"Later, one of my grandchildren asked me why we Germans in the Soviet Union were treated as second-class citizens. I wanted them not to be ashamed of their parents or their people." I took it as my assignment to explain to them why they were in that position, while at the same time I did not want to stir up hate in their hearts. They were persecuted because of their ethnicity. Even as children, they were considered second-class citizens, scoffed and cursed. They had inherited the stigma of being damned, exiled Germans. I wanted to spare them the difficulties I had experienced.
Ida Bender writes in the Foreword: "I wanted my children to have a happy, peaceful life, while they still were young. The book includes photographs and sketches depicting Volga German village scenes and life in the forced labor camps. Ida Bender, who also describes acts of kindness by some Russians, expresses the hope her book will help replace hatred with understanding between peoples. Many persons perished from starvation, freezing, and brutal treatment. Bender and fellow ethnic Germans were subjected to inhumane conditions in Soviet concentration camps. These people were descendants of 18th Century settlers invited by Czarina Catherina II from western Europe to convert barren Russian steppes into productive farmland. She and her family lived in the lower Volga region of the Soviet Union, along with 400,000 other ethnic Germans. Ida Bender relates her story of deportation and exile to Siberia at the beginning of World War II in 1941. Her cousin, Carl Anderson, helped write this book with assistance from Laurel Anderson and William Wiest who completed the German to English translation. The Germans from Russia Heritage Collection is pleased to present Ida Bender's important work The Dark Abyss of Exile: A Story of Survival which she originally authored in the German language.
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