There and Back

My Great Grandfather in 1932

2010-07-26T04:33:00.002-06:00

Well, we think we found his house. Next, a lengthy discussion as to what became of him. Lengthy because I am constantly sorting out characters, this time sorting out the confusion between my Grandfather and Great Grandfather.

Great Grandfather Johannes owned the nice house across the street. He was a Volst mayor, which encompasses Rohrbach, Worms, and probably a few other small villages in the area. This also made him a magistrate, or judge, with some additional political influence that came along with it. A very nice position to hold in the German community. A death sentence once the communists took over the village.

More specific research is needed, but I believe the final thrust of the communist takeover in that area was around 1928. By other accounts I have read, the local officials were the first to lose their properties and their freedoms. My dad was still young (9-10 years). His first recollection was when grandfather was arrested in 1932. He was not, however, sent to prison, but spent his time in the local jail. Let's speculate that his influence in the community may have made the local communist officials leery about disposing of him too quickly. They did try at first to gain the cooperation of the local community (but soon resorted to more persuasive methods). This may explain why Johann lasted nearly four years after the takeover. Call it collusion if you will, sounds more like some excellent survival tactics on Johann's part.

Four months after Johann's arrest, college students were sent to Rohrbach to tend the orchards. Tending to fruit orchards was totally foreign to these students (as was probably anything agrarian). Thus, the officials decided to release Johann from jail and put him in charge of managing the orchards, at the same time teaching his skills to the students. The orchards had been in the family for perhaps 100 years. We know very little about that summer in the orchards. We do know that it was now the fall of 1932 - the onset of the Great Famine. The soldiers came to confiscate all of the food. The village was sealed off. Johann could not go back to his house. It wasn't his anymore. Anyone harboring him would be arrested if caught.

Statistics tell us that the famine took nearly everyone except those in their early teens. My father was 13. Johann was never heard from again after the summer of 1932. My dad's sentence tailed off at the end. "Starved" was what he said. Yet I have an execution date from somewhere that says he died in 1935. Was it the same Johann (there were many). Did he somehow manage to survive the winter, only to face the firing squad three years later?

Magistrate, Volst Mayor, proud farmer. Prisoner, street beggar, starved to death in a quiet ravine? Will we ever know what became of this once-proud man?

See this link for more information on The Famine of 1932-33.

Its There!!!!

2010-07-25T17:52:00.004-06:00

I made a huge effort while in Rohrbach to try and locate the position of my grandfather's and great grandfather's house. When I got back home to Colorado I sat down with my father to review the photos and movies I had taken. I stood in the spot where my father's cousin had said to look and started taking pictures. The house between the road and the pond was the one my father identified as looking "exactly like my (his) grandfather's". Ok, this could be it.

"We lived on the other side of the road from the pond". Nope, can't be that one.

"We lived at least a mile from the pond." Nope. Can't be the one. Too close to the water.

I went back on Sunday to do some tree trimming for him. He had found an old survey which showed the location of the houses in the village. "Here's the pond. We lived here." We're looking at it upside down, south is up. Turn it over. Here's the road we drove down. The creek (pond) we visited is on the right, west of the main road. Yes, I believe the pond I was focussing on is really a widening of the creek flowing from north to south through the town. The survey, which has topographical lines on it, supports this. The pond my father was talking about is to the east and to the north, not the one I was taking photos of, but clearly shown on his map. He locates his house, I color it in with my pencil. Then I see some writing on the map, very light and faded. I ask mom for the magnifying glass. There it was: "Eduard" was penciled in to indicate my dad's house, right where he showed me. "Johann" was penciled in on the house across the street - right where my dad and Amalie had said it was.

Next thing was to locate this house on my photographs. The house which my dad said "looks like grandfather's" corresponded to the location Amalie had told me to look, and is in the perfect relationship with the creek (pond) behind. Dad's house was across the street. He said it was in very poor condition and was being used as a pig stable when he left Rohrbach in 1932, and the fact its no longer there is not surprising. It appears that the home for the retarded stands where that house used to stand.

My great grandfather had a very fine house, with a porch on the side, in the lower village, on the west side of main street. This may be it:

A Post-war Re-unification in Haunstetten

2010-07-16T03:02:00.004-06:00

The war was over. My dad was on his own, not knowing where to go. Only that he did not want to go back to Russia. The train took him to Augsburg, Bavaria. He had somehow gotten word that some of the Rohrbach families were there in a refugee camp. After a few inquiries, he found out that Amalie was working in a bakery. He arrived on foot near quitting time and asked if she worked there. "No, we haven't seen her for some time," was the reply. My dad had no place to go that night and was dead tired, so he asked if he knew where she lived. “No, but you may find her over at the flour mill. Her husband works there.” Not knowing she had even been married or to whom, to the flour mill he went. a man came out of the back, leaving for the day. He addressed my father in Ukrainian. Surprised, my dad asked where he was from. Somehow, the conversation continued, and it came out that dad was looking for a lady named Amalie who was from Rohrbach. “Come with me, I know where she lives,” was the Ukrainian man's reply. Before dark, dad found his cousin, aunt and uncle, and then found out she had married the Ukrainian man. Family was re-united. Everyone was ecstatic.

The bakery today (on the right):

A Return Trip to Germany

2010-07-16T02:59:00.001-06:00

A follow-up trip was needed to Germany, which I managed to fit in on my way back from my work assignment in Russia. First on the agenda was to fill in the holes on my mother's side of the family tree, with related photos. First I met with tante Hildegard and gleaned information and pictures from her, as well as a visit to two local cemeteries – named simply the “old” cemetery and the “new” cemetery. The cemeteries in Germany formed a much different impression from what I was used to in American cemeteries. Hildegard appears to be the appointed caretaker of the graves of both her paternal and maternal side, as well as yet another friend with whom she worked with, who “has no one else to take care of it”. Both cemeteries are walking distance from her house, centrally located in the city. She goes there about every other day in the summer and waters the flowers on the graves. The cemeteries are somewhat of a meeting place for the local community, structured like parks, with nice walkways, bike paths and access to watering cans and cisterns for watering the flowers on the graves. They are very beautiful and peaceful places for taking a quiet stroll.

Next on the list was my uncle George, mom's and Hildegard's brother. He is getting on in years and seems to have lost interest in the trail of ancestry. He had a good treasure of old photos, although I was a bit disappointed in the way they were catalogued, or rather randomly stored in shoe boxes. I am now careful to point out to folks the need to label their photos with the where, when and who. I found a lot of old photos where George could not even tell me who was in the picture. I scanned them anyway to see if perhaps my mother will recognize them.

On Tuesday I boarded a train from Augsburg to Giforn to visit the paternal side again. My major objective turned out to be a dud. The wife of my deceased uncle, whom I thought could help with some of the early photos of Rohrbach, was no help whatsoever. She did not grow up in Rohrbach, and apparently her husband never shared any photos of his family with her. “Can't help you, I don't know any of these people” signalled pretty much the end of our brief conversation. Nevertheless I was able to meet with both cousins there and fill in the missing data on their children and grandchildren.

