[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] WW-I Deportation from Central Poland

[LMPauling]

I have done a number of oral interviews with people who lived in the Sierpc
area of Central Poland. The inhabitants of the villages only slightly north
and west of Sierpc (Bialasy, Blizno, Gozdy) were not taken to Russia in WWI,
but those in the city of Sierpc were.

One woman told me she was 12 years old at the time. They took her and her
family to the city of Saratov where they were for 4 years. When I asked if
there were a lot of Germans there, she said yes, but they were Russian
Germans and she was impressed that they were big people. She spoke of being
in a "concentration camp," but it was not fenced in. (Another man from Dembe
Wielki said that there were no true concentration camps but more like
settlements.)

When she was 13, she pretended to be 16 and got herself a job wrapping
cigarettes. Then she went down river on a boat and "shoveled" rye.

She was confirmed in Evang. Lutheran St. Marien Church in Saratov on 3 April
1916 in a class of  about "300."


Another man from Sierpc that I spoke with was taken in 1914 at age 2. They
were taken to the Volga, Sarepta, Saratov. He said that from there they
could go where they wanted and his family went to the village of Kromtage,
which he described as a big village belonging to Saratov where there were 6
Russian German families. When the Bolsheviks took over in Russia, the
Germans from Poland were free to go home. He returned in 1919.

A woman from Bialasy, a small village only about 5 miles from Sierpc, said
that they were all ready to be deported when the Germans arrived and  saved
them. They saw the first Russian soldiers in August 1914. (She was born
in1900.) The deportation for this area was in January. She described the
scene that the head of the household had built boards up on the sides of the
wagon to try to protect from the cold. They had put on all the clothes they
had. One dog had been shot already. It was 10pm and they were waiting for
the papers to come from Rypin. She even remembered the full moon. "All of a
sudden a German soldier comes on a horse in the dark." The Russians were
still in the yard on the other side.

She spoke of the people going to "Siberia" and most freezing to death there.

These tales are just anecdotal, but they give us a glimpse of the memories
of some of the people of this area at this time.

Linda Pauling





 From: <blbrandt at comcast.net>
 Does anyone out there know where the Russians relocated the Germans from
Central Poland?