On this day in 1941, the Supreme Council of the USSR published its Decree on resettlement of the Ger
On this day in 1941, the Supreme Council of the USSR published its Decree on resettlement of the German population of the Volga Region whereby all Germans in the region were proclaimed potential Nazi sympathizers and “in order to avoid the undesirable outcome and prevent massive bloodshed” were sentenced to exile to the “fertile lands” (sic) of Siberia and Kazakhstan. The Volga German Republic, a community that had existed since 1764, was dissolved, and within the next three weeks 480,000 people were loaded on freight trains and carried eastward, 57,000 of them dying en route.The resettlers were tied to their places of exile, any unauthorized movement punishable by 20 years in labor camps. Having no means to provide for their families and facing starvation in the approaching winter, the Germans quickly became a headache for local authorities, and in 1942, in order to thin out the German population, all Germans aged 16–50 were conscripted for labor columns where they would remain until 1946.In 1956 the Supreme Council of the USSR returned the freedom of movement to Volga Germans while simultaneously reiterating that they are nevertheless forever barred from returning to their abandoned homes, unlike most other peoples that suffered forced resettlement during the war.The people’s hardships resulted in severe deterioration of their culture and community spirit. Today, out of the estimated 1.5 million people of German origin living in Russia, only 394,000 still identify as German, and just 200,000 speak German. About 500,000 have remigrated to Germany. -- source link
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