Virtual Gulag museum

The Museum was founded in 1964. At present a large proportion of the exhibition space is undergoing renovation; the Museum is therefore displaying only temporary exhibitions. The permanent exhibition on the history of repression in the Iurga region takes up part of one hall. It shows objects from the exiles’ daily life and possessions that were preserved in the families of German special settlers: churns, a vegetable grater, a bench.

In 2002 the museum organised the temporary exhibition “Ruki, postroivshie gorod” [“The hands that built the city”], which was dedicated to prisoners of war, those exiled to Iurga, and special settlers. The exhibition showed maps of the special settlements, documents about the prisoner-of-war camp and photographs of houses built by prisoners. The exhibition “Nemtsy v Sibiri: stroitel’stvo goroda Iurgi i sud’by spetspereselentsev” [“Germans in Siberia: the construction of the town of Iurga and the fate of the special settlers”] was opened on 5 October 2005. It features materials on twenty German families from the Museum’s collection, as well as objects on temporary loan. The German consul general for Novosibirsk, Michael Grau, was present at the opening of the exhibition. The materials relating to the exhibitions are kept in the Museum’s archive.

The collection on the history of the Gulag was begun in the mid-1990s; material on the history of the German special settlers is being collected since 2000. The material is organised chronologically and thematically; material on the history of the Gulag is kept separate. There are twenty personal files and a card index for German special settlers, supplemented by questionnaires completed by old residents of Iurga and eyewitnesses. Personal photographs are mainly copies or on temporary loan. There is also a collection of documentary photographs – a chronicle of factory life from the 1940s handed over by the museum of the Iurga mechanical engineering factory, which was decommissioned in 2002 (a large number of the photographs are not labelled). The collection includes approximately twenty everyday items that belonged to German special settlers in the 1940s and 1950s (needlework, crockery etc).

The museum teaches local history to the town’s school pupils. In cooperation with the town’s Club for young tourists it also organises annual lectures on the topic. The Museum cooperates with the Society of Iurga Germans, "Vozrozhdenie" ["Rebirth"], and with a Iurga society in Germany (headed by Josef Tserr from Hanover). In 2000, the Museum participated in the unveiling of a monument and in 2002, in the improvement of the cemetery of the German special settlers.

Persons

Dorofeeva Nina Nikolaevna, Director

Persons

Grau Michael

Persons

Tserr Iosif (Iuzif) Kliment'evich

Web page?

Yes

General information

Museum exhibit(12)

Museums /Iurga Municipal Local History Museum