locals. The company transports gas in the Ivdel district. There's also the Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC), which operates a copper-zinc mine, as well as the aggregate mining companies Shcheben Polunochnoye-1 and Artel Ural-Nord. Many people go to work in the public sector as teachers, police officers, administration employees, museum workers, and custodians. There are also a few enthusiastic locals who hope to develop the town's tourism industry and thus revitalize it.
From the train station, Vladimir takes us to Ivdel-3, or Lesozavod, as the locals call it, after the logging operation that has operated there since 1938. Schoolteacher Vladimir Verbets and his wife Valentina live here, preserving the memory of the displaced people.
"They were considered fascists, although what kind of fascists were they, especially children?"
The Verbets' house is located directly across from the timber mill, which closed in the 1990s. It used to process timber harvested by prisoners. IvdellagNow, nothing remains of the timber mill. When Vladimir points out his office window at the plant's grounds, it's hard to immediately understand what he's talking about: a small deciduous forest has already grown over the former site.
Vladimir collects stories of mobilized and displaced Germans. While still in college, he studied the etymology of German surnames, and now teaches German to children at a local school. Verbets loves his northern Ural homeland and has a vast archive of photographs of Soviet and post-Soviet Ivdel. He says he's drawn to this primarily because of the city's ethnic diversity—in addition to Russians, Ivdel also includes Germans, Tatars, Mansi, and Ukrainians.
Vladimir himself is from Donetsk. Therefore, he is also interested in Ukrainian surnames: he writes entire books in Ukrainian describing the origins of surnames. He still has relatives in Ukraine. Recently, his sister and nephew were killed in a shelling.
In Ivdel, Vladimir interacted with many Germans, studied their dialects, and determined which part of Germany their ancestors came from. His wife, Valentina, is an ethnic German; her maiden name is Lochman. Her father is from the Volga region, her mother from Kuban. The family spoke German, but even their parents don't know how or why their ancestors arrived in Russia; they only know the date— 1756 year.
The first repressions affected the Lokhman family even before the war. Valentina's grandfather, a physics and mathematics teacher, was arrested in 1937. According to her, he said something inappropriate at a scientific conference, was denounced, and was exiled to the north.
"He was sent to Solovki without the right to correspond. Then my grandmother's brother, Uncle Artur, arrived and told me that my mother's father had been killed by thieves. He was a foreman." (the senior in the group of workers - editor's note)), very fair,” Valentina says tearfully.
Already during the Great Patriotic War, in 1941, Germans began to be resettled to the Urals, Siberia, Kazakhstan, and other places far from the front—the authorities feared they would defect to Hitler's army. They were then sent to camps and forced labor camps. The same happened to the Lokhman family. According to Valentina, her family was given 24 hours to pack. Therefore, they had to leave behind all their livestock and most of their personal belongings.
"Grandma collected the dishes. Grandpa came, turned the chest over, threw out all the glass, all the china. He put away iron bowls, spoons, mugs, tools, axes... Basically, everything that was needed," Valentina recounts.
Germans were deported whole families, but some still lost contact with their relatives. For example, Valentina's father's family was separated from his older sister—she simply wasn't home at the time of the mobilization, visiting in the Molotov region (now Perm Krai).
Before reaching the Northern Urals, many Germans first found themselves in Siberia, where it served as a transit point. Typically, men were sent further to camps, while women and children were left behind.
Valentina's maternal relatives were exiled to Novosibirsk. Her grandmother was assigned to a military factory there, and her mother attended a girls' high school. Her paternal relatives were sent to Ishim in the Tyumen region. Valentina's father, then only ten, was a laborer, tending livestock and shoveling manure. Both families were separated from their male breadwinners—they were sent to Ivdel, to join the labor army. There, they fished timber from the rivers and sawed it into beams.
According to Valentina, when her relatives first arrived in Siberia, they were stripped naked to see if they had horns and tails. This is how Germans were depicted on propaganda posters during the war, and local residents wanted to check if it was true.