My disappointment with my uncle's wife was more that compensated on Friday, when, on an unscheduled trip to Osnabruck (about 100 km from Wesendorf), we visited another man who was the son of one of my dad's cousins, and had spent the first six years of his life in Rohrbach. He had known my father's family well, and had once made a visit to the U.S. to see my father when I was still young. This man, age 75, shares my passion for history, remembers dates and times like they were yesterday, and talked endlessly about our family and the times in Rohrbach. My cousin Eduard and I were invited (or somewhat invited ourselves) there for lunch, and by 5:00 we were still talking. He recommended several books (in German) which I am going to seek out in English versions. I definitely want to do some follow-up with him. At his age, his mind is still a treasure of information.

The two days in Wesendorf and Osnabruck has turned up another leaf on the tree. My dad's aunt Sophia married a man named Petrokevich, who had a son and a daughter. The son ended up in England with my father and is no longer alive, but could very well have had children. I believe I may have met the daughter of Petrokevich in Wesendorf. She wasn't clear on the lineage, and seemed to confuse paternal and maternal sides, but I believe I have enough information to track this one down. This could turn up some relatives in England and in other parts of Germany, as well as eventually someone who may still be in Russia.

After Osnabruck, we drove to Bad Oeynhausen to see the son of my dad's other brother. He has two sons, both married, one with children. We had a great dinner and a few toasts of the famous Russian tradition (vodka of course). After lunch in Osnabruck and dinner in Bad Oeynhausen, I don't need to eat for a week. Of course, Lilly called from Karlsruhe and wanted to know my arrival time the next day. I am boarding a train in the morning for my final leg of the paternal visits.

Lilly and Eduard are the last two of the Eduard line of my father's brothers. I was able to clairify a few things while I was in Karlsruhe. First of all, the mystery of how Eduard managed to have a family while in prison. The truth is, he was a free man until 1957, when he was arrested as a former German soldier and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was apparently identified by an informer, and things went quickly after that. His family then moved to Siberia with a relative of his wife. Times were bad for them, and when my dad's other brother visited them in Siberia, he saw how bad things were and took them with him to Kazakhstan.

The other mystery of destinations after World War II seems to be clearing up a bit as well. Fridolin to the Ural mountains, Eduard to Ufa, then family to Siberia, Sophia marries Petrokavich and goes to Orenburg, Heinrich (I think) still ends up in the Caucasus mountain region. My dad, by this time, is on the run in England, Belgium and finally back to Germany to try and re-unite with his relatives.

Where are the Orchards ?

2010-05-30T08:50:00.003-06:00

I asked the question so many times the other members of the tour started thinking I was some sort of nut. "Why are you interested in a bunch of trees?" they ask. "Because my ancestors planted them. They hold meaning for me," was my reply. Coming in to Rohrbach, there were rows of planted trees on the hillside off in the distance to my right. They could very possibly have been orchards. Leaving Rohrbach that afternoon, there were similar rows on the other side of the road, again off in the distance. Amalie said they were about 5 kilometers from the village. The latter could have qualified. They were way off in the distance. In the village I asked our school teacher guide. "Yes, I have heard some folks talk about times when there were some orchards, but I don't think they exist anymore. They probably weren't tended and ended up dying." That's not what I wanted to hear. While I did see the occasional cherry or apple tree along side the road or in someone's yard, there was no sight or further mention of orchards to which we could get to. The ones on the hillsides were clearly out of range of our van and would have taken a horse cart to get to. I had visions of walking in them, picking up the dirt, scraping the bark, touching the leaves. Maybe taking along a few seeds and sneaking them back through customs. And maybe even (gulp) planting them. Alas, it was not to be on this day. Perhaps another day, another trip. A trip on a horse cart.

Rohrbach - The Second Bridge

2010-05-30T08:20:00.002-06:00

The first bridge is suspect. Is it where my grandfather lived? The layout of the houses has changed over the years. Im not certain. I ask our guide and the other tour members if we can visit the other bridge, and they agree.

This bridge holds a bit more promise, It lies on the main road, serving to drain water from the village underneath the road into the pond. I fully expected to see a running stream, but such is not the case. It contains several round concrete drain pipes instead. I get out of our van and stand on the bridge abutment and begin to scan the view. Looking towards the end of the village and turning left, there is a hospital and communal home for mentally retarded people. They live in a small complex which also houses some animals, farm implements and gardens. The idea is that, with the help of the employees of the hospital, they form fully self-sufficient community. Our guide tells us that the ratio of workers to patients is roughly one to one, making this probably the largest employer in the village. Amalie said that grandfather's and great-grandfathers houses were adjacent to a school building. Could this be the former site of the school? The closest house is now beyond the hospital grounds on the side of the street where the houses I'm looking for should be located. Is it possible this could be it?

On the other side of the street stands another house. Amalie said her Uncle Heinrich (my grandfather's brother) lived on the other side of the street. Could this house be his? Here is a view from the bridge.

Rohrbach - Finding the Bridge

2010-05-24T01:33:00.001-06:00

Amalie told me where to look for the houses of my grandfather and great grandfather. Go to the "unterdorf", or lower village. There is a small bridge across the road where there was a well where they used to fetch water. From there you can see the houses.

I asked our history teacher tour guide where the bridges were in Rohrbach. There are two, both in the unterdorf. The distinction between oberdorf and unterdorf was very clear, there being a definite change in elevation, with the unterdorf being at the far end of the village. By the first bridge stands an old German house which Galina referred to as the "Zimbelman" house. That name immediately rouses my interest. Johann's wife - the Johann that moved to Nebraska, then Texas (let's call him "Texas" Johann and let's call my great grandfather "Rohrbach" Johann to make this distinction easier in the future) - married a John Zimbleman in Keenesburg, Colorado after Johann died. I remember visiting them as a young boy. Her name was Katerina. I also remember the Zimbelman name in Rohrbach.

When we arrive at the bridge, I find it divides two sides of a small pond. There are people fishing and kids swimming here. This is not on the main road. We had to make a right turn off the main road and travel a few hundred yards. This photo is looking back towards the village and main road.

The Zimbelman house is on the right side standing in the line of travel as we progressed through the village. It has been nicely re-furbished and the owner comes and greets us.

The scene from the bridge is not as Amalie describes it in the early 1940's. She said stand on the bridge looking along the direction of travel, then turn back to the left to view the houses. Unfortunately, back to the left is where the pond is, with no houses. Forward to the left, there is one house, and just beyond that, the remaining foundation of another house. I get pictures of these two.

Still further up the hill on the left is yet another house, but that doesn't look like a German house. The German houses stand out due to their long rectangular shape. Both of the houses on the left appear to be rather square. I continue shooting pictures. The lady in the house further up the hill is not thrilled with me taking pictures. She is a bit far away to make out what she is saying, had I been able to understand her at all. I am not well versed in Ukrainian cursing, but I must have gotten a good dose. She wouldn't stop yelling until I was clear back across the road near the van, and then added a few more spurts later on. I was warned that a few of the villagers were a bit sensitive to us high-heeled Americans snooping around their houses (like we would want them back?). This was apparently one of them. On up the road from the Zimbelman house was another old building with only the walls still standing. Inside there were some men butchering a cow.

