It is our firm belief, supported by research into the history of the "German-Labor Army Conscripts" in the camps of the Urals, that these mobilized Russian Germans were not free citizens of the USSR, but people repressed due to their nationality, and placed in special settlements. They appeared as part of the composition of the "special contingent", representing a marginal group in Soviet society employed in forced labor under conditions of strict limitations of their rights and freedoms.
Source: V.M. Kirillov and N.V. Matveeva, "Trudmobilizovannye nemtsy na Urale: sostoyanie i novye aspekty issledovaniya problemy," in A.A. German (ed.), Nachal'nyi period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny i deportatsiya rossiiskikh nemtsev: vzglyady i otsenki cherez 70 let (Moskva: MSNK-Press, 2011), p. 627. Translated from Russian to English by J. Otto Pohl.
1 comment:
Otto --
The May 23 issue of the New York Review of Books has an article that might interest you:
Kicking the Germans Out of the East
Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War by R.M. Douglas
By Paul Wilson (A writer based in Toronto. He has translated major works by Josef Škvorecký, Ivan Klíma, Bohumil Hrabal, and Václav Havel.)
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