At first, the Germans were housed in a barn, but later the head of the farm took pity and the family was given a small house.
"My mother's family managed to slaughter a pig before leaving. They took a whole can of meat with them, covered in lard. So they weren't as hungry as the Lokhmans." (father's family - editor's note), says Valentina.
Valentina's mother's family, separated in 1942, was reunited only in 1947, when the Germans in Ivdel were allowed to invite relatives living in other regions. As they approached the city, Valentina's mother saw a multitude of lights. She thought she was moving to a city as big as Novosibirsk, but soon became disillusioned: the lights illuminated not the city, but the colonies within it.
In Ivdel, Valentina's mother met her father, whose family had also reunited in the Northern Urals after being divided in Siberia. They married in Ivdel.
Valentina herself didn't experience the resettlement; she was born in 1954 in Ivdel. As rehabilitation approached in 1956, life became easier for Germans there. Many families were reunited, and there was no longer the need to report to local authorities as before. However, people still tried to keep a low profile.
Valentina's parents also kept a low profile; for example, they didn't speak German on the street. Valentina recalls that when people stood in lines for bread, the Mansi and Tatars conversed in their own languages, but the Germans didn't speak to each other. They took the bread and went off to eat it silently.
"Easter was celebrated in secret. We all walked around with colorful eggs, but we were told not to show them. And we obeyed... Easter wasn't officially recognized at the time," the woman says.
Valentina's family celebrated Christmas on December 25th, a Catholic holiday. It was also celebrated secretly and very quietly. Only New Year's was a common holiday, celebrated openly.
Valentina's parents never shared their memories of the resettlement with her. Years later, they only dared to tell her husband, Vladimir, about that period of their lives. He spoke German and collected stories of the Ivdel Germans.
"They had nothing to share with me, it was very difficult. My childhood was hell. My father spoke Russian poorly, and one Tatar beat him so hard with a whip that he still has a scar on his back. They were considered fascists, although they were hardly fascists, especially children. It was all connected to the national question. That's why we never advertised that we were Germans," Valentina shares.
She herself also faced insults from her peers because of her nationality, although Germans made up a third of her class.
"There was a girl at the end of the village. She called me a 'fascist.' Of course, I gave her a hard time. I grew up among boys, that's just the way I was. I was an excellent student, but I had a habit of not letting anyone bully me. I hit her. Then she threw a rock at our window, and it broke. Dad came home from work that night and asked, 'What's wrong?' Mom told me I'd been insulted. Dad didn't say anything, he fixed the glass, and didn't go to my defense," Valentina recalls.
As early as the 1990s, many Germans began repatriating from Ivdel to their historical homeland, Germany. At that time, Valentina passed the language exams at the German consulate, and she, too, was allowed to move to Germany. But it didn't work out.
"The director of our company called us together and said that times were tense in the country, and to prepare to leave if possible. We had relatives there, in Germany. My mother's brother had left Kazakhstan, where it was impossible to live. He and his family invited us. I passed my exams, but Vova and the kids refused to go. My son was a first-year student at the time. He said, 'Mom, I guess we won't go.' But since they weren't going, I didn't go either," the woman recounts.
Thirty years later, Valentina's children finally left for Germany, received citizenship, and live there permanently. She and Vladimir remained in Ivdel, only occasionally visiting their children. Valentina last visited Germany last year. She loves the country, strolling along Winter den Linden boulevard in Berlin, and the abundance of Russian spoken there.
At the end of our conversation, Valentina offers us some tea, but we decline. It's time to move on, to Ella Butt. She, a three-year-old girl, along with her parents and little brother, was also resettled from the Volga region.
"We ended up here as tenants."
On the way to Ella Batt, we pass IK-55, a prison colony that closed last year. It's still standing, dating back to the days of Ivdellag. Today, you can enter the camp grounds through a hole in the fence. Some buildings and barracks still remain.