I am suspicious that this is not the correct bridge. I ask the tour guide if we could visit the next bridge. So we go and look for that.

Rohrbach - History at the School House

2010-05-24T01:19:00.003-06:00

Our translator/tour guide managed to contact a very interesting lady in Rohrbach. She teaches history at the local school. There are two schools and a kindergarten. One school is grades one through four. The other one grades five through eight. After that I suppose one must go to a nearby larger city for advanced education. The school we visited was the primary school, and what we were shown on the second floor was a one-room museum dedicated to the history of Novosvetlovka. The teacher and museum curator, Galina Gorbachouk, was in front of the school house to greet us upon our arrival.

She spoke no English, so we relied on our translator. With immense concentration, I could occasionally follow her conversation. Along with old artifacts and pictorial history of Rohrbach/ Novosvetlovka, from early settlement until modern times, Galina has compiled an extensive list of names of the German inhabitants of Rohrbach. The pages are hand-written in Cyrillic. No computers or internet exist yet in Novosvetlovka.

I wrote out the name RIDINGER in roman capitals for her and she recognized it immediately, began leafing through her alphabetical listing, and started reading. There was Eduard Ridinger, my grandfather. Birth date, arrest date, execution date. Other Ridingers. The information she has jives with the information I have been able to obtain, so its likely to have come from the same sources. This has taken her an incredible amount of effort. How did she do it without internet?

This will take some translation, but it appears number 442 is my grandfather.

I asked if there was not some way I could photocopy her pages. Dumb question. There are no photocopy machines in Novosvetlovka. I settled for taking pictures of the documents, and one of the other members in our group, with a special feature for close-ups, offered to do the same, in case mine did not turn out.

After the museum session, I retrieved my laptop from the van and showed Galina some of the old photographs which I have collected, and asked if she would be interested in them. She was very excited, and I asked her to write down her address. No computers, no e-mail, we'll have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Rohrbach at Last

2010-05-24T01:10:00.005-06:00

The village of Worms is located on the main road, a quaint little rural Ukrainian village with an assortment of old German houses, the church, centerpiece of the village, since converted from the German Lutheran to Russian Orthodox faith. A few of the old folks there still remember the German heritage, but I got the sense that it will soon die with these old people. Rohrbach may hold a different promise.

Leaving Worms (now Vinogradne), the van carrying our little tour group gets back onto the main road and travels some 10 kilometers, where we see a sign indicating the turnoff to to Novosvetlovka, telling us its another 13 kilometers. Over the fields, where I'm sure my ancestors travelled, the distance is much shorter. The road now becomes a one lane sparsely-paved asphalt road running down the center of a row of planted trees. Sometimes it seems we are traveling through heavy forest, until a break in the trees shows us once again the green fields stretching endlessly to the horizon. About a 30 minute drive seems to be taking hours. Is there really a village out here? Suddenly we break out of the tree cover and see a few houses nestled in the valley. The village of Rohrbach, now Novosvetlovka. We pass by a large abandoned stone building which appears to me to be the remnants of a collective farm that the Soviets started when they took control of the village. We see these throughout Russia. In the distance beyond this building are what could be the remnants of clay pits, those used by the settlers to get brick for their houses.

Suddenly on the side of the road, just before it turns left into the village, is a prominent sign that announces the village. This is a special moment. Seeing this sign.

Two names. Rohrbach, Novosvetlovka. On the sign, the years 1809-2009. Two hundred Rokov. Two hundred years. This is not a highway directional sign put there by the department of roads. This sign was paid for and erected by the citizens of the village. They remember. During the communist era the perpetrators of this horrific crime of eulogizing pre-Soviet history would have been arrested and the sign would have been taken down. Times have changed. Seeing this sign and having my picture taken was a special moment for me.

Worms (Vinogradne), Ukraine

2010-05-24T01:00:00.000-06:00

The Rohrbach trip was finally fulfilled. First we went to Worms, now Vinogradne, a very usual Ukrainian village, a right hand turn off the main road.

Main Road

We were met by an elderly lady at the local orthodox church, the church having been converted from a Lutheran church after the Germans left. What was interesting was that she still spoke German, and told us "I wish you folks would come more often so I can practice my German." She remembered a lot of the old German houses and folks there, but I'm sure she had to be very young when the Germans bolted back to Germany.

The old lady, our local contact, is front and center. Rest of the folks all have ancestors in Worms or Rohrbach.

Babi Yar (and a bit of drama)

2010-05-20T10:17:00.005-06:00

I rose up this morning and charted out my Metro route. Red Line to Teatralnaya, transfer to the green line, then three stops to Dorogozychi. I've read about Babi Yar and have seen it on documentaries. Soon after the nazis occupied Kiev, they found a nice deep ravine on the outskirts of the city and set up operations. Jews were ordered to report there for transfer to a refugee camp. Some transfer. They were lined up, machine-gunned down or shot with pistols, and their bodies were thrown into the ravine. There were a few that weren't quite dead when they were tossed in, or jumped in when they heard the gun shot, and may have been only grazed by the bullet aimed at them. They then pulled themselves out from under the piles of bodies during the night and managed to make their escape. I don't recall the numbers of those killed, but I believe it was in the tens of thousands over the course of about three days. This is a mass grave site, now filled in and turned into a park.

There is no massive memorial here like the kind you find in the city commemorating war heroes. I found two small granite memorials and two very crude ones, almost like they were made in someone's garage, which were made of steel pipe in the shape of crosses, the Russian Orthodox version, with two horizontal members. Rather interesting considering that the victims were primarily Jewish. I would imagine there were probably a few Christians that got in there as well. No matter, I'm sure Jesus would have pity on them despite their specific beliefs, and doesn't mind the shape of the symbol.

When I arrived at the site, as is often the case, the reality did not quite fit the vision I had. Instead of the flat plateau with neatly-trimmed grass which I had imagined, the place appeared very virgin, a huge area, maybe 100 acres, criss-crossed with trails, picnic areas and many small hideaways, perfect for shelters of those unfortunate who are forced (or choose) to live on the streets. Up from the metro station, the park - lets call it a wilderness area instead – was only a few steps away. I began walking down a widely-paved area lined with weathered wooden benches. Grandmothers were taking their grandchildren for walks in their strollers, there was one group of three women having an impromptu picnic, and there were some young folks laughing it up and imbibing in some spirits. Ten o'clock in the morning, very common here, any time is drinking time. There were a few homeless people who probably didn't know the date, let alone the time.

