Interesting facts from individual Russian history, part 3

The final part of the story of my Grossmama Maria (part 1 and part 2)

For the rest of the world, the second World War started in 1939. In the Soviet Union, it started on June 22, 1941 and was called the Great Patriotic War. Within a couple of weeks, all Germans in every city, town and villages in Russia were told that they would be deported. They were told it was for their own protection and that they would be able to come back once the war was over. Jonathan and Maria lived in a German village in the Caucasus, together with a huge group of relatives, nephews and their families. They were herded together and taken by a freight boat across the Caspian Sea, and from there they were to go by railway. They knew that they were going into death. But they did not despair. The family chronicle says that they sat on deck in rain and storm, like cattle, and suddenly one of the nephews said: "Uncle Jonathan, can you please sing something?" And Jonathan stood up and sand Mephistopheles' aria, which was his special hit.

Then they were put in the infamous cattle car to be transported further eastward. But Jonathan got very sick and had to be carried into the car. Three days later he died and was buried in a mass grave at a little railway station, together with others who had died on the way. Many, many years later we put a memorial plaque on our family grave in the German Cemetery in Moscow.

The family was forced to go on. They were dumped off in a tiny village in Northern Kazakhstan and put up to live in local people's homes. Soon first all men and then all able women and young girls were taken away to forced labour. It was called, in true Orwellian spirit, called "Labour Army". 

 

Maria was the only one left of the family, but there were some other old Germans with her. Some of those were artisans and made it somehow. Maria was sixty, but healthy and strong. She went to the boss of the collective farm and asked for work. Her first job was to pile dried cow dung. They heated houses with cow dung because there was no wood in the steppe. In that way she made some wages and got a little flour. The boss liked Maria and invited her to work in a nursery school. It was good, the kids liked her, the mothers liked her because she never stole bread from the kids and shared equally between them all. Most nurses stole food from the kids since the nursery was relatively well-supplied.

Some years later Maria's youngest daughter, who had also been deported and survived the horrors of “Labour Army”, found her way to her mother. All in all, they stayed fifteen years in Kazakhstan. At the end of the war all Germans expected to be allowed to go home, as they had been promised. But there came an official to the village and read a paper for the Germans. It said that all persons of German nationality who had been deported in 1941 according to the special decree of the Supreme Soviet were to live at their places of deportation "for ever" - this was the first time they heard the words: "For ever". Every attempt at escape was to be punished by twenty five years of labour camp. This was also a new word. Anyone who helped Germans to escape was to be punished by five years of prison.

Then in 1953 Stalin died. Three years later all Germans were summoned to the police and received their ID-cards. Clean cards too, no stamps, no indication of deportation. The deported Germans had shown in practice that they were good Soviet citizens, was the verdict. And they had indeed. They worked as hard an anyone just to show that they were Soviet citizens. No matter good or bad, Soviet was it. There were even Germans who wanted to join the Communist party to show how they liked the authorities. The same authorities who had driven them away from their home and let them die in the steppe.

Anyway, the Germans were allowed to live where they wished, but not where they had lived before the deportation. In that way the authorities tried to avoid that the Germans would claim back their houses, schools and churches. They had no property rights. Still some of them moved back to Caucasus. They were not allowed to live where they had lived before, bit they still wanted to live near the places their forefathers had lived. They came one after another, bought houses in old German villages, got jobs. During the '60s, we would often go and visit granny's cousins in Pyatigorsk.

But the majority stayed in Kazakhstan. They had nowhere to go. Some moved to towns, others stayed in the country and went on as peasants. They were diligent and hard-working, they had saved money, built solid stone houses, worked their land, become well-off. They did not want to leave all that once again. Instead, they started schools, libraries, theatres and choirs. This is what our recent visitors fromKazakhstan referred to.

Since my Grossmama Maria was deported from Caucasus she was allowed to come and live with her daughter, my granny, in Moscow. I remember her well. In 1958 we celebrated her eightieth birthday with a huge family gathering. She spoke, read and sang to me in German. Sometimes I was horrendously nasty and rude to her, and I am still ashamed to think about it. She was the nicest, kindest person in the world.

She was the last of her generation, and everybody came to us, to her, on the forbidden Christmas Eve, but I have already told this story.

She died on May 11, 1962, when I was ten and didn't understand death. Perhaps because of that I cannot say that I miss her, in the same way I miss my granny. But I have warm memories of her. 

