TOMSK, Sep 14 – RIA Tomsk. Online
project presentation "Open the Exile" timed to the 80th anniversary of
the Volga Germans deportation to be held on September 17; everyone will
be able to learn the stories of "willy-nilly Tomsk residents" and see
the freight car in which they travelled, one of the project’s authors,
head of the agency's press center Anna Yaroslavtseva told.
According
to her, the "Open the Exile" project was created by students and
teachers of the Higher School of Journalism of Tomsk State University,
as well as representatives of the German Autonomy of Tomsk. The date of
the presentation is not accidental – on September 17, 1941, a train
carrying immigrants from the Volga region arrived in Tomsk.
"The
project is unique, perhaps, in its scale. We did not just tell a story
about deportation of the Volga Germans to our region, we "animated" it
with stories of people – passengers of the train, which arrived in Tomsk
in 1941, interviews with their descendants, and original illustrations:
designers recreated freight car, in which people were going to Siberia
for 2-3 weeks, drew an infographic "The resettler short-list", – said
Yaroslavtseva.
The heroes of the project were, among
others, well-known Tomsk residents. For example, among the passengers of
the train were ethnographer, linguist and archaeologist, professor of
Tomsk State Pedagogical University Andrey Dulzon with his family (his
son, future TPU professor Alfred Dulzon, was four years old), honoured
coach of Russia, coach of TPU basketball team Georgy Resch, family of
Tomsk writer Leonid Gartung.
"Nobody specifically wrote
down the passengers of the echelon, we found them ourselves from various
sources. Our project is about Tomsk citizens and for Tomsk citizens. It
is about those who by the will of fate ended up in the Tomsk region and
fell in love with it", – Yaroslavtseva added.
The
presentation of the project will be held on September 17, Friday, 18.30,
at "Boiling Point" (Lenin Ave., 26). Participation is free, but
registration is needed. Link to online streaming >>>
***
In
August 1941, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a
decree "On the resettlement of Germans living in the Volga region". As a
result the Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans, which existed
since 1932, was abolished, and its inhabitants were ordered to prepare
for resettlement within 24 hours, and with a limited amount of their
property to arrive at the assembly points.
Between
September and October 1941 alone, more than 400,000 Soviet Germans were
deported to remote areas of Siberia, Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Some
of them ended up in Tomsk.
Information compiled from open sources