After finding my way past the first stone memorial, the path started getting narrower and more overgrown with trees. I could see where fires had been doused and the areas were littered with cans and other debris. I changed direction a few times when I saw some rough-looking youths having a party behind the trees. I topped another hill, and found the second memorial, a granite monument in the shape of the Jewish candle. Nearby I found the first cross made of steel pipe. By that time I was near the other end of the “wilderness area”. There were about four different paths leading away from there. I headed down what seemed to be the widest, and it took me behind some houses into an alley way. Looking like a possible dead end, I reversed after about a hundred yards and decided to turn right. I could hear traffic noise in the distance so I decided to head towards it. I walked into a small wooded cul-de-sac, so I veered off onto another small path which started to descend down at a slight angle. I could still hear the traffic noise, but could not see through the trees. I hadn't seen any humans now for about ten minutes. The vegetation got thicker, the path drew narrower. Soon it was only a small trail. It seemed to end in a small cove, where again I saw remnants of someone's

I was a long distance now from the metro station, probably at least a mile. One way led downhill, away from the metro. The pictures I had seen of Babi-Yar showed a street sort of like on the down-stream side of the dam, and the story was the dam was creeping out into the street, and at one time was in danger of collapse. If that happened, the street would fill with skeletons from the dead. That was about twenty years ago, I'm sure some repairs have been made since then. Part of me wanted to see the bottom of that street, but the better part told me to hoof it back to the metro station. I chose that option. Enough drama and walking for one morning.

The trail ended after this

Kiev, Holodomor, Balilaika

2010-05-19T08:58:00.005-06:00

Here I am in Kiev, after a stop-over in St. Petersburg to visit the palace of Catherine the Great and a few other sights. That's where this German migration started. Catherine the Great, the German princess, then Tsarina of all the Russia's, the manifesto inviting the Germans to settle into Russia, then her grandson Alexander II expanding that to "New Russia" (i.e. Ukraine).

My first full day in Kiev, after checking "Places to See" in the local tour guide, I find they have a "Holodomor" Memorial. Holodomor is the Ukrainian word for famine. The memorial is specifically for the estimated 8 million people who starved to death during the winter of 1932-1933. At Stalin's order, food was confiscated from the farmers and, at threat of shooting, they were not allowed to leave their villages (see the links to the left). This was to punish them for refusing to give up their land to the Soviet government. The villagers were opposing the government policies.

The memorial was an emotional event. I was compelled to light a candle in memory, and I signed the guest book as follows: "In memory of my grandfather and father. May they live on through their children". My father is not dead, so maybe the words weren't quite correct, but when he goes, his spirit will also live on. "Those were terrible times," was all I could ever get out of him. His cousin was a bit more revealing, and it sounded much like the other accounts I have read; how the people boiled rats and tree bark just to stay alive. The rats were poison, and so many died of disease. Those that survived were primarily in their teens. My dad was 13.

On my walk back from the Memorial, I was still contemplating. As I rode the long escalator back down to the subway, balilaika music was being piped in. It was like all those people were talking to me through their music.....

Random Thoughts and Opinions

2010-05-19T03:10:00.000-06:00

I've been to Ukraine and seen several of the small villages. I haven't been to Afghanistan. I only know that country from the news I watch. The Ukraine villages I saw have no paved roads, no sidewalks, no grocery stores. Most folks get water from their wells, which is probably better than Afghanistan, where they have to carry it from the nearest community well.

In Ukraine, it was a holiday that day in Rohrbach, but a few children were hanging around the elemetary school and decided to give us an impromptu singing performance, after which our tour group provided candy, some chewing gum and some of our lunch apples. I invited them to join our group photograph. The organization and dedication of the history teacher I met was incredible, especially knowing that a teacher's salary there is barely at a subsistence level. They have no computers, no internet, not even copy machines, yet they manage to get a basic education. At a time when our government spends trillions in countries like Afghanistan, only to find that the people there still hate us, why can't we provide assistance to places like rural Ukraine where, unlike Afghanistan, the people already have civil order, harmony in their villages, an organized school system, and love Americans. What a precious resource is being wasted here, when comparatively little money could give these children the opportunity to become doctors, teachers, artists, musicians. I don't want to be-little the children in Afghanistan either. They certainly deserve an opportunity, and I realize there's only so much money to go around. But if I have ten sick pets that can be cured relatively easily, and one that's near death and requires massive outlays of money, with only a remote possibility of living, I would prefer to save at least a few of the sick ones first. Otherwise, the sick ones may die before I can rescue the one with least chance.

Time to Head to the Ukraine

2010-03-28T04:39:00.001-06:00

I've interviewed my father and his cousin, made trips to Lincoln and Wichita Falls. Then I spent a few days with my cousin's family (the Russian side) in Wesendorf, Germany. I was trying to generate some interest in one of them accompanying me to Ukraine. My Russian isn't that great yet and I'm not sure I want to travel alone to the back country of Southern Ukraine. That wasn't successful, however, so when I returned to Russia I began to search for a suitable guide in Odessa who could hire a car and provide interpretation. I kept running across the web site for GRHS - Germans from Russia Historical Society. They are based in Bismarck, North Dakota. I found out they were sponsoring a tour to Ukraine in late May, which happens to coincide with my next leave. I sent an e-mail to the organizer, a history professor at North Dakota State University, not knowing if I'd get a response or not. This was on a Sunday and, to my amazement, he responded back the same day. A few exchanges of e-mails later, and I'm pretty well tied in with a group of four other folks who are traveling to the same villages that I want to see. All I have to do now is pay $50 for the membership to GRHS (not exactly dictated, but a worthwhile thing to do anyway), plus some money to cover the tour expenses, then arrange a trip to Odessa and reserve a hotel. I figure I can take a week's leave in the states (my daughter's college graduation), then fly back to Moscow, board a flight to Odessa, then meet up with the folks I'm traveling with to the villages. A van and a guide is already organized.

Wesendorf, Germany

2010-03-12T00:28:00.001-07:00

About 50 km east of Hannover is a small village called Wesendorf. It is home to a large population of Germans who emigrated from the former Soviet Union after its collapse in the late '80's. My family is one of them. My cousins Eduard and Lyddia, aunt Amalia, and numerous off-spring from them - children and grandchildren. They are descendants from my dad's brother Fridolin, who was re-located after the war near the city of Sverdlovsk (now Ekaterinburg) in the Ural mountains. When we go into town, its not unusual for Eduard to point at some stranger in the street and exclaim "see that lady over there? She's a distant cousin of your father's." How I would like to meet them all and get their stories. I feel like I almost need to live there to understand.

When these people came to Germany, the German government offered some assistance, particularly job training and language skills. The village is now a typically clean German town, the largest industry being the Volkswagen factory in nearby Wolfsburg. The people have done well for themselves. Eduard and Lyddia live in a small community of new homes which they built themselves, the architecture not totally German, a little bit Russian.

On my last visit, the occasion of Eduard's 60th birthday, I wanted to meet with Fridolin's wife Amalia. Unfortunately, she was laid up in the hospital. I will need to make a return trip very soon, while she is still with us.

Further to the south, near Karlsruhe, lives the other part of the Russian side, from my dad's other brother Eduard, who spent his time in a prison near Moscow, and was eventually executed just prior to his release. He apparently knew too much to be allowed to be freed. His wife died a few years ago, but his daughter Lilly is still alive. I met her at Eduard's celebration, for the second time. She is the keeper of family records, and I vowed to come see her in the near future. She has two sons and a daughter, and a few grandchildren.

