Orchards on the Steppes

While based on historical facts about my family, my book Orchards on the Steppes must be classified as Historical Fiction, as I've created fictional characters and events within the framework of a historical timeline. A shout out to James Michener, one of my favorite authors,  for the inspiration his novels provided as excellent examples of historical fiction:

The epic story of the Rheinhart family begins in 1809, when a group of Germans from the Phaltz region of eastern France decided to leave their homes behind and cast their luck on the barren steppes of southern Russia, now Ukraine. Georg Rheinhart wanted a better life for his wife and five children, a life where they would be free from heavy taxation, where they could freely practice their religion, and his boys would not have to fight in Napoleon's armies. Tsar Alexander of Russia had promised settlers free land, freedom from taxes for thirty years, freedom to practice their own religion, and their sons would not be asked to join the Russian army. It was a chance to build a better life for themselves and their children.

That spring, a caravan of over 150 people started out, first crossing over the Rhine River, then through the Black forest and to the city of Ulm, hoping to board houseboats to float them down the Danube River through Austria, Hungary and Romania, where they would disembark and take another overland journey east to Odessa, a journey lasting several months, often fraught with disease and river pirates.

Plans changed when they reached Ulm, as they discovered that the river was closed to traffic through Vienna, the scene of heavy fighting between the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Austrians and Prussians. A few decided to turn back, but the rest decided to take an overland route to the north, taking them through Bavaria, Bohemia (today the Czech Republic), Poland, and finally southward to Odessa. The trip took longer than the river route and their arrival was too late to get settled in Rohrbach, so they wintered in temporary army barracks outside of Odessa. The next spring they set out to find their land and started to build their village. They named it Rohrbach, after the village they had left back in France.

After decades of struggle, they had become successful farmers and were an important part of the local economy. Under Tsar Alexander II, things were steadily improving in Russia as a result of his reforms. Things started to go downhill when the Tsar was assassinated in 1881. His son Alexander III reversed many of the reforms that his father had put into place and placed power back into the hands of the large landowners. He forced the various ethnic groups, including the Germans, to assimilate into Russian society and adopt the Russian Orthodox religion. Language instruction other than Russian was banned. Many Germans decided to emigrate to America. Jacob Rheinhart was one of them.

Jacob's brother Johannes was a Volost mayor, a strong and respected member of the community. By the standards of the times, he was rich and successful. Johannes lost his first wife, who had borne him a son which he named Johann. Johann lived a troubled youth, was disrespectful to his new mother, and treated his siblings and the hired help at the farm poorly. Having gotten into numerous scrapes which brought shame to his family, and, upon finding out that he had fathered an illegitimate child, his father decided to send him to America to join his brother Jacob. The child's mother, Katherina, unable to travel with the infant, followed the next year with her brother, who posed as her husband. When they arrived in America, Johann and Katerina immediately went to the local county offices to get married. 

Everyone else stayed in Rohrbach.

Wilhelm, the next oldest son of Johannes, was conscripted into the Russian army to fight in World War I against the Germans. He was captured by the Germans, released at the end of the war, arrested by the Russian government, bribed his way out of prison and, after a few years on the run, finally made it back to Rohrbach to rejoin his wife there.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was followed by a civil war that destroyed the Russian economy and led to wide-spread famine. Things improved after the end of the civil war, when Vladimir Lenin instituted the New Economic Plan, or N.E.P., which allowed the farmers to once again sell their goods on the open market. After Lenin's death in 1929, Joseph Stalin halted the N.E.P. and started full collectivization, meaning that all of the farmers' lands, their animals and their tools would now become the property of the state. Large collective farms, called kolkholzes, were established, and everyone went to work as employees of the government.

This did not set well with the farmers. Many were arrested and sentenced to years of hard labor in Siberia or the frozen north of Russia. Johannes and his son Eduard (Wilhelm's younger brother) were both arrested in 1932. Eduard was given a five year sentence and sent to a penal colony on the Moscow Volga canal project. Johannes languished in the local jail awaiting sentencing for about six months, then was offered a furlough so that he could train students in managing his orchards. College students from the Komsomol, the communist youth organization, were sent from the cities to help manage the kolkholzes and to learn farming techniques. These students had no clue as to how to tend the orchards, thus  Johannes was released from jail so that he could impart his knowledge onto the young students.

At this time there came what is known as the “Holodomor” (Man-made famine). The government felt that the people were hoarding grain, and decided to crack down. Grain quotas were set at an unreasonably high level, and when they were not met, soldiers went door-to-door to collect all of the grain they could find. They used metal rods to probe under the floorboards and into the walls,  confiscating everything they could find. Anyone trying to steal grain from the local granaries, or even seen venturing into the fields, was shot on site. Many people starved to death that winter.

Eduard had three sons. Willi, the oldest, was from his first wife, who died when Willi was only four. He had two more sons with his second wife. When he was arrested and sent to the Volga canal project, Willi went to live with his Uncle Wilhelm, Wilhelm's wife Magdalena, and their daughter Amalie, while his stepmother and his half-brothers went to live with relatives in nearby Worms. To help his family survive, Willi, who was thirteen and working in the collective dairy, concocted a scheme to steal  the rich cream from the cows milk - a potential death sentence if caught. Magdalena, Wilhelm's wife, worked as a cook at the kolkholz, cooking for high-ranking government officials. These folks had plenty of food, and Magdalena was able to sneak away with a few morsels now and then, just enough to keep everyone from starving.