 

Interesting facts from individual Russian history, part 2

Here continues the story of my Grossmama Maria. 

Jonathan and Maria were rich and happy and generous. Jonathan gave money to schools, libraries, hospitals and a prison. He was just about to buy a whole street in Moscow and turn it into an artists' colony.

Then came the Great War, and it wasn't popular to be a German in Russia during the war. He was treated with suspicion. But they didn't take away his property. That came later. According to the family chronicle, when they confiscated all his millions, he said: "What a relief, they were such a nuisance!" For obvious reasons he had not read the Moomin stories, but this was a very Moominish comment.

The one who wasn't happy was Elly who had dreamed of going to Paris to study music at the Conservatory. But there was nothing she could do about it. So when she was old enough she went to Moscow, but that is another story.

Back to Jonathan and Maria. The post-war time in Northern Caucasus was long and confusing. The rulers changed all the time. One day the white army came and forced all high school boys and all other young boys to join them. Next day the red army came and hung and shot people without asking questions. Eventually the Soviet power was established, and Jonathan and his family were evicted from their house. (The house was later turned into an old people's home. When I visited it in 1991 it was being renovated).

The family left the town for a nearby village where they lived with a distant relative. First they lived by selling their belongings. Then Jonathan got some jobs. From time to time there came orders from the new government in Moscow to shoot the ten topmost citizens in the town. This was part of the Great Terror, and the purpose was to hold people in constant fear. There were orders that ten richest and most prominent citizens should get shot, and Jonathan had been one of the richest and most prominent. But someone would come late at night and say: "Uncle Jonathan, tonight we must come and arrest you and shoot you. If we don't do it, they'll shoot us. Get away and hide for a while". So he did. He became a school inspector, then he worked at a wool factory buying wool. Then someone squealed on him. Without any reason Jonathan was accused of being a "saboteur" and "an enemy of the Soviet state", they said that he had stolen state money. He was tried and sentenced to a year in prison, which was a very mild punishment at that time. So he went to the very same prison which he himself once had built.

When Jonathan was released he moved to a little village where he was offered a job as an organist in a little German church. He was the only educated person in the village, and he started a choir, an orchestra and an amateur theatre there. Then he became a school teacher. The children had already left their home and moved to Moscow to study. The first grandchild (that is, my father) was born in 1931. Maria and Jonathan loved their little grandson who would stay with them during summers. There was nothing like the wealth and luxury they one had, but they were happy, far away from the turbulent events in the big cities.

To be continued.

Interesting facts from individual Russian history

In a Facebook post yesterday I mentioned that it was fifty years since my great-grandmother died. I got several comments on this post, including: “why not give us more info about her life as there's always interesting facts coming from individual Russians history?”

For people who read Swedish, I provided a link to my memoir that gives an account for interesting facts from my family history. But this book is unlikely to be translated into English, so for my English-language friends I can tell the story again.

It is, however, impossible to tell any family history out of context so I need to start a long time ago, as long as the family chronicle goes, which is 1788 when a forefather, Paul Tietz, twenty years old and poor as a church mouse, came to Russia from Germany. At that time, Catherine the Great of Russia invited skilful Germans to come and contribute to Russia's well-being, which they doubtless did. But my ancestor was not part of that diaspora, who are better known as Volga-Germans. He belonged to a religious sect who were wandering to Palestine by way of Russia, but often got stuck somewhere in the steppes of Northern Caucasus where they could rent or buy land from local dukes and start wine production. Actually, I have already told part of this story.

Within two generations, the Tietz family got rich beyond imagination on wine and grain. My great-grandfather Jonathan Tietz was the youngest son of a miller, but he didn't have to rely on a trickster cat to make his fortune. His older brothers did try to cheat on him, but he was clever enough to resist. He wasn't particularly interested in the family business but preferred to use his share of income to support young artists and musicians. He was a good musician himself and even sang for a while in an opera house in Moscow.

At that time it was usual for a young man to marry whoever their parents chose for them. Jonathan's father told him to travel to a particular little town where one of his business partners lived. He had two daughters. Jonathan was to choose one of them as his bride. Before he left, his mother told him: “When you have chosen, give her a box of chocolates, but tie it very hard with a ribbon and watch closely. If she cuts the ribbon with scissors, don't marry her, but if she ties up the ribbon no matter how hard the knot, she will be a good housewife”. Jonathan chose the older sister, Maria, and she untied the knot carefully and put the ribbon away in her sewing box. This does sound like a fairy tale, but no one in our family has ever cut a knot with scissors.