Wichita Falls, Texas

2010-03-07T13:48:00.000-07:00

In the heart of tornado alley, I've heard Texans from the southern part of the state refer to it as the "armpit of Texas". It probably has its share of rednecks and rodeo cowboys, but I was very pleased with the cosmopolitan feel I discovered. The thing I like about all of the smaller cities in the midwest and south is that these are "real people." You know where you stand from the beginning. No hidden agendas, no need to impress, come on over for a barbecue, stay the night if you wish.

I remembered very little about the city in which I spent two years of my life as a young boy after my family came from Germany. Actually we lived in the country, and I doubt we spent much time in the city itself. The first Ridinger showed up there in the 1920's. He had left Ukraine and headed for Nebraska, where his brother had settled earlier. He decided to move to the WF area and start a dairy farm. His first son was born in Rohrbach, and 13 more sons and daughters were born in the U.S. Many started their own dairy farms. In 1949 he sponsored my dad's cousin, her husband and daughter, who in turn sponsored my family to immigrate in 1960. Most of the dairy farms are gone now and some of the Ridingers have moved away, but with that many children and immigrants, the likelihood of running into a relative is very good.

My dad's cousin is 89 years young, a bit frail but still getting around, but with the mind of a 30 year old. She talked almost non-stop for the parts of two days that I was there. She talked about the orchards. Oh, did she talk about those orchards. Some unimaginable things happened in those orchards....

"I may not be here when the book is finished, but you must finish it," she told me a number of times. Like my father, her spirit after such a hard life was a true inspiration.

Home for two families (9 people) upon our arrival in 1960

Dad's cousin March 2010

The Orchard

2010-03-03T05:34:00.001-07:00

There is an orchard somewhere near Rohrbach and I long to see it someday. My ancestors planted fruit trees there. I can imagine during the good years that it may have bore enough fruit for the entire village. The fruit may have sustained my family during the great famine.

The orchards fell into a dismal state during the communist years. There was no ownership. The youth of the Komsomol, who were sent from the cities to the countryside to spread the communist gospel, had no clue as to how to tend to them. My grandfather was brought back from his exile in Siberia to teach them, only to fall victim once more to the politics of the times, and to lose his life during the purge of 1937.

If life in the Southern Ukraine of the 1800's was similar to what we found in the American West (which I have no reason to doubt), we would expect that family burial plots were established on the hillsides. That means that today, if those orchards are still there, they are growing over the bones of these ancestors. The communist government, as a routine matter of policy, periodically razed the cemeteries. People were told to put their energies into the communal state and forget about the past. Ancestor worship was a religious activity, and that was not permitted.

Cemeteries can be razed, but the trees live on.

Passion

2010-03-03T05:14:00.001-07:00

Its hard to convey the passion of ancestor study to those who haven't become immersed in it. In my younger days, the subject was of no interest, and to many who do show some interest, it seems, they are looking for that hero ancestor, the one who turned history, perhaps a cook for the King, the civil war hero, the painter, the sculpture, the one they can brag about at the cocktail party or the local brew pub. What we find instead are not heroes of monumental importance, but real people just like us, who laughed, cried, mourned, longed and dreamed. We find periods of ecstasy and periods of profound sadness. That we are here today gives testimony that, no matter how mundane or trying their lives may have seemed, their lives were not wasted and we can judge all of them a success.

Wednesday in Lincoln

2009-12-09T06:45:00.010-07:00

I am well rested and up at 6:00 am. The snow has stopped and skies are clear, but the wind is now busy re-arranging the previous day's snowfall into even deeper drifts, and the wind chill is well below zero. I take my shower and go downstairs for a breakfast of cereal and bagels. I come back to my room and write to this blog. At 9:00 am I venture out. After a bit of digging, I extricate myself out of the Days Inn parking lot and onto the main street. I see that D street has been plowed so I turn left past the AHSGR museum and see it's still covered with a foot of snow. I turn back onto 9th street and head for the University of Nebraska. Its closed. So is the book store, and the next bookstore, and the next. I'm freezing and looking for a Starbucks to warm up. The fellow ahead of me is carrying a cup of coffee, so I ask him where that coffee shop is, and Starbucks. I hit the first one and spend some time there, then over to Starbucks. Jim calls at 12:00 and says lets meet at Mill Coffee at 1:00. I have an hour to kill so I swing back by one of the bookstores to see if they are open now. To my luck, it is, and the proprietor has a good selection. Three used books and $20 later I'm on my way to Mills.

Jim shows up shortly after 1:00. We talk about family history. He knows all about the Lodi connection. Like me, he's more interested in the history than the genealogy. I get some ideas about where to go next. South Dakota has a good archive. Sutton, due to the railroad, was the starting point in the U.S. Fanned out from there to Texas, California, South Dakota - Sutton was running out of free land. There are city histories in Odessa and Kherson (Ukraine). My next stop is Ukraine! Follow it with Germany, France. I'm ready!

My First Field Trip

2009-12-09T05:54:00.004-07:00

I have finally gotten the motivation to reach out to others who share my fascination with this subject and headed down a parallel path of discovery. The obvious starting point is Lincoln, Nebraska, headquarters of AHSGR and home to their museum and library. It is December in America's Midwest and the weather can deteriorate quickly. A storm is coming in, which prompts me to make the 500 mile journey from Denver to Lincoln on a Monday in order to get to Lincoln before the storm hits. I call the museum first to find out their protocol in case of severe storms. The lady on the phone tells me that they do sometimes close the museum, often in parallel with school closures. I take my chances nonetheless.

I detour off of Interstate 80 south to Hastings, then east along State Highway 6, to the town of Sutton, Nebraska (population 1,700). It is late afternoon when I arrive and already beginning to get dark. I find the cemetery on the northern outskirts and check the board which is conveniently placed behind glass panes under a small canopy. The inhabitants of the cemetery list multiple names of Ochsners, a few Kleins and a few Ulmers, all of which bear some relationship. The name I am looking for, that Jacob Ridinger, is not listed.

I proceed back into town and stop off at the local library. By chance I see a book chronicling the 125 year history of the town. The librarian, despite a frenzy of small children participating in a holiday coloring contest of some sort, finds a few minutes to spend with me and shows me a few collections of books which pertain to my subject of interest. I ask her about other cemeteries in the area, especially in Grafton, Fillmore county. She says there are other old cemeteries around.

I proceed to purchase the 125 year history of Sutton, which has plenty of old photographs of my relatives, and head back on highway 6 towards Lincoln. I soon pass through the town of Grafton, population around 400, in Filmore county. The images I have now are of the landscape, not much different from the rolling fields of Tatarstan in Russia and, from the aerial pictures of Rohrbach and Worms, not such a distant place anymore. I picture what this area may have looked like when Jacob first came here, an untamed and uncultivated region very much like his previous home in Ukraine. Such a shame, though, that he would have to leave his established home in Ukraine to begin again in this new land.

