Republika Komi w Rosji - Redux

A labor camp interior where worked prisoners including children served time and were executed still stands, Korotkeros, Russia. June 2011. At the beginning of the War (1941) Russia adopted a new land named Komi, where roughly 1200 German families who had been expelled by dispossession from Ukraine were forced to settle with those evacuated from the Karelian, Finnish Republic and the Leningrad Oblast. Since 1942, the Komi Republic was occupied by the Trudarmeytsy Germans from the eastern regions of the USSR. Germans were exposed not only to national discrimination, but they were also denied civil rights and battled various restrictions and prohibitions. Special settlers did not have passports, which made them outcasts in a society, with many people serving time as political prisoners in labor camps. Thousands of people were displaced and quite a few were executed. Russian Germans who wished to remain in the Komi, decided to consolidate. They began to band together in places where they could preserve their national identity, culture and language. Many of theses families live in the town of Syktyvkar, Ezhva, as well as Maksakovka, Sedkyrkesch, Krasny, Zaton and the industrial and woodworking areas. Years later, Russian Germans struggle to maintain their identity and hold on to traditional values, as younger generations of Russian and German descent integrate.