They were married and lived in the mill before Jonathan build a house of his own in the town of Pyatigorsk in Northern Caucasus. They had six children, but only three survived infancy. The oldest was my grandmother Elizabeth, or Elly.

To be continued.

Milestones

Tenth birthday: my party was cancelled because my great-grandmother died. Nobody told me that she had died, but suddenly one day her bed was empty. They didn't take me to the funeral. I had my party the following weekend. Don't remember anything special about it. My mother used to have nice birthday parties for me, with dressing up and party games. I invited classmates and some neighbour children. 

 This is not a birthday photo, but as close to the age as I have. There are very few photos from my childhood.

Twentieth birthday: newly married and moved from a luxury apartment two block from the Kremlin to my husband's tiny room with shared kitchen and bathroom with another family, in an industrial zone outside Moscow. Nevertheless huge party with friends and my father and aunt (don't remember why my mother couldn't come). I had baked a huge cabbage pie and bought a cake. My father said it was sacrilege to put birthday candles on a cake from a shop so they had to go on the cabbage pie. I was pregnant, but didn't know it yet. 

Thirtieth birthday: my first birthday in Sweden. Staffan not particularly responsive to the idea of celebrating such an insignificant birthday. I was pregnant and it had started showing. The year before, which was my last birthday before I left Sweden, I had a huge party with all friends, effectively a farewell party. Funny posters, poems and songs, flowers, presents. Joyful and sad.

 

 A 17th-century mansion where I spent my first year in Sweden.

Fortieth birthday: after the previous ten failed attempts, I decide to celebrate in Moscow. Sixteen very carefully selected friends invited to a sit-down dinner in a friend's apartment. I was going to say: Don't remember why I could not do it in my parents' apartment, but I remember now. The apartment was being renovated. I went to a bank to change a hundred dollars into roubles. My friend told be to bring a big plastic bag. I didn't get it. The bank gave me two million roubles in ten-rouble notes. I bought a huge piece of meat at the farmer's market and made a roast in my friend's tiny kitchen. I had a sitting plan. I set the table Western style, with individual, very pretty starter platters. Afterwards, my friend told me that the other guests were shocked that I had become so Westernised and stingy. At a Russian party, you put dozens of starters on the table, and people help themselves until they are full and cannot eat the main. No pictures from that one.

Fiftieth birthday was grand. Castle environment, guests from all parts of the world, including Down Under; elegant three course dinner, speeches, poems, songs, and afterwards dance to the band of the Royal Guards in traditional uniforms. I cannot beat that. Sadly, many of the guests from that party are no longer among us.

The imminent sixtieth, at least as far as I know (although it has been hinted that some surprises are to be anticipated): a reception at Homerton, a family dinner in a fancy restaurant in Stockholm and a small reception for friends in Julia's apartment. Reports to follow.

What the professor should have done

At some point when I was terribly stressed out and anxious about not having time to do this or that, my clever daughter came up with the words of wisdom that I have cherished ever since. Imagine, she said, that you have been kidnapped for one day by extraterrestials. Will the world stop without you? If the answer is no, take a day's break.

During my four years here in Cambridge I haven't taken a day of sickness leave. I did swap a class when I had eye surgery, but I didn't have to cancel anything. I usually get nasty colds on long weekends and get over them by the first working day. Not this time. Last Sunday, just after I had a nice tea and chat with a friend who dropped in on the way to Norwich, I suddenly felt rotten and, recognising the symptoms, drank three gallons of tea with honey and went to bed, putting a roll of kitchen towel on my nightstand. I spent all Monday (bank holiday) in bed, half sleeping. I emailed a student and cancelled a supervision on Tuesday morning. I succumbed one bit at a time. I emailed the people with whom I was supposed to dine on Tuesday evening. I decided to skip the book club, although we were to discuss a book I really wanted to discuss. On Tuesday morning I emailed the admin person for a meeting I was to attend to justify a very important change to our doctoral programme. I told her the meeting would have to consider my written paper. I emailed my secretary to find someone to chair my academic group business meeting. I emailed another secretary to find someone to chair another meeting I was supposed to chair in the afternoon. Everybody got back to me with wishes of soon recovery and assurance that everything would go on smoothly without me. I would have been disappointed if I hadn't been so ill.

