The Bone Orchards

My ancestors planted fruit orchards somewhere near the village of Rohrbach.  The fruit from those orchards may have helped to keep my family alive 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 great grandfather was released from prison to teach them, then afterwards fell victim to the famine.

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.

During World War II, according to my dad's cousin Amalie, the jews would hide in the orchards, only to be caught and shot by the German soldiers. More bones.

Cemeteries can be razed, but the trees live on. On the road into 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 the side of 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.

Somehow I sense my ancestors' spirit in those trees. My dad showed a lot of expertise in tree trimming and grafting, and I often invited him over when I needed to trim the trees in my yard. The last years before he died, I would come to trim the apple and cherry trees, and the grape vines he had in his backyard. He would tell me precisely where to cut. Where anyone else would have written them off, he nursed his cherry trees back to health after the wet snows had virtually split them in half. Largely as a result of these experiences, I remain an avid "tree nut" to this day.

Are those orchards up on that hill?

Great Grandfather's House by the Bridge

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 Texas 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 out and waves.

The Zimbelman House

The scene from the bridge is not as Amalie described it. She said to 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. 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?). 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. 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.

The next 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, the residents form a self-sufficient communal 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:

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. But his house was on the other side of the pond, about a mile away. More confusion.

I tried to get him to pinpoint the location. He brought up an old survey from the basement that 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. I show him the road we drove down. The creek (pond) we visited is on the right, west of the main road. Now I realize that "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.

Rohrbach - History at the School House

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?

Written in cyrillic, number 442 is my grandfather

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.

Arrival at Rohrbach

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

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)

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

        

The Holodomor Memorial

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.....