Magdalena Schweiger

was born the eleventh child of Ignat and Kenefefa German on 6/4/1915. These were descendants of German settlers living in a village in the Soviet Republic of the Crimea. ln January 1938 Magdalena married the lorry driver Nikolaj Schweiger. In her short marriage she had three children, a son in 1938 and two daughters in 1940 and 1943.

In September 1941 in the course of the Second World War the family was dispossessed, being "German nationals", and deported from their homeland to a labour camp in the north of Kazakhstan. The husband was mobilised for industrial work and taken to Korkin in January 1942, where he died in a traffic accident in 1945. Magdalena and her children were under the supervision of the commander's office in Kazakhstan without the right of freedom of movement until 1955. It was not until 1990 that she was recognised as a victim of "illegal deportation" and political reprisals and was rehabilitated.

On 31/3/1993 Magdalena left Kazakhstan for Germany, together with her youngest daughter, as a so-called late repatriate, where she died on 11/10/2003 at the age of 88.