Josefstal – Skripalovo Russia

A German Village on the Volga

Book of Remembrance: Josefstal Residents in Nizhny Tagil Labour Camp, Sverdlovsk Region

egerk | April 29, 2010

The fall of 1941 saw the expulsion of the Volga Germans to Siberia.  Made to fend for themselves in the coming winter in Siberia, many of them perished.  In 1942, all Volga German males were separated from their families and “drafted” into a “Worker’s Army”, located in special “work camps”.  These “work camps” were labour/concentration [...]

In Memory: Josefstal Pastor Father Aloysius Kappes (1885 – 1937)

egerk | December 10, 2007

Volga-German Catholic priest, arrested in 1930 along with 19 other Catholic clerics; on April 20, 1931, he was initially sentenced to death by shooting, but then received a “reprieve” in the form of ten years in a penal camp. In 1937 he was arrested again on Solovki Island and, following a brief trial, was shot [...]