JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

department head for cattle cross¬ breeding and acclimatization. Fortunatov turned to me: “Young man I recall you have a short surname and are German. I’ve met you before.” He informed me that he urgently needed a specialist and wanted me to work in his department. When Fortunatov had made all the arrangements I was able to freely move about Dolinka without an armed guard. What a wonderful feeling. With head ISLAND IN THE STEPPE 117 held high I walked to the Institute, number fifty-one on Fourth Street. This building housed the flower of zoological-technical experts in the entire country. All were prisoners .... Dolinka, where the Institute was located, was populated by Germans until 1931. They were resettled when the Karaganda camp was established. Within the NKVD system the camp was called: The Karaganda NKVD Work and Rehabilitation Camp. Since it had connections with other agricultural institutes like kolkozes and sovkozes the camp was also known as the “Karaganda Sovkozes of the NKVD.” It is wrong to assume that this camp occupied an uninhabited steppe. The area of this camp stretched two hundred and sixty kilometers north to south. It was a state within a state. Here were settlements of Kazakhs, Russians, Ukrain¬ ians and Germans. These people, except for the Kazakhs, began settling here in 1906-07. During 1930-31 all these settlers were forcibly evacuated. Northwest of the camp were special settle¬ ments for the disenfranchised. They and their families were sim¬ ply unloaded on the barren steppes in winter, where they literally dug into the ground with their bare hands. They covered these holes with branches and shrubs or whatever they could find. Few survived the winter. There settlements had no names, only num¬ bers. For example number thirteen initially had eleven thousand inhabitants. Only five thousand were alive in the spring of 1932 thanks to cold and hunger. Most of the victims were naturally the old, the sick and the children. There were more than twenty-five such settlements. The camp and the settlements served only one purpose: open¬ ing up the wilderness. The former villagers — Russians, Ukrain¬ ians, Germans - were allowed to keep their cattle and farming inventory and rather quickly re-established themselves in the new regions. It was a different story for the rich Kazakhs. They were disenfranchised. Their cattle - cows, sheep, horses and camels — were confiscated. Many of them fled or were arrested and sen¬ tenced. A special company called “Eastern Meats” was organized under the supervision and leadership of the NKVD. A terrible famine ensued and entire families starved to death. The cattle were handed over to the newly established camps and the new camp sections were established in the extinct Kazakh settlements. These enterprises resembled the sovkozes. The inhabitants of these new localities were all adults and unpaid workers, namely prison¬ ers. Each clay barrack, w