We meet Ella at her family's dacha. The house has a large stove and an interior more reminiscent of a modern city apartment—plastic windows, a good renovation. Ella was born in 1938; her hearing is not very good now, and she sometimes asks for things to be repeated, but her memory is accurate, and she tells her story in detail.
Ella is from the village of Dittel in the Volgograd region. She remembers well how they came to be mobilized. Back then, she didn't yet understand they were being sent into exile, and she enjoyed the preparations and the hustle and bustle.
"I was happy, jumping, happy to be somewhere, to be about something. And then I remember jumping in front of the mirror, and my mom scolded me. She asked, 'Why are you jumping? I'm so tired of it. What are you happy about?!' That's how I remember it," the woman recounts.
The families were allowed to take whatever they could carry with them and loaded into train cars along with the livestock.
"The cows were standing on one side, and we were already on the other side. We tied a green enamel bucket of butter to this freight car to keep it from swinging around. We were storing it for the winter. But on the way, I remember, the rope frayed and the bucket fell," says Ella.
She and her family were taken to the Omsk region. The settlers didn't know where to go, so they asked the stationmaster where they were dropped off for advice. He advised them to walk to the nearest village of Mikhailovka and look for a house themselves. Later, because the names "Mikhailovka" and "Mikhailovskoye," where Alexander Pushkin was exiled, sounded similar, Ella thought she was living in the poet's house. But during the settlement, things were much more prosaic.
"What's there in the village? What extra housing? Well, we found a house, it had frames and no glass. A big house, made of logs. There were doorways, but no doors. No floor. So what can we do? Where else could we go? We started moving into the house," the woman says.
On the second day, all the men from Mikhailovka were taken away. Thus, Ella's father, Georgy Georgievich Batt, and his brother were sent to Ivdel to serve in the labor army. Two more brothers were sent to Kazakhstan. In the village, "only the women remained," says Ella.
"The women worked in the barns, milking early in the morning and late in the evening. They mowed hay, planted, and dug. When we lived in Mikhaylovka, my mother was forced to bring firewood for the kindergarten. There was a cow, and this cow was harnessed to a sleigh. She would put my brother on the sleigh, and we would trudge along behind. It was good that we had our grandmothers left. They were our guardians and looked after us. We renovated the house. We took clay and manure, mixed them together, and made plaster. We plastered it, and that's how we lived," the German woman recalls.
Later, Ella and her family were resettled in Pelevino in the Tyumen region. There, they lived in houses for temporary workers on the collective farm—long stone barracks with rooms.
Ella admits she's always been a daddy's girl. She still remembers greeting her father after work in her home village.
"Dad was the director of MTS. I'd sit by the gate, swinging my legs, waiting to run up to him, sit on his neck, and take him for a ride," the woman says, wiping away tears.
After his family was separated, Georgy Batt lost contact with his family for five years, until 1946. During this time, they could only correspond, but very infrequently. When the labor army prisoners were allowed to reunite with their families, Ella went to Ivdel to see her father for the first time in a long time. The family traveled the 15 kilometers from Ivdel to the village of Gartsunovka, where one of the Ivdellag camps was located, on an ox, with a cow tethered to the back, hauling their belongings. In Gartsunovka, they found her father. Ella remembers that the prisoners were already traveling without escorts, doing agricultural work—"cabbage, potatoes, carrots, beets, all that stuff." The reunited family was given a small room.
The following year, Ella went to school in the village of Yurkishche. To avoid the seven-kilometer commute each day, her parents arranged for Ella to live with a German family living near the school. She spent four years there. After fourth grade, they had to move again—to the village of Taly. There, Ella lived in a boarding school; her parents bought a run-down house not far from the village and renovated it as best they could. They had to ration food, and the locals relied on their vegetable gardens for support.
After the war, Germans experienced some leniency. Some even had their party membership cards returned, but they were later confiscated. Ella believes this was done to keep Germans fearful of arbitrary action in various forms. Her family also lived in constant fear, unsure of what to expect from ordinary people or the authorities, so her elders taught her not to push ahead. Kind people or practical tricks smoothed things over.