The next days in Lincoln are not productive, but I take this in stride as one of the frustrating times that us researchers must often endure. The storm arrives as predicted and I am snowbound in my room at the Days Inn, with the museum, and practically everything else in Lincoln, shut down. I do manage to call Jim Griess, the AHSGR coordinator for the village of Rohrbach. We have a lengthy conversation of how we are related, how I pronounce my last name, have I been to Rohrbach, and about the regions in France and southwest Germany where our ancestors originated. He says Jacob is buried in a smaller cemetery a few mile north of the one I was in, and he has a photo of the headstone. He has a 4-wheel drive truck and lives about 10 miles outside of Lincoln. We will try to meet at the museum tomorrow.

Acknowledgements

2009-08-11T19:22:00.003-06:00

My father, who took everything this world could throw at him and still came out smiling. To the memories of his brothers. One made it through the Soviet worker camps to see his children again in their ancestral homeland. The other, unfortunately, executed in a Soviet prison. My father's children live on in the comfort of the United States. His brother's children, my cousins, returned to their ancestral homeland in Germany after the breakup of the Soviet Union. All are doing quite well. I've heard there may still be a few relatives somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Maybe fate will lend a hand and this blog would somehow find its way around the world and summon them.

Familyologist, you'll never know how truly grateful I am for the inspiration you gave me so I may at last share this with the rest of the world. See "Followers" for more information.

Sakharov, Steinbeck and more Circular Movements

2009-07-19T09:07:00.006-06:00

During my assignment in Nizhnekamsk, Russia I spend the bus rides to and from work reading. Currently I'm reading a biography of Sakharov. Now dead, he was the nobel-winning physicist, father of the Russian H-bomb, then turned dissident and world-renowned human rights activist. For that, he was dis-credited by the Soviet government, stripped of his scientific affiliations, and exiled for 6 years to the city of Gorky (now Nizhni-Novgorod). I found it interesting that one of his favorite books as a youth was Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath", the book I had just finished reading. The book no doubt had some socialist undercurrents and explored that option as an answer to the brutality inflicted upon the California migrants during the Great Depression by the capitalist landowners.

On page 58 of the Sakharov book there is mention of a Texan that Sakharov travelled with after the war on a month-long train journey from Moscow to Turkmenistan by the name of Leon Bell. Bell emmigrated from Ukraine to Texas, didn't like the life in Texas, immigrated back to the Soviet Union. He would have been in his early twenties in 1941. I would like to check this out some more. This is a different twist on my migration story. How extensive was the migration from Ukraine to U.S., then BACK to the Soviet Union?

Why?

2009-06-06T08:31:00.002-06:00

Where to start..........I think of the images of my father as a child and young adult in the rural area of Southern Ukraine during the most troubled times of that country's modern history. Images of his father - my grandfather - being led away from his home by soldiers loyal to Stalin. To return, then to be led away again, this time never to return and leaving my father an orphan. The Ukraine famines. First one in 1929, then again in 1933. Not due to crop failures, but an extermination effort by Father Stalin. Then finally the image of my father as a young adult, being awakened in the middle of the night by German soldiers retreating from the Red Army, giving the ethnic German villagers only hours to pack their belongings and join the retreat westward.

Ukraine means "Borderland". What a perfect fit. No natural barriers to invasion. The land is rich and fertile, and has always been coveted by invaders from other lands. The people could never feel safe, rather to be tamed, ruled and exterminated at the whims of the conquerers. After the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, as the communist society of the new Soviet Union was being formed and perfected, the Ukrainians did not fit the true communist mode. The kulaks, the landowners, were far too independent and capitalistic to integrate into the communist society. They had to be tamed.

Germans in France, late 18th Century

2009-06-05T19:51:00.004-06:00

The American Revolution provided inspiration for the French Revolution. Let's back up just a bit and examine this connection. The American Revolution was successful THANKS to the French; they helped the colonists defeat the British. The French didn't do it out of love for the Americans, but because they couldn't afford for the British to have the prize of the American continent for themselves. As a result of this venture in aid of the Americans, France's economy was bankrupt. Now the French Revolution starts, much of the ideology based on America's constitution and Bill of Rights. Ben Franklin himself was ambassador to France, and was consulted often as to how the new democracy of France should be structured. Unfortunately the French path to democracy was more circuitous than the American version. The French people were not necessarily French and did not live in a new continent by their own choice. The people on the west side of the Rhine River were in French territory but spoke German. Germany as a country did not exist until much later. During this time there were only a number of individual kingdoms and principalities that happened to share varying versions of the Germanic language.

Napoleon and the Danube Campaign

2009-06-05T09:11:00.001-06:00

Several battles of Napoleon's Danube campaign were fought in 1809, which was significant in my history, since the earlier route of the German settlers to Ukraine was on the river Danube from Ulm. It is likely that the mass mobilization of troops in the area of Regensburg, northeast of Ulm, prevented my ancestors from taking the river course, but rather forced them to take a land route across central Germany to Poland, then south to the Ukraine. The land route was longer, but may have been safer, given that the earlier river people were robbed by Turkish pirates along the river, then succumbed to river-born diseases along the lower stretches of the river.

Revolutions - (the circular pattern emerges and the light shines)

2009-06-05T05:25:00.001-06:00

If it weren't for three major revolutions I wouldn't be sitting here writing this. I would exist in a different mind, a different continent perhaps, wouldn't be named what I am, would have no knowledge of these events. My parents would not have met. My children would be someone else's. There would be another human being taking my place on this planet.

The American Revolution begat the French Revolution. Germans in France move to Ukraine. Life is good, the new American West right there in Ukraine. World War I comes along, Germany sends Lenin back to the Soviet Union on a sealed train to make trouble for the czar. Germany and Russia sign a treaty. Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrow the czar - third revolution. Lenin/Stalin collectivize the farms in Ukraine, life in Ukraine takes a turn. WWII happens along because WWI never really settled things. This is now the big one. Some Ukrainian Germans make it back to the west. The others are scattered over Siberia and Central Asia. Western Germany is in ruins after the big one. Although they speak the language, Germany is not their homeland.

Ridingers in Phaltz - Alcase

2009-06-04T20:15:00.005-06:00

Two cities in the Palatinate (Phaltz) region of modern Germany bear names of my ancestors. These are Worms and Rohrbach. Worms is northwest of Mannheim on the left bank of the Rhine River. Rohrbach is immediately to the south of Worms. Until recently I have confused this region with Alcase, the French region that borders it to the south. Many of the German settlers came from there as well. The two areas are closely linked, with Alcase having changed hands between French and German control several times.

The family name was originally Reidinger, now modernized to Ridinger. In German, it's pronounced "reedinger" with a bit of the rrrrrrr roll of the German tongue. I pronounce it Ride-inger. That's how I heard it pronounced when first arriving in northern Texas from Bavaria as a six year old in 1960. It seemed to have stuck with my family, although I briefly experimented with the Germanic version, hoping strangers would have an easier time with the pronunciation. It was to no avail. Why Americans continue to butcher this seemingly simple, pronounce-just-like-its-spelled name is beyond me, but the versions I have heard are comical enough to provide ice breaker material at cocktail parties.

Development of Southern Ukraine

2009-06-02T19:50:00.002-06:00

Borderland. That fitting phrase. Ukraine was in the center of intersecting cultures. The Vikings settled from the north, to conquer. The Venetians and Greeks from the South, to trade. The Mongols from the East, to conquer. The Europeans from the West, to farm.

