Ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union have held their first international "memory marathon" to raise awareness of the deportation and persecution of the group under brutal dictator Josef Stalin and through into post-Soviet Russia.
The chairman of the Association of Ethnic Germans of Ukraine Vyacheslav Bodrov (aka Redekopp) told RFE/RL that the event, which began on August 26 and ended on August 28, was held in Germany, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the United States.
"This is the first [international] event held by ethnic Germans from the post-Soviet space to express solidarity in different countries and attract attention to the big problem," he said of the single largest and one of the oldest diaspora groups in the former Soviet Union that is connected to a foreign state.
"Through the marathon, we remind about the suffering of the German minority in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, and also focus on the destinies of the successors of those who survived the deportation," Bodrov added.
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According to Bodrov, before Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the major problem faced by ethnic Germans in Russia was assimilation.
But since the Kremlin launched its offensive, ethnic German males have been actively recruited to the war in Ukraine.
Bodrov said more than 500 ethnic Germans recruited to Russia's aggression have been killed in Ukraine.
German organizations in Russia are currently divided over the war, with one part openly condemning the full-scale aggression against Ukraine, while the other is trying to keep a low profile and avoid the war, Bodrov said.
"People in Germany very often have no idea about our problems. German authorities responsible for solving problems faced by ethnic Germans in post-Soviet countries report that there are no problems. But it is a big problem to enter Germany for ethnic Germans from the post-Soviet states because of German law," Bodrov added.
As part of raising awareness over the situation, ethnic Germans held pickets in front of the German Consulate in Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty; the UN Office in Bonn; the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg; Amnesty International's headquarters in Dusseldorf; the Federal Administrative Office in Cologne; the White House in Washington; and in several U.S. cities.
At least one single-person picket was held in Russia.
The picketers held placards with slogans saying: "Kremlin Sends Russia's Germans to Die," "80 Years of Assimilation and Ethnocide," "Save German Minority in the Former Soviet Union," and "Russia's Germans Are Hostages Of Russian-German Business."
Bodrov said he and his organizations have sent letters of awareness to several European institutions, urging them to help ethnic Germans from the post-Soviet space obtain refugee status in Germany and other European nations.
"Germany and Russia have been unable to solve the problem of ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union in the last 30 years. It means the problem is now international," Bodrov said.
Ethnic Germans in the post-Soviet space are successors of Germans invited to the Russian Empire in the 18th century by Russian empress Catherine the Great, who was German herself.
In the autumn of 1941, shortly after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Soviet authorities dissolved the German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the Volga area and deported at least 400,000 ethnic Germans to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Siberia.
In the late 1980s and early '90s, hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans emigrated from the former Soviet Union, mostly from Kazakhstan, to Germany.
Human rights groups and media reports have said that since Russia started its invasion against Ukraine, Moscow has been mostly recruiting representatives of ethnic minorities to the war.