An article by Tim Obojski, Deutsche Presse Agentur, appearing in the 28 Aug 1995Arkansas Democrat Gazette says in part: "Like adopted children whose cruel stepmother hasbreathed her last but left them in limbo, ethnic Germans in the ex-Soviet republic of Kazakhstanare seeking out the motherland they've never known. 'There's been a massive exodus,' saidAlexander Dederer, chairman of the Union of Kazakhstan's Germans. Speaking with Germanprecision but in Russian, his preferred tongue, he said 121,517 Germans left in 1994, 'and theflight is continuing.' The ethnic Germans were joined by some 300,000 ethnic Russians, whomake up 37 percent of Kazakhstan's population. In 1989, two years before the U.S.S.R.'sdemise, some 960,000 Germans lived in the vast Central Asian republic of 17 million.....Just526,000 are left, thousands with suitcases all but packed."

Konstantin Ehrlich, editor in chief,of the state's remaining German newspaper, theweekly, Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, said circulation had fallen to less than 3,000 from 16,000in 1988 and that 42 employees had emigrated. He has one German editorial staffer left. 'We'relosing the few things we'd been able to preserve,' said Ehrlich, who also heads the enervatedGerman autonomy movement "Wiedergeburt" (Rebirth) in the Almaty region. 'The number ofGerman schools is dwindling. Teachers are leaving. There aren't any books because there's nomoney.':

'I can't say we've had any problems with the Kazakhs, but I'm afraid of the future-- not formyself, but for my children' said Irma Borovikova, an ethnic German who has applied toemigrate to Germany with her family. "Borovikova, who is married to a Russian, said half of theinhabitants of her home village near the northeastern city of Semipalatinsk had been German,but nearly all of them are gone now..." Ehrlich concludes: 'When the old ladies who can't get byon their pensions come to me for help, the only advice I can offer is to leave. The most talentedpeople have already gone."