I emailed two students with whom I had scheduled supervisions on Wednesday. I also send my apologies to the whole masters group who were reading their creative writing pieces in Wednesday afternoon. I had really been looking forward to it. Some of them send me their work by email.

While I was at it, I cancelled my massage on Wednesday morning. (It turned out that my masseuse was quitting, and I had missed my last session with her). I also cancelled a meeting on Thursday morning and send my apologies to College Council meeting and Academic Staff Meeting. Everyone got back saying not to worry and wishing me to get well soon. Regrettably, I had to cancel a drink with two colleagues after the ASM. I was so much into it that I felt I could cancel everything.

I went to work this morning, even though I still felt like dead meat. Everyone I met in offices, corridors and the dining hall inquired about my precious health. Every meeting had happened without me, and the world is still there.

It is hard to admit that you not irreplaceable.

"Save the life of my child, cried the desperate mother"

All right, one thing at a time. Long, long time ago in another galaxy I was a young, silly single mother of a boy of four. It was summer, and I was imprisoned in the country because it was the duty of a good parent to give their children three months of summer holiday in the country. I let him play in the daytime while I tried to work (I was a free-lance translator at the time). I would take him for swims, but not let him make mud pies at the beach because he had a very bad eczema. I read bedtime stories for him. I cooked his meals over a little petrol stove, again very carefully because he was allergic to more or less everything. There was no grocery store in the village, and I had to take him on long walks to another village. There were no pushchairs so I had to be patient or carry him. I had enough to carry from the store. This is just to paint a pale background.

One Saturday morning he had fever, and half of his face was swollen. There were several options of getting to Moscow where the closest children's clinic was, but most were not operating on Saturdays. We had to walk for about forty minutes to the nearest bus stop, take an hour ride by bus, then another bus to the surgery. I didn't have enough money for a taxi. We had to wait for quite a long time, and when it was our turn, they said we were in the wrong place, we had to go to A&E. Another bus, another wait, and then they took him away, saying: “You are lucky you brought him now, two hours more, and it would have been too late... Good bye, we have phone inquiries on Thursdays between two and three, you can ask about his temperature”. “Wait!”, I cried, “He is just four years old, he has never been away from his family! He is allergic to everything! He has eczema and must have treatment every night!”

Well, Russia is a country where everything is prohibited and everything is possible. Within a couple of hours I found a friend of a friend of a friend who knew the nurse who knew the doctor, and at least I had first-hand information, although I still wasn't allowed to see my child, and the fruit I sent him, bought for my very last money, was most probably stolen by the nurses. Since he could not read it was pointless sending letters. Just as pointless sending toys. When I got him back after a week he wasn't much worse for it and told me with awe that the boys in the ward used bad words.

I couldn't help recalling this episode when my youngest son had to be operated for hernia at the age of two, in a Swedish hospital. I had to hold him while they fixed the tubes; I was allowed to follow in the ante-surgery room. They warned me that he would go to sleep much quicker than I expected, and I am glad they did, because he just went limp in my arms. Then they took him in and told me to go and get a cup of coffee. When they brought him out, still asleep, they said: “You must not leave him for a second, because when he wakes up, the first thing he sees must be your face”.

So many things...

I haven't blogged for a while, and I don't know where to start. I should blog about wonderful days with Norton Juster when I was a bit jealous because he and Staffan got up very early and talked and talked. I should blog about the death of Maurice Sendak, trying to say something that hasn't been said by everybody else. Just two days before, Norton was telling us about Sendak - they were so close friends. Before that, I was planning to blog about another, much less famous children's writer who had passed away, Leila Berg, whose book The Adventures of Chunky, I loved passionately when I was a child. I should also blog about the anxiety and despair of a young mother whose four-year-old child is taken away from her into a hospital, with the words: "It was good you came now, two hours from now would be too late... You can call the day after tomorrow".  The memory comes as we read reports about a grandchild in a hospital in Sweden, luckily surrounded by the loving family. I should blog about Julia's little cat who, sadly, is no more, which brings memories of just a couple of months ago. I should blog about yesterday being the Victory Day in Russia and what it once meant to me. In the first place, I should blog about the imminence of three-score.