examples – 2 – I was born in the Gulag

I was born in the Gulag – 

“My father comes from the German-speaking minority in Czechoslovakia (CSSR). My paternal great-grandparents were of Hungarian descent. The Z’s had been watchmakers since the 14th or 15th century. On my mother’s side, my family descends from the German Swabians of the 16th century and were Volga Germans. Virtually no one from my family is left. I am one of the few remaining.

“At the end of World War II in 1945, the Russians herded German prisoners of war through the streets. People stood on the sides of the roads watching to see what was going on. And it happened that German prisoners of war would jump out of the column into German houses or haylofts and disappear. But the Soviets had to keep the numbers right, so they’d grab just anyone to take their place, who then had to march along with them. And that’s how they grabbed my father. My parents met while doing forced labor. I was born in the Gulag. I can’t remember almost anything. It’s not just a faint memory. I simply had no idea where I was. It was all just unimaginable.

My mother is a Volga German from the village of Remmler. During the purges of 1937–38 in the Soviet Union under Stalin, she was deported along with other Volga Germans.

that longing …

My mother always sang. She sang Russian songs all the time … everywhere … … that longing … … The children swam in the Volga with the horses! The people couldn’t swim, but the horses could. The children held on to the horses’ tails and went into the Volga with them.”

I conducted the interview in June 2026.

Foto: the Solovetsky Islands with the Monks’ Kremlin in 1995. The prototype of the Soviet penal camp system was established on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in the year 1923