От бездны забвения до вечности
Man became the ruler of the world when he learned to transmit and preserve information. Language and writing—these are what help us, who live "in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust" (Job 4:19), to sense Eternity.
You know, I was lucky. My grandfather Albert, who lived almost ninety-six years and passed away quite recently, managed to write a book. This autumn, I wandered through Dresden’s Altstadt again, but this time without him. Yet his book—filled with incredible stories of his dramatic youth under NKVD supervision in the taiga, felling trees, traveling in “cattle cars” for exiles—remains a greeting from him not only to me but also to my sons, and, God willing, to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well… I remember how my grandfather lamented that he had never properly asked his parents—my great-grandfather and great-grandmother—about their past and how "they took many good stories to the grave."
History remains alive as long as someone preserves it. If it is written down, recorded, documented. For Germans of Kazakhstan, this is a sacred topic. One only needs to recall how everything tied to national identity—whether photos, books, or prayer books—was literally taken by force from our deported grandparents, stripping them of their historical foundation, turning them into rootless wanderers without memory, without faith…
To kill the German in a German, you don’t have to shoot him.
The generation of the war and post-war years is still alive. It remembers hunger, humiliation, and the dream of a lost homeland. If we want to remain ourselves, we must pass on this chain of memory, these surviving recollections and traditions, to future generations. A family album tucked away in an attic, filled with yellowed photographs, can tell much to any curious and caring mind. Any story told by a grandmother will not be "buried" if just one hand records it. From the abyss of oblivion to eternity, there are only a few taps on a smartphone.
You can set an example for your fellow countrymen in this noble and worthy cause. It is not difficult. Share the stories of your ancestors, scans of old photographs, and any chronicles of your family with the participants of our project! Family history should not become a vague legend of "something, somewhere, somehow"—not if we refuse to abandon our own identity. Not if we are still Us.
Igor Niederer,
Member of the Board of Trustees of the Public Foundation "Kazakhstan Association of Germans ‘Renaissance’",
Volunteer of the INTERACTIVE ARCHIVE OF KAZAKHSTAN GERMANS project.
