North Dakota Books

Review by Dr. Irma E. Eichhorn, retired professor of history, San Jose State University, San Jose, California

The opening event in Ida Bender's autobiographical account is the radio announcement of June 22, 1941, about Hitler's invasion of Russia. Bender was nineteen and had returned for the summer to her parents' home in Engels, after completing her first year at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Leningrad. Soon the war and the consequent decree of the Supreme Soviet on August 28, 1941, announcing the mass deportation of the Volga Germans, changed the lives of Bender's family for ever. The Dark Abyss of Exile is the author's well-told story of surviving her Siberian exile but with a changed attitude toward the Soviet state.

The journey of horrors began on September 2, when Bender's family and other Volga Germans left Engels in crowded freight cars and ended several weeks later in a Russian village in the Krasnoyarsk region. In January 1942, however, her father, older brother, and almost all German men were conscripted into a labor army (Trudarmiia) and doomed to hard work in forced labor camps. Then the same cruel fate befell German women. Bender and her mother went to a fishing camp at Verkhne Imbatsk on the Yenisei River. They were fortunate that they could bring along the younger children, two boys and a girl.

Bender's richly detailed narrative impressively creates the daily struggle for survival in the camp against brutal physical, mental, and psychological obstacles. The women fished with nets until late fall, standing barefooted in the icy water because they had no boots. During the Arctic winter months they fished through the ice or felled trees in deep snow, often without a noon break, and then cold, exhausted, and hungry trudged several kilometers back to camp and their wretched lodgings. These were a crowded room with a resentful Russian family or a room in haphazardly constructed barracks, with one small window, bug-infested walls, tree-stump furniture, and a makeshift stove, all visually real for the reader, even without the author's drawings.

Fish were plentiful but were shipped to the military and were forbidden food for the women. Stealing even one fish was severely punished. The daily ration was 600 grams of dark, heavy bread with meager monthly rations of oats, sugar, and margarine. A full ration depended upon the women fulfilling their assigned work quotas. Hunger and scrounging food, whether berries, birds, and even muskrats, were daily preoccupations in an environment where the women were at the mercy of the supervisor and the local inhabitants who called them "fascists" and "traitors."

Conditions varied in the fishing camps along the Yenisei River. A German, Alexander Mueller, efficiently and humanely supervised the camp at Iskup. He enabled Bender and her family to transfer there in August 1944. They still worked hard but without starving. "Iskup was like an oasis" (p.128).

After the war and then the removal of some restrictions on the Germans (but not the vigilance of the police), Bender and her husband eventually moved to Kazakhstan and later Kamyshin on the Volga. From Kamyshin, her father's birthplace, Bender came to Germany and now lives in Hamburg. An American cousin encouraged her to write about her experiences. She did so because she wanted her children and grandchildren to understand the Germans' fate in the Soviet Union. The present work is the English translation of the German manuscript.

In telling her story with a fresh immediacy, Bender reconstructs conversations, especially with her parents. Frequently she also quotes her father's diary, even inserting a long excerpt (pp.97-109) about his labor camp ordeals in the Kirov region. The theme, though, that infuses meaning to her life experiences is survival. This is the author's justification for daily choices and actions in the camps and for her earlier participation in Communist youth organizations. The Communist ideals of equality without poverty appealed to her, but joining Communist youth groups also helped her chances for a college education. During her year in Leningrad she noted the blatant favoritism bestowed upon Party officials, and she "began to lose respect for the Soviet system" (p.55). Yet she writes, even after arriving at the fishing camp, "I still believed in our government" (p.50). The erosion of her faith in the Soviet state (as distinct from the country) is a repetitive motif throughout her chronological treatment of each year in the camps. "Finally in Siberia, I came to understand that the promise of the Soviet state was nothing but empty words" (p.56).

