Tuesday, November 01, 2011

More on Solikamstroi

Solikamstroi also known as Solikambumstroi or Solikamlag was a corrective labor camp devoted primarily to industrial construction. Located in Molotov (Perm) Oblast the camp centered around the building of a cellulose-paper combine and operated from January 1939 until the summer of 1946. The camp employed both convicted prisoners and Russian-Germans mobilized into labor army detachments. The population for each group confined at the camp is listed below for each January. After discharging them from the labor army in 1946, the NKVD assigned the Russian-Germans in the camp to continue working  in the enterprises formerly part of the Solikamsk ITL and placed them under special settlement restrictions.

1942 10,531 prisoners and 9,126 mobilized Germans
1943   5,986 prisoners and 9,089 mobilized Germans
1944   2,343 prisoners and 6,027 mobilized Germans
1945   9,123 prisoners and 5,980 mobilized German
1946  1,556 prisoners and  an unknown number of mobilized Germans

Source: A.A. German, "Sovetskie nemtsy v lageriakh NKVD v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny: Vklad v pobedy ," Voenno-istoricheskie issledovania v Povolzh'e, Sb. Nauch. (Saratov: Izd-vo: "Nauchnaia kniga," 2006), Issue no. 7, pp. 301-302.

5 comments:

Merv said...

A first cousin to my Dad lived in Solikamsk from 1945 right up until 1991 when she moved to Germany. I have met with her three times. She has two daughters, both married to Russians, who have remained in Solikamsk with their families.

Merv said...

A first cousin to my Dad lived in Solikamsk from 1945 right up until 1991 when she moved to Germany with her son. Her two daughters, who married Russians, still live there with their families. I have met with Anna three times.

J. Otto Pohl said...

Interesting, according to German and Kurochkin all the Russian-German labor army conscripts at Solikamsk were men. Was she the wife or daughter of one of the mobilized men allowed to rejoin with their families in 1945, but not allowed to leave the area?

Merv said...

Anna and her mother and her siblings had fled from Odessa district with the retreating German army in the spring of 1944. After a few months in Poland, they again fled westwards into Germany. In October 1945 the entire family was "verschlept" to Solikamsk where they lived under "der Kommandantur" until 1956. Anna's husband was part of the labor army in Solikamsk, and that is how they met. They married there in 1948.

J. Otto Pohl said...

Ok, she was forcibly repatriated to the region as a special settler and married a formerly "mobilized" special settler. That makes sense.