— I remember I was in fifth grade and every month on a certain date we would go to the police station, to a certain office, and report in. Dad picked me up and we went there. And then we came back for a second time. One policeman was walking down the hall and said, “Why are you torturing the kid? Buy him some…”to the police officer to whom they went to check in — editor's note.") a bottle." And indeed, the next time my father bought a bottle, took it to him, and I never went there again. It was strange," the woman shares with a smile.
When she was in school, no one even knew her real name. It wasn't until she was in tenth grade that her homeroom teacher inquired about her different names on all her references—for example, "Ella" was often listed as "Elena." Her high school diploma, however, was issued under her real name.
After rehabilitation, Ella's relatives who remained in the Omsk region attempted to return to their native Dittel, but they were not even allowed into the house where they once lived.
"They weren't allowed past the gates of a single house. They weren't even allowed to look. But the village, they said, was neglected, and the gardens abandoned. When we were rehabilitated, the documents stated that we were born in the village of Dittel and lived on Vodoprovodnaya Street, and at the bottom: 'House number not established.' This was written specifically to avoid conflict, because people wouldn't vacate the houses occupied by Germans," Ella says.
Many of Ella's relatives later emigrated to Germany, but she herself didn't want to move. Ella visited Germany in the 1980s with her mother. She enjoyed strolling the German streets, visiting shops and cafes, and speaking German. But she didn't want to stay—she spent her childhood in Ivdel, and she later started a family and settled permanently in the Northern Urals.
— A lot of relatives left. I have a cousin from the Tyumen region. She graduated from high school with honors and spent three years applying to medical school, getting A's on the exams. But they underlined her nationality in red ink. The teacher then told her she wouldn't get through, that she should go to paramedic school. She went, graduated, and entered the university. Then she worked in Siberia, and later left for Germany. Now I can't seem to reach her; her phone isn't answering. She's older than me, so maybe she's gone by now. Many people left for Germany. But I think it was a mistake. There was no talk in our family about me leaving. We just felt that way. It's as if we were born here.
For our journey, the woman gives us tomatoes she grew at her dacha. Ahead lies a meeting with the next heroine—Lilia Gies, the daughter of Theodor Gies, with whose memoirs we began this text.
Today Russian, tomorrow German
On the way to Lilia, we decide to take a tour of the abandoned factories that once formed the backbone of Ivdel. On the grounds of the former penal colony No. 55, half of the administration building remains, along with a mosque and church with a small chapel nearby, a shooting range, and several buildings where prisoners lived. The atmosphere is oppressive yet captivating.
Next on our route is a hydrolysis plant. It opened in 1960 and closed in the 2000s. It produced ethyl alcohol and feed yeast. Gradually, the plant began laying off staff, and workers demanded back wages and staged hunger strikes. In 2005, director Natalia Malykhina was arrested for non-payment of wages, and the plant went bankrupt.
Now, nothing remains of one of the city's largest enterprises, save for a few buildings that haven't yet been torn down. Children jump on them, and some locals try to tear down the concrete walls in search of rebar. The same thing happened to the timber mill and brick factory, which thrived with the help of prisoners and free people in the last century.
Lilia Gis greets us in her apartment. She immediately pulls out printed copies and manuscripts of her father Theodore's memoirs, translated by Vladimir Verbets.
Liliya was born in 1952 into a mixed family where her parents spoke Russian to each other. Her mother, Sofia Korzun, a dispossessed peasant, was from Belarus, and her father, Theodore Gis, was from the village of Walter in the Volga region. Theodore's sister, Marusya (Marikhen), also lived with them, and their father spoke German with her.
Theodore was mobilized before he met Sofia. Before the war, he had another family in his home village; his first wife, Martha, had given him a son, Berthold. When mobilization began, he was separated from his wife and son—they were visiting their parents in another city and missed the train with Theodore.
