Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/85035

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/jbr.12.55

The aim of this article is to contribute to the study of Russians in exile, using the perspective of personal narrative of a second-generation Russian exile of Kalmyk descent as a resource. The research method of oral history was used to reconsider the lives of individual Russian exiles as “displaced persons.” World War II produced an incomparable number of refugees. In 1941, the Allies established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to protect and assist refugees and other victims of war. As a result of the havoc caused by World War II, those who were found outside their “country of origin” were referred to as “displaced persons” (DPs), especially in the United States. This situation shows the limitations of the UNRRA’s refugee resettlement program. The number of people displaced in Europe in the immediate aftermath of the war was as high as 11 million. An estimated 33,000 DPs were repatriated daily in the summer and early fall of 1945. By the end of September, the number of DPs in Germany had dropped to 1.2 million. However, many people of Eastern European origin were not willing to return because they were worried about the new political system in their home countries and their own treatment upon returning. They were referred to as “non-repatriable DPs.” The subject of the oral history was a second-generation exile of former Russian Imperial subjects of Kalmyk descent (a Mongolian-speaking people); she was born in Belgium in 1931. Her mother left her when she was very young, and her father left home for work, leaving her in the care of her uncle and his wife. She was a stateless person with a Nansen passport. She traveled around Central and Eastern Europe in search of educational opportunities. In the late 1930s, her father and other first-generation exiles cooperated with Nazi Germany to seek to “liberate” their homeland (Russia). After the war, she was interned in the DP camp in Freimann, Munich, which became an American occupied zone. About 8,000 people of various nationalities stayed in the camp at Freimann. The gymnasium in the camp taught Russian, English, German, Church Slavonic, and Latin as required subjects. The camp had a cosmopolitan environment and was very intellectually rich, housing professors who had taught in many parts of Europe. There were several clubs of various ethnic groups in this camp, and they were very active. She enjoyed her youth in the “cosmopolitan” conditions of the camp. The interviewee and other Kalmyks were moved with the Russians to a camp at Schleissheim around 1946-47. The reason for this was that the Russians and Ukrainians did not get along so well, so it was decided to put them in separate camps. However, the DP camps including Schleissheim were dismantled at the end of 1952 with the withdrawal of US troops. In addition, the housing of German refugees returning from many parts of Europe left the Kalmyks with no place to stay. Seventeen countries refused to accept migration of the Kalmyks. The fact that they were identified as Asians was a serious barrier to migration. After many twists and turns, the U.S. Department of Justice was finally able to conclude that the Kalmyks, although Asian in origin, were "a white, so-called European race" given generations of education, cultural activities, and Russian Soviet domination. In 1952, the Interviewee was able to leave Germany and moved to the United States, where she attended college and lived for more than a decade. However, she was never able to feel at home there and returned to Munich where she found a place to live. As a stateless person who had moved from place to place in Europe, the camp in Munich was the place where she could be, where the borders between those with and without a homeland, between European and Asian, and within the Kalmyk people were evened, even if only temporarily. Munich, where she had spent her youth as a DP, was the place where she could belong.