Understandably she also defends her father, the well-known Volga German author, Dominik Hollmann (1899-1990), a former Dean and faculty member at the Pedagogical Institute in Engels. He joined the Communist Party under pressure, but according to his recent critics, he wrote excessively propagandistic works. Bender insists that her father "praised the Soviet system, for no creative person could hope to get a word published unless he included such praise" (p.175). He used his Party membership, moreover, to plead for the restoration of rights to the Germans in the postwar period.

Until 1987-1988, Germans in the Soviet Union could not mention in print their labor camp experiences. Recent autobiographical writings appearing in Russia as well as Germany present an important literature for study from literary, social, cultural, and historical perspectives. Among these works, Ida Bender deserves praise for a thorough, poignant, and thoughtful portrayal of German women's lives in the Soviet Union during the war and postwar years.

Diamond Willow has characters you'll recognize if you've read To Each His Own. I had read Diamond Willow BEFORE I read To Each His Own and recognized the characters. Both are must reads if you're a Kathleen Eagle fan! She's my favorite author, because you know you'll not be disappointed with ANY of her books. The characters get under your skin right away, and you'll lose sleep before you finish either of the two!

The story of a farm and farm life set in Sargent County, North Dakota in the time between the two World Wars told mostly from the viewpoint of the horses who witnessed all the farm's events.

A quick glance at the reviews listed for this book reveals that something is amiss. The Face of North Dakota is a geology book, NOT sociology. I would much rather read books than review them, but since it appears that these reviews are for some other book I will write a few words about this one.

The Face of North Dakota is an excellent overview of the surface geology of North Dakota. Bluemle is a scientist but his writing style is such that anyone can understand his work. North Dakota is a land which was shaped primarily by ice and this book gives the layman a solid understanding of how glacial activity has resulted in the present topography. The book also covers the state's non-glacial related landforms and touches on the mineral resources.

I carry a copy of this book in my vehicle and refer to it often while traveling across North Dakota with my cameras. It has greatly enhanced my appreciation of the state and the forces of nature which created what we see today.

A life history of the great-great granddaughter of Sacajewea who was Indian boarding school teacher. The stories were great and left me with the notion of how could this women accomplish so much in one lifetime. A must read.

Was so inspired by the photographs in this book, I took it with me on one of my visits to Wounded Knee, to compare and photograph pictures from on or near the same place the photographer(s) did at that time, at the massacre site as well as the town itself.There are many pictures that I had not seen anywhere else in this book, and anyone interested in this place in history has got to have it. Textually very good as well.

I thought I had exhausted finding fresh, literary works on the subject of plains Indian/military history, but this book is a gem. It is sprinkled with wonderful, relevant tidbits to events whose humanity is gone in other efforts. I've read about 400 books on the subject, and this is in the top 5

Research historian Jerome A. Greene presents Fort Randall on the Missouri, 1856-1892, an in-depth study of the military post of Fort Randall: its establishment, the day-to-day life of its troops and their support of military expeditions against American Indians, routine patrols of Dakota and Nebraska territory, exploration and mapping missions among the Black Hills, and more. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations, including all twenty-four of the original stereopticon photographs of Sitting Bull's incarceration at Fort Randall, illustrate this heavily researched and meticulously accurate chronicle. A welcome addition to American and Missouri state history shelves.

If you are planning on traveling along the Lewis & Clark Trail in North Dakota, this is a beautifull book for reference. The authors do a splendid job at giving the reader pertinent information on the expedition, i.e.; "Jefferson's Vision", "The Captians" and the scientific tools that were utilized. The authors present the geology of North Dakota along the Missouri River as well as life along this magnificent river. The guide is then divided into six sections, following the expedition in North Dakota as it enters at the North Dakota/South Dakota border, following the Missouri Rivier, and ending at the North Dakota/Montana border. Each section discusses the geology, the hydrology, and numerous geologic sites within that section. The book is laced with gorgeous color photographs and maps on virtually every page of the guide. Unigue with the maps is the Missouri River as it was at the time of the expedition, in 1804, versus as the river is during modern times. The books has a generous glossary and reference section.

