Deportation to Sennoye · October 1941
Emma Ivanovna Kröker was 17. Her mother Emma Gottliebovna — 64. The deportation came for them because they were Germans.
What happened
On 28 August 1941, a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR declared all Volga Germans to be "saboteurs and spies". The decree was quickly extended to Germans throughout the European part of the country — Ukraine, Crimea, the Caucasus, Leningrad region.
In October 1941, from the village of Peski in the Dvorichna District of Kharkiv Region, Emma Ivanovna Kröker (born 1924) was deported together with her mother Emma Gottliebovna (née Schulz, born 1877). They were taken to the village of Sennoye in the Sovetsky District of North Kazakhstan Region — about 3,000 km from their home.
The Bolshevik authorities resettled us by force... Famine of 1932–1933: 3–4 people died every day, there was no bread, leaving was forbidden.From the handwritten autobiography of Lydia Dreger, Emma Ivanovna's sister, EWZ file, 1944What was left behind
In Peski, grandmother and great-grandmother had not lived long — they had been forcibly resettled there too, around 1935, from Rishchelovka in Volhynia. They had already survived the famine of 1932–1933. By 1941 they had a settled life: work, home, community.
In October, as the Wehrmacht reached the village, the Soviet government decided — to send ethnic Germans from the front line to Kazakhstan and Siberia. There was little time to pack: personal belongings, clothing, what one could carry. House, livestock, possessions remained behind.
Who was freed, who stayed in special settlement
The family's fate differed from many others. Emma Ivanovna's sister — Lydia — had already been brought to the station for deportation on 30 September 1941. Wehrmacht soldiers freed her, and Lydia was able to return home with her son Leo, and later move west with the retreating German troops. In April 1944 she received German citizenship in the Hermannsbad camp. Her husband Edmund Dreger, deported on 6 September 1941, vanished without trace.
Emma Ivanovna and her mother had no one to free them. They remained in the special settlement in Sennoye — under mandatory registration with the commandant, with no right to leave, without a passport. This lasted until 16 December 1955 — fourteen years.
I was born in Shilesna, grew up in Volhynia, in Rishchelovka. When I was 7, my father died. I went to school for only 3 years.Lydia Dreger (Kröker), EWZ file No. 906 134, frame 1344Life in Sennoye
Emma Ivanovna found work as a milkmaid at the "Kolos" kolkhoz — this fact is recorded in her son's birth registration entry (1950). On 8 April 1950 her son Vladimir was born in Sennoye. In the "father" column, on the mother's testimony, only a name was entered — "Vasily". The special note in the entry: "single mother".
In 1952 Emma Ivanovna married Nikolai Maksimovich Usachev (born 1923). Several years later he adopted Vladimir — the boy received the surname and patronymic of his stepfather. Thus "Kröker Vladimir" became "Usachev Vladimir Nikolaevich".
Epilogue
On 16 December 1955 Emma Ivanovna was released from the special settlement registry. She lived in Dubovskoye (Rostov Region) and died on 2 May 1987, at age 62. Posthumously rehabilitated in 1993 by decision of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Her grandson Eugen Usachew, born in Shakhty in 1979, moved to Berlin in 2019 and took the German form of his name — Eugen Usachew. So the circle closed: the family forcibly taken east in 1941 returned west 78 years later. On the map — a journey of about 6,000 kilometres.
Sources
Documents: EWZ file No. 906 134 (Lydia Dreger, Federal Archives Berlin), MHSBC Canada film B019 frames 1340–1353 (received 22.04.2026); birth registration entry No. 13 of 14.04.1950 (Sennoye, Civil Registry); reply from NAO "Government for Citizens" for North Kazakhstan Region, ref. ŽT-2026-01503067 of 16.04.2026.
Linked on the site: Peski (Volhynia) · Sennoye (Kazakhstan) · Full family history · Timeline 1820–2026