Yes, that's right. There were almost 16 thousands germans living in Karaganda as per the last population census (2010).
Not really, there are lots of russians with such surnames in south Russia (Kuban, Rostov), he is not from that region but probably his ancestors were.
Levit is a german surname. There used to be 600K ethnic germans in north/central Kazakhstan before Soviet unit collapse and he is from that region.