The Ottoman Empire provided some political stability, but it was Russia that truly wanted the prize as a gateway to the Black Sea. Peter the Great made inroads but could not hold the territories. Finally Catherine the Great, after several successful wars against the Ottomans, formed the newly aquired lands into a Russian state called Novorussiia (New Russia). The Treaty of Kuchuk-Kainarji, signed in 1774, gave Russia the coastal lands between the Bug and Dnieper rivers. Soon after, the cities of Kherson, Mariiupil and Mykolaiv were established. Conditions were set for Russia to establish new trade routes out of her southern border. The only thing still missing was an efficient port with favorable land routes and a deep harbor. That was accomplished in 1794 with the founding of Odessa. A Dutch engineer (Franz de Voland) recommended the site and Catherine II provided her approval on May 27, 1794. Work on the harbor and the city began immediately and the city began to grow.

The steppe regions north of the Black Sea coast are the areas of most interest to me. Unsettled, rich and fertile, now with access to a deep harbor for export of agricultural products, Russia's rulers had the foresight to know that the lands needed to be settled quickly or someday be lost again.

The other side of the family - another digression

2009-05-25T14:41:00.003-06:00

I am still keeping in mind that there are two sides of the family. My mother's maiden name is Riss. Her mother's maiden name was Gaul - as in the Gaul region of France. Yes, there is French heritage on that side as well, which I intend to pursue in due time, even though my immediate interest is in the Ukraine/Russian migration of the Ridingers.

What has intrigued on the Riss side is the deep Bavarian tradition and the possible tendency towards Nazi sympathy during those war years. I have heard my mother's stories about the resentment and sense of betrayal after World War I, both towards the French people in exacting unfair retribution from the Germans and towards the German government in caving in to world pressure - sentiments shared by the German masses and my theory for saying to you that the unsatisfactory arrangements which followed WWI led to the rise of the Nazi movement and the atrocities committed during WWII.

So when I see pictures of my great uncle Albert in his German uniform or my uncle Otto in his side-car military motorcycle, I wonder about their sentiments towards the German military cause. There was some prejudice among my older relatives, subsided now with the younger generations, but no doubt some lingering innuendos from even my generational peers that the German way, and perhaps the Bavarian traditions, work better than the ways of other cultures. Can repression in the Nazi tradition ever return? Absolutely, and not necessarily in Germany! The United States is still teeming with neo-Nazi or other "purist" movements, who believe that the human race is in need of some improvement, and the methodology to that end can be only a cleansing, and not a re-habilitation, process. Holocausts still happen. Look at Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda. It is an ever-present danger!

A digression on life, death and circularity

2009-05-25T13:42:00.002-06:00

A brief digression, but one I believe is pertinent to our study of geneology and historical events. To grasp my concept, we must understand our destinies as human beings not as the result of a single life, or even of one generation, Rather, lets think of the human race as one organism, growing as the billions of individual cells divide, multiply and migrate in seemingly random directions. Yet, as the studies of probability will tell us, even random events can eventually be found to have order.

I made a weekend trip from California back to my home in Colorado on May 22. I flew there from the Bay Area to attend my youngest daughter’s high school graduation, then to celebrate my oldest daughter’s 21st birthday. The graduation ceremony included the usual oratory about new beginnings and new challenges, including a touching rendition of Doctor Suess’ Oh the Places You’ll Go (You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes…..). Ironically, once the weekend was over, the rendition could just as well be called “Oh, the places you may end up”.

I was on the bus returning to the airport after my long weekend. I decided to begin reading the book Night by Elie Weisel, the famous author and holocaust survivor, describing his experience in the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. I was reading this book because I had given the other book I was reading, another rendition of concentration camp experiences entitled Ravensbruck, written by a French woman who survived the concentration camp of the same name. One of my acquaintances, a neighbor two doors down on our street, was at my home attending a reception my wife and I were having for our recent graduate. He is a prominent geologist who has crossed into some of the same distant places I have been and shares some of the same experiences. He is also an author who has published two books and is preparing to begin a third. Lastly, he is French by birth and still carries a very pleasing French accent, along with that typically continental flair which we Americans identify with a degree of social sophistication. During the course of the reception for my daughter, we were discussing his work as an author and I mention my interest in the history of the Alsace region. He tells me that the theme of his next book is to be an accounting of his aunt’s experiences in a nazi concentration camp - a bit out of character for him, since his early works had dealt with lost tribes of Polynesia. Nonetheless, the topic has shifted to concentration camps of World War II, at which I mention the book I’m currently reading. “Ravensbruck is where they sent her”, he offers. “The author of the book I’m reading is French”, I reply. Ravensbruck is where French people were sent, and died. In mid-sentence, I walk into the den and take Ravensbruck from my briefcase and hand it to him. He and his wife are on their way to Denmark in a week’s time for him to present and defend his post-doctoral geology thesis. Since the wife wants badly to read Ravensbruck on the airplane ride over, I insist they take my copy instead of taking a chance of not getting their hands on a copy before they leave. I knew there were more copies available at my Berkeley bookstores and it was a very small sacrifice. I can finish reading it later.

The reading of Night was not the only reason my mind was thinking of death that morning at the airport. The evening before we celebrated my oldest daughter’s 21st birthday with dinner at a local restaurant. Later she went with her boyfriend, son of our neighbors next door (the ones between us and the French geologist/author), and some of their relatives in from Kansas for his sister’s graduation (same age as my younger daughter), to a downtown Denver drinking establishment. I spent the evening with my youngest daughter helping her to select a dormitory for her upcoming freshman year. Five minutes after settling into bed, at ten minutes past midnight, the phone rings. My wife answers. It’s my twenty-one year old. “There has been a shooting. The husband shot the wife, then shot himself. Mom, can you come and pick us up.” At five in the morning, after being at the hospital, speaking with doctors, police and next door neighbors, my daughter knocks on the front door. I’m due to leave for the airport in 15 minutes and she wants to say goodbye. “All dead”, was my daughter’s answer when mom asks her for an update. The woman next door, mother of my daughter’s boyfriend and the other high school graduate that weekend, had lost her sister. The couple was not getting along, financial problems, personal issues, what have you. There was a fight at the couple's house (not next door), probably after some drinking (the husband had a reputation). The grandmother, who was visiting for the weekend to see her granddaughter graduate from school and staying at the sister's home, took the children (ages eight and ten) upstairs. It was a large house, a historic schoolhouse renovated as their residence. The grandmother heard screams and knocking on the inside of the bathroom door downstairs. She called the police. The police found the bathroom door locked. The next moments found the bodies of both parents riddled with bullets. The investigation continues, but it appears that the husband shot the wife seven times before being killed by the police. (He may have shot himself, we don't know yet).

The dead couple’s children are now orphans. We knew these kids, we knew their parents. The kids still played on the playground set we gave them when our children had outgrown it. Ironically, this is not the first crisis for our neighbors. A year earlier my daughter’s boyfriend’s father had nearly died in a motorcycle accident and was effectively disabled now. His wife is now not only his caretaker, the sole head of the household, but having watched her younger daughter graduate from high school two days earlier, had now inherited care and custody of a niece and nephew.