Book review by Edna Boardman, Bismarck, North Dakota

Drawing on his first hand experiences and knowledge, Landau native John Philipps begins with a once-over-lightly history of the area above the Black Sea in which the German colonists settled. He recounts this history from memory, mixing major historical movements with lesser details. He includes the full text of "The Memorandum of the Secretary of the Interior Ratified by Alexander I," the February 20, 1804 document under which the Black Sea Germans entered Russia. It is interesting to see how this differs from Catherine the Great's manifesto which set the guidelines for the first Germans who settled along the Volga. (Catherine's manifesto does not appear in this book but will be known to many readers and is readily available elsewhere.)

About the first half of the book is made up of thumbnail histories of individual mother colonies. A difference from brief histories that one might find in other books is that Philipps brings the story of their development into the time of the Bolshevik revolution. He tells of the deterioration of the villages and what became of the village and/or villagers. Brief essays in the book bear titles such as "Expansion and Founding of Daughter Colonies," "The Barges of Ulm (Ulmer Schachtel)," "The 100th anniversary of the Beresan colonists in Landau," "The College for Girls, During the Soviet Period `Agrotechnikum," "The Educational system," "The St. Raphael Church Built in 1863," "The Immigration of the Beresan Colonies," and "The Development of Agriculture."

On page 110, about the middle of the book, essays titled "Phases of the Deprivation of Rights," and "World War I and Its Results," move the reader into the era when things begin to deteriorate for the German colonists. A law passed on July 4, 1871, "revoked the privileges given upon settlement to the German colonies." The administration of the villages was put under Russian provincial governors, keepers of records had to do their work in the Russian language, and Russian patriotism was given primacy. Many colonists voted with their feet. They migrated to farms in Siberia (where laws were more loosely enforced), Canada, the U.S., and South America. Philipps then guides the reader through the sequence of accelerating degradation and destruction--the Civil War of 1917-1921, the famine of 1921-1922, the New Economic Policy of 1021-1929, the collectivization of agriculture, 1928-1933, and the terrible famine of 1932-1933. Of this period he says, "There was no end to this brutality, mass arrests, and deportations."

His accounts, though told in straightforward narrative, are powerful because Philipps, as a young man, became an agronomist at the Machine Tractor Station in Speyer. The MTS units provided
machines to collective farms in the area and served as political centers. He tells of one chilling incident when army officers stopped at the station. "One of the officers asked ironically, `Can you tell me the name of this place?' The accountant, Rafael Bleile, gave the answer, `This is Speyer.' The officer, `O, yes, Speyerburg.' the accountant, `No, just Speyer." The officer asked, `Why are you still here? Waiting for your friend Gitter (Hitler)? But don't rejoice too soon; we will return again and settle with you fascists.' And we asked ourselves, `What will become of us when the Germans really come into our villages and the Soviets come back again.'" He had the opportunity to find out.

Philipps suffered deeply in the years that followed his departure from Russia but before he was able to emigrate to the United States. His mother and son died on the train back into the Soviet
Union.

Philipps includes black and white photographs of major buildings and of a few homes. Many of the photographs were taken in recent years by visitors to the Ukraine; others, which show steeples missing from churches and ruined homes, reflect the earlier communist period. He adds
maps and the dorfplans which also appear in the books by Joseph S. Height (Paradise on the Steppe and Homesteaders on the Steppe). The book ends with the German occupation of the
Ukraine, the dissolution of the colonies, the trek to the Warthegau in Poland with the German army, and a brief mention of the enforced repatriation of many ethnic Germans from Russia after the war. Philipps reviews the scope of the Gulag, gives present-day population figures in the former Soviet Union, and closes with 36 pages of names of men executed during the time the communists consolidated their power, 1932-1938. The list, he says, is not nearly complete. Subject and name indexes are so useful for researchers. His work does not have the precision a scholar would bring to a history, but he was a keen observer who felt the era in his bones, and that has great value too.