"They were herded into school or the club that evening, I can't say for sure now. They were allowed to take small bundles. And in the morning, the cows and all the other animals started screaming because they needed to be milked and fed. And when they were taken away, the animals screamed all day. Aunt Marusya said it was a nightmare. That's the worst part, in my opinion. They don't know where they're being taken, and the animals scream. It was terrifying, the way she described it, I cried," Liliya recounts what she heard about the resettlement from Aunt Marusya.
Theodore insisted on being resettled with his wife and son, but they were exiled separately; he was not allowed to see his family and was nearly arrested. Berthold died during the resettlement. Martha subsequently married another man. Theodore and Marusya first ended up in Siberia, then they too were separated—Theodore was sent to Ivdel.
His knowledge of Russian was a great asset in his new position. He could act as an interpreter between the labor army workers and the camp administration, so he was appointed safety engineer.
"He read the instructions and went off to show them how to do things, how to chop wood, where to stand. He checked the wood chopping and all the safety procedures at all the camp sites. And the headquarters was in Ivdel. He would come there and report," says Liliya.
One day, the camp authorities asked Theodore if he knew a certain Yakov Gis. It turned out that his brothers, Yakov and Friedrich, had also ended up in Ivdel, sent to work at the timber mill. Friedrich refused to work—he had been wounded at the front, from which he had been sent straight to the labor army, and he asked to be treated first.
"My father got some pea coats for my brothers then. It was winter, cold," our interlocutor recounts what she knows from her family.
In Ivdel, Theodore was given an apartment where he lived while he was in the city. His future wife, Sofia, also rented an apartment in the same one-story building. They got together in 1948, and their son was born in 1949, followed by Lilia in 1952.
After the war, when the Germans were allowed to reunite with their families, Theodore's sister Marusya moved in with him. Even after her brother's second marriage, she remained the head of the household, looking after the children and the household. Sometimes, Lilia's mother even felt jealous of her daughter's relationship with her aunt.
Marusya was a Catholic, did not lose her faith and, as best she could, preserved German customs and holidays.
- Aunt Marusya always said that when Christmas came, she tried to bake something, dinekuhe and revelkuhe (German pies - editor's note). But we didn't celebrate. Who knows, someone might snitch and it would come back to bite us. The Germans were afraid to take an extra step, to say an extra word. Russians were arrested for God knows what, and Germans even more so. That's why my father always kept his cool and never, as they say, let his tongue run wild," the woman says.
The family celebrated Orthodox Easter. Liliya recalls that, due to the mixture of Russian and German in everyday life, her parents liked to joke that one day she was Russian, the next, German.
"Lil, who are you today?" they asked me. I said, "Russian." "And tomorrow?" I answered, "German," Lilia recalls.
Unlike our other heroines, Lilia faced almost no rejection or bullying at school. Half the children in her class were German, and her father also taught at the same school.
"I got my grades because my dad was a teacher. It happened in fifth grade. My best friend got a B, but I got an A. And I clashed with the neighbors. Our neighbor was Uncle Kolya Ryazanov. He liked to drink. And he called us fascists and all sorts of other names. We almost called the police," Liliya recalls.
Most of the woman's relatives moved to Germany in the 1990s, but she herself chose not to move. At the time, Liliya worked in a prison colony, teaching prisoners, and had already firmly established herself in Ivdel.
"I'm fine here. The Ivdel swamp has sucked me in. What's there to do in Germany? No matter where you go, it's always better where we're not. And home is best of all. I didn't want to," the woman says.
The Boar Kingdom
"The documents of our past have been destroyed, the guard towers cut down, the barracks razed to the ground, the rusty barbed wire rolled up and carted away. Fireweed has blossomed in the ruins of Serpentinka—the flower of fire, oblivion, the enemy of archives and human memory. Were we there? I answer: 'We were'—with all the expressiveness of a protocol, the responsibility, the clarity of a document," wrote Varlam Shalamov in his short story "The Glove."
It's not just people who forget and change, but also the space themselves. Even today, one of the most important repressive institutions of the Stalin era, Ivdellag, has almost disappeared from the landscape of the Northern Urals. Unless you know that this was once a camp site, you'd be hard-pressed to spot the piles of bridges across which prisoners transported timber. It's impossible to guess that a path through the dense forest was once a railroad, carrying train cars past checkpoints directly to the camp grounds for timber.