Life, death. Optimism, fatalism. Alsace, Ravensbruck. Ukraine, Siberia. What interesting contrasts. Is this the circularity of our lives and our ancestry?

I spent other parts of my weekend, before the tragedy on Sunday night, scanning old photographs of my family for a photo gallery I wanted to present to my mom and dad for their upcoming 90th and 80th birthdays, respectively. I showed dad the photos I had discovered on the AHSRG web site. “Yes, that could be my grandfather” and “the photo of the unidentified soviet soldier was my Uncle Wilhelm – he is the only Ridinger and only villager to enlist in the Red Army”, was the response to my two prepared questions. “He was captured by the Germans and spent time as a German POW. What a twist. A German, now a Soviet soldier, in a German POW camp.

My mother could not make it to my daughter’s graduation. She was bedridden with a chronic back ache. My dad was at the reception on Saturday. I sent food home since mom couldn’t get up to prepare their meals. My wife and I went to their house Sunday afternoon to take more food over and check on them. While both have held their aging well without complaining, each time I visit I am immediately taken back by their increased frailty and deteriorating health. My wife and I help them prepare lunch, discussing re-arrangement of the kitchen for “safer” access, elimination of the ever-dangerous step stool needed for access of upper cabinet space. More visitors arrive, an elderly couple, acquaintance of my parents. The visiting woman at first seems seemingly alert and full of entertaining off-the-wall remarks. But she drifts from past to present, sometimes unable to hear or comprehend our questions. The conversation swerves like an alcoholic after a night of binge drinking. She suffers from dementia.

My mother, father, the older couple, photos of dead relatives, Nazi concentration camps, orphaned children. I come for a weekend of celebration for new beginnings, graduations, new-found freedom on 21st birthdays. I am on the airplane flight back to California reminded of death’s intervention and mastery over the lives of all. Circularity.

After I’ve written this piece during the airplane ride back, the flight has not yet landed, so I decide to read some more of Night, now into the descriptions of the endless processions, roll-calls and moving about. People always standing in lines never knowing what is up ahead. When the plane lands the passengers disembark on the tarmac instead of the traditional swing-out accordion ramp leading directly inside. Immediately the passengers are led into a canvas “tunnel” which meanders from the plane to the terminal. The irony was not lost. Single file, look ahead, where is this leading? One hundred yards, still no end in sight. Two hundred yards, more turns. Where is this leading? Finally, the terminal. Happy ending. The Jews at Auschwitz weren’t so lucky.

Breakthrough in Karlsruhe

2009-05-08T15:54:00.002-06:00

My cousin, who lives near Karlsruhe, turned me on to geneological research done by Dr. Karl Stumpp. Together we scanned the names of Germans who migrated from there to Ukraine or Russia. One of the names is a Georg Reidinger born in the Alcase region, presumably in Rohrbach, who moved to Rohrbach, Odessa oblast. Other Reidingers also came from Alsace, moving to places such as Landau, Munchen, Liebenthal. The settlers named the new villages after German villages they knew. I now have a place to start.

Another Breakthrough

2009-05-07T21:47:00.001-06:00

Searching for Rohrbach, Ukraine, I was led to a website posted by American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. It shows the prominent influence of the Ridinger family. One photo shows the three Ridinger brothers. The gentleman on the left is my Grandfather Johann. Jacob Ridinger was the first to emmigrate to America, to Sutton, Nebraska. The family was closely linked to the Ochsners.

My Grandfather the Mayor of Rohrbach ?

2009-05-02T17:14:00.002-06:00

Johann Ridinger, born 1894, could be my grandfather and is reported by AHSGR to have been the Mayor. My father told me his name and said he was a public official. There were many Johann's. This one couldn't be my grandfather; he was only 25 when my dad was born. But I'm sure he was somehow related. After that, is there a public record? Who was his father? I believe I can trace Johann's lineage (provided he is the right one) to myself. Oh my, though, where are the records? Government's overthrown, village names are changed, records destroyed, cemeteries razed.....

Lodi, California

2009-05-02T17:04:00.001-06:00

I happen to be living in the Bay Area right now when I come across some old correspondence from a distant cousin in Texas. He referred to the daughter of some Ridinger who moved from Nebraska to Lodi, California. With help from the Familyologist, I checked the California death records and found Emma Ochsner, born 10 April, 1905, died 8 Nov 2000. She is the daughter of Jacob Ridinger, who immigrated in 1910 (Ellis Island). Could it be Jacob was Johann the mayor's brother, my dad's uncle? I am finding many references to Germans who settled in the Lodi/Stockton area through the AHSGR. Seems a number of the Rohrbach and Worms families ended up there.

Rohrbach and Worms Now

2009-04-17T18:27:00.004-06:00

I believe circa 1929 the names of these villages was changed to Russian names. Rohrbach became Novosvetlivka. Worms became Vynogradne. When looking from Google Earth, the latter is located close to the highway, but for the life of me I can't see a road going to Novosvetlovka! The place is obviously still very rural, but one can somewhat see the same land divisions that showed in the earlier aerial photos I saw which were taken during World War II.

German Settlement - The Early Years

2009-04-02T12:28:00.002-06:00

The first German families began to arrive in the fall of 1809 following land grants under the reign of Czar Alexander I. They built houses and planted vineyards and orchards. Apple, pear, plum, cherry and apricot trees. Wells were dug which provided plentiful water. The villagers were generally poor and indebted, but money allowances were provided by the local administration. Aside from occassional outbreaks of German measles and similar children's diseases, the village was generally spared of catostrophic events such as floods, epidemics and earthquakes. Illiteracy, graft and alcoholism was reported since schools, churches and law enforcement was a bit slower to follow the settlements. A minister was received in 1812, but died after two years. Not until 1820 did a significant improvement begin to occur when a firm commissioner was appointed to enforce the law, followed in 1824 by a respected minister and in 1826 by a schoolmaster.

Alsace Struggles, Ukraine Dreams

2009-04-02T11:51:00.001-06:00

Why did Germans want to leave Alsace?:

July 25-30, 1789 Peasant revolt in Alsace
Reign of Terror: 1793-1794.
October 17, 1793 - Austrian army is driven out.
Dec. 16, 1797 - Austria recognizes French sovereinty.
1809 - Napolean drafts Germans to fight against the Austrians.
1812 - Napolean drafts Germans to fight against the Russians.

Why did Germans want to enter Ukraine?

Free land
Money allowance for Re-settlement
No forced military conscription
Freedom of speech, religion

Photos

2008-05-10T20:14:00.010-06:00

My Great-grandfather is the bearded man 3rd from right. My grandfather is the boy standing on the left of the second row, next to his mother. Photo taken circa 1900.

My grandfather on the right. Circa 1920.

William and Maria Ridinger

Haunstetten, Germany

circa 1959

Author's parents.

(L-R) Manfred, William, Ernst
Ridinger, circa 1959.
Aspiring author in the center.