Abstract
This article is concerned with the oral memories of the descendants of Kazakhstani Germans living in the East Kazakhstan, about the deportation of 1941 and its consequences. The study analyzes the policy of the Soviet state towards the German population within the framework of the deportation policy. The content of the article is based on interviews of three descendants of the deportees, as well as materials from their family archives. The article introduces into science new factual material from sources of personal origin. The information obtained during the interview, as well as sources from the family archives of the interviewee, systematize and enrich knowledge about the tragic events of the mid-twentieth century, including the forced resettlement of entire peoples, and detail many facts of national history. In the study the problem of the dynamics of self-identification of Germans is studied in the context of historical memory, which includes ideas about the lifestyle and standard of living in various periods of the existence of an ethnic group, confessional memory in ethnic consciousness, and memory of interethnic communication culture, using historical and anthropological methods.