Novopol (Donetsk region)

The German colony Neufeld (Neufeld; Novopol; Novopolie; now - the village of Novopol) was founded on the territory that is now part of the Republic of Ukraine, in 1888 by settlers of German nationality, the Evangelical Lutheran religion ^[2] . The colony is administratively located in Mariupol Uyezd, Mayor volost (during the period of the Russian Empire), in the Staro-Kermenchik (Bolshe-Yanisolsky) district (in Soviet times before the Second World War), in the Velikonovoselkovsky district of the Donetsk region of the Republic of Ukraine (to the present) ^{[2 ] [3]} .

The number of inhabitants did not exceed several hundred people and in different periods amounted to: 192 (in 1897), 150 (in 1905), 145 (in 1910), 172 (in 1914), 122 (in 1918 according to unofficial data) , 354 (in 1924), 350 (in 1990), 253 (according to the census in 2001) ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} .

The village was built up with brick houses connected to brick household buildings (for keeping pets), had a current, barns, a forge, a school, a shop.

In the early Soviet period, before World War II, the inhabitants of the Novopol colony were part of the Dimitrov collective farm.

In 1937, many adult men living in the Novopol colony were arrested, accused of participating in a counter-revolutionary fascist insurgent-wrecking organization, and preparing for an armed uprising in the rear of the Red Army at the time of the declaration of war as one of the fascist states and leading wrecking activity on the collective farm. In 1938, at least the following residents of the Novopol colony were executed:

1. Shefer Yakov Adamovich (born 26.01.1885);
2. Koos Yakov Korneevich (born 02.27.1914);
3. Klyu Yakov Khristianovich (b. 12.24.1910);
4. Reichert Genrikh Ivanovich (b. 09.05.1904);
5. Kalinovsky Efrem Petrovich (born 1900);
6. Koos Ferdinand Yakovlevich (born 17.03.1893);
7. Krieger Yakov Yakovlevich (genus 03.03.1891);
8. Abend Petr Petrovich (born 1914);
9. Gantsvik Ivan Karlovich (born 1910);
10. Koch Otto Ivanovich (born 26.03.1910);
11. Trapp Augustus Augustovich (born 01.12.1906);
12. Trapp Yakov Yakovlevich (genus 18.08.1893);
13. Reichert Eduard Ivanovich (born 11.04.1911);
14. Miller Christian Teodorovich (b. 12.21.1912);
15. Schnark Alexander Petrovich (born 05.04.1906);
16. Schitz Philippe Gottlibovich (b. 10.31.1887);
17. Shemyakov Dmitry Fedorovich (genus 08.31.1892);
18. Shefer Yakov Fridrikhovich (born January 31, 1907);
19. Eberly Yakov Egorovich (born 07.03.1910);
20. Engelke Friedrich Valentinovich (born 1904) ^[5] .

With the outbreak of World War II and the advance of German troops, the German population was forcibly deported (deported) from compact settlements, including the Novopol colony.

“1941 came. In mid-September, a team of 12 people came to us from Volodarsk. They went around the village and warned the residents, men from 16 years old and up to 70 years old, that they were mobilizing for military construction. Lists of this age in the village council were already ready. By 9 a.m., all Germans of this age were built and sent on foot to Volodarsk. We no longer saw them. Old men, women and children remained in the village. It was scary. Every night they carried out patrol service in the village. It was necessary to clean the bread, carry the grain to the Rozovka station. There was a lot of bread on the currents. All who could work. At the end of September, the NKVD team again arrived in our village. They again went around all the yards, they informed the German population so that by morning they would be ready for evacuation to the east. Each family was given a chaise or arba. They were allowed to take with them everything that could be loaded onto the cart: food, clothes, bed, etc. At night, pigs were slaughtered, salted, but not everyone could do it. By morning, all the carts were loaded, and they drove out onto the road. I helped the Kistner family plunge and escorted them to the Mariupol station. There they unloaded everyone directly into the heating cars. It was a forced relocation, deportation, when hundreds of thousands of Germans were declared “enemies of the people” and “accomplices of the Nazis”, “underground spies and saboteurs” and thrown into the Ural forests, Siberian taiga, and snowy deserts of Northern Kazakhstan. And only after 30 years, on November 3, 1972, by a special decree, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided “To remove restrictions on the choice of place of residence”. During the long absence of Germans in the Donbass, their houses, like property, were either confiscated by the state, or looted and destroyed, or settled by new residents. They did not receive compensation. Now the total German population of the Donetsk region is 12 thousand people. Before the war, there were 10 times more. According to the census in 1998, 145 Germans lived in our Velikonovoselovsky district ” ^[6] .

A small number of Germans managed to avoid deportation. The oldest, to date, a resident of the village of Novopol, about 80 years old, in the fall of 2011 said that her family moved to the village of Novopol to reside almost immediately after the deportation of the Germans - in the fall of 1941 and 11 Germans lived in the village, it seems that they hid in the dugouts (she said that these Germans showed her their dugouts). According to the resident, these Germans left the village of Novopol in 1943 with the German troops retreating under the onslaught of the advancing Soviet army. At this event, the history of the Neufeld colony, as a German settlement on the territory of Ukraine, almost ended.

Modern inhabitants of the village of Novopol remember the German origin of this settlement, for example, they say that the Germans called the village “Nafil” (obviously, this is a distorted sound of the name Neufeld, distorted by time and memory). Currently, the only material reminder of the German origin of the Novopol colony is the layout of the streets of the village: in the form of a strict rectangle with a parallel arrangement of streets. In fact, there was only one brick house built by German settlers, which did not undergo significant restructures (the modern owner of the house said that the inscription of the name of the former German owner and the year, possibly the year of construction: Corf or Koch; 1909 were visible in the house). The brick building of the school, built by the Germans, was used for its intended purpose until at least the 80s, but is now completely demolished (according to modern residents of the village). The brick building located opposite the school was used as a club in the late Soviet era (according to modern residents of the village), but is not currently used - there are no windows: you can see the quality of the building, the brick, one of the basements of the house is accessible for viewing. A street cast-iron water column with a watering can in the form of an animal’s mouth, located next to the school, has been preserved - it does not work. The buildings of the forge, current, and barns have not been preserved. The former German cemetery of the Novopol colony turned out, in the late Soviet times, to be practically in the center of the village: it is now completely overgrown with trees; the stone frames of the burials, located in several rows, are destroyed; metal crosses from graves were scrapped in the 90s (according to modern residents of the village).

Currently, the village of Novopol contains a relatively large number of non-residential buildings and unused farm buildings to varying degrees of destruction, wasteland in places where residential buildings and farm buildings were previously located. There is no school (children, up to ten people, are taken to school in another village by a school bus). Asphalt roads within the village are in poor condition. There are no sidewalks.

85535, Donetsk region, Velikonovoselkovsky district, with. Green Field , st. Lenin, 20a, 92-4-10.