It's impossible to imagine that 23,5 people once served their sentences here. Among them were common criminals. But as many as political prisoners, Theodore Gies recalled in his notes. Among the labor army workers resettled in Ivdel in 1942 alone, 1387 died. This is the origin of the Ivdel legend that a German is buried under every sleeper on the railroad tie to Serov, which the labor army workers built.
Fending off a swarm of aggressive northern mosquitoes (our trip took place in early autumn), we venture deeper into the camp grounds in the village of Palkino. We are accompanied by Sergei Kozin, a resident of Ivdel who explored the trails of the former zone as a child. Sometimes he finds artifacts from those years there, such as horseshoes and tools, but the main find is a potbelly stove from the Kaganovich plant, manufactured in 1937.
Kozin frequently stops us along the way and pulls out printed photographs. He points to places where the administration building or watchtowers once stood. All we can do is try to imagine that a person once lived in the place where trees have already grown.
The further we go, the less forest there becomes, gradually giving way to swamps. Among them, we can find a preserved structure resembling a well. It's made of larch, so it hasn't rotted yet. Besides this structure, Sergei points to something resembling a cellar, its walls and ceiling also made of wood. Essentially, this is all that remains of the camp.
Nature has reclaimed this place. What wasn't destroyed, it has absorbed and camouflaged. Now the boars are the owners of this land. As we walk through the camp toward the Lozva River, our feet constantly encounter ground plowed by boars' tusks.
Near Lozva, our attention is drawn to driftwood—logs and firewood that sank during a rafting operation. The bottom is practically covered with them. It looks vast. Perhaps this is the last place on our journey where the memory of space still retains the traces of human activity.
Preserving memory requires actors who will personally engage with history and pass it on to future generations, explains Daria Uspenskaya, a PhD student at the European University's Faculty of History. The very location where events took place doesn't necessarily need to be preserved. People, organizations, and communities are essential. Without them, memory can simply disappear. For a time, it remains communicative—passed on from person to person from generation to generation—and then becomes cultural—memories frozen in voice recordings, museum exhibits, books, and films.
Our guides, Vladimir Konishevsky and Valya Anufrieva, are among the last guardians of family memory in Ivdel. They speak with journalists, show us places associated with the Germans, and introduce us to people who lived through the resettlement. Toward the end of our trip, Vladimir takes us to the Berlin neighborhood, where Germans once settled and where he was born. He points to the remains of the foundation of his house, joking, "Look, maybe some of my childhood toys are still there!"
Previously, the zone began in Berlin, which was a German ghetto. A branch line ran from residential buildings to the camp, allowing Germans to work in the logging industry. Now, like the camp, it is partially destroyed and overgrown with dense weeds.
To this day, the numerous graves of Germans in the local cemetery serve as reminders of their displacement. Valya and Vladimir's relatives are also buried here. The German graves are distinguished by the fact that the headstones are turned in the opposite direction: the tombstones stand at the head, not at the foot, as with Orthodox Christians.
The Ivdel Museum of Local History also attempts to preserve, to some extent, the memory of the repressions in Ivdellag. Although located far from the former camp, its exhibits feature the bars from Ivdellag. However, today's state memory actors have distinct priorities, deciding what to honor more and what to deem less.
At the Ivdel Municipal Museum, these priorities are dictated by the reality of contemporary Russia. Next to the exhibit on repression, a new exhibition on the modern war in Ukraine recently opened. Museum staff created it, as they put it, "to support the guys."
One of the museum's display stands is divided into two sections. One displays color photographs of city residents who went to war, the other black-and-white photographs of those who perished. During our visit, the display had not yet been updated. Below were several new black-and-white photographs; their color copies had not yet been removed from the display of "living" soldiers.
Author: Semyon Khorokhoritsa.
Photo: It's My City