Eduard was released from the penal colony after four and one-half years and returned to Rohrbach, where he set about putting his family back together – only to be arrested a second time – this time along with Willi, who was only seventeen. Many of the farmers in Rohrbach were arrested as kulaks and sent to penal colonies in Siberia, or were simply executed. Luckily, Willi was released, presumably because of his age. His father Eduard was sentenced to death, taken to Mykolaiv, where he was executed in November of 1937. Johannes, the former Volost mayor, after finding his orchards had been destroyed, was found frozen to death in the fields.

World War II marked the beginning of the end for the village of Rohrbach. The southern region of Ukraine was invaded by the German-allied Romanian army, and the region became known as Transnistria. The Romanian army raided the villages and helped themselves to the crops, livestock and whatever else they felt that they needed. The villagers formed a militia to protect themselves against the invaders. At long last, the German Einsatzgruppen (a branch of the SS) set up shop in the villages and offered some protection from the Romanians, and began the process of the Nazification of the Black Sea Germans, to prepare them for their destiny of ruling over the Ukrainian peasantry. But first there would be some ethnic cleansing. Jews, Gypsies, and suspected communist sympathizers were rounded up and sent to faraway places or simply executed.

Willi and his two brothers joined the German army to fight against their Russian homeland. During the battle of Poltava, Willi was injured by a grenade fragment and returned to Rohrbach. After his recovery, he was told to report to Vienna, Austria, where he was assigned to a brigade which was tasked with repairing the railroads which were being destroyed by bombing raids or by sabotage. He never again made it back to Rohrbach. When the war ended, he surrendered to American forces and held as a POW.

In 1944, when the Russian army began to push its way westward through Ukraine, the German army was ordered to evacuate the German villages. They moved them westward into Romania, then onward to Poland. The Warthegau region was already home to Germans from Bessarabia, who were relocated there by the German army in 1940 after the Poles were driven out. Until more housing could be built, the Germans from Ukraine would have to live in tents. Meanwhile, they had to provide documentation to prove their German heritage, so they could move from being merely Volksdeutsch to become full citizens of the Third Reich.

The Soviet army continued their advance through Poland on their way westward into Germany, and the Germans of the Warthegau region were forced to evacuate again, lest they fall into Russian hands. Women and children were selected to be evacuated by train to Germany. Wilhelm was allowed on, as caretaker for his wife and daughter, along with his sister Emma and her daughter. The other families continued on with their wagons and were never to reach Germany. When they reached the Oder River that crossed into Germany, they found that it had been destroyed by the German army in an effort to slow down the pursuing Russians. The Russian army soon arrived to take ownership of the refugees. The following months saw them living in tents and rail cars, traveling through Belarus, Russia, until they were finally settled in Kazakhstan.

By the time Willi was released from the POW camp, he had found out through the Red Cross that Uncle Wilhelm and his family had been sent to an UNNRA camp in Bavaria. He decided to set out on foot to find them, a journey of nearly a hundred miles. By this time he knew his way around Germany. It was near closing time when he arrived at the bakery where his cousin had told him he could find her. He was told that she had left for the day but that he may find her in the flour mill just down the street. When he arrived at the flour mill, he saw a man who was just closing up. After a brief exchange, Willi found to his amazement that the man was his cousin's husband Peter. They had been recently married in the refugee camp.

Willi and Peter, along with their families, waited for a country that would accept them. The break came when they were offered jobs in the coal mines of Belgium. After a few months, Peter realized he could not bring his family to Belgium, so he decided to return to the refugee camp. Willi went with him, and soon was offered another job in the coal mines of England. After a year in England, he managed to again find his way back to Germany, where he met Maria and the two were married.

After four years of waiting, Amalie and Peter were granted permission to immigrate to the Unites States, through the sponsorship of Amalie's Uncle Johann, who had been sent to America by his father forty years earlier, after his troubles in Rohrbach.

Author's Notes – Fact vs. Fiction:

The character of Georg Rheinhart who moved to southern Russia in 1809 is based on Georg Ridinger, who is listed in the work of Dr. Karl Stumpp, a German genealogist who has chronicled the initial settlers of the Steppes of southern Russia. I believe him to be my ancestor. Johannes was my great grandfather, Eduard was my grandfather, and Willi was my father. My grandfather's arrest and execution is listed in the files of Memorial, an organization founded by academics in Russia, where he was shown to have been rehabilitated (pardoned) in 1990. Numerous Ridinger surnames are listed. That organization was recently shut down under Vladimir Putin and the web site is no longer operational.

Through the sponsorship of my dad's cousin Amalie, our family immigrated to the United States in 1960, where he joined his Uncle Wilhelm, his aunt Emma and cousin Irma. I was swimming in a sea of Germans from Russia.

The stories of my father's survival during the holodomor are true, as confirmed by him and by his cousin Amalie – Wilhelm's daughter. The hand injury and war record are confirmed by documents from the German archives. I found his release paper from the American POW camp at Bad Abling after his death. My father never admitted to having served in the German Army, other than to say he worked on the railroads. The scar from where he cut out his tattooed blood type was always visible. I found out about his hand injury from one of his cousins in Germany. He never mentioned it and it was apparently fully healed. Throughout his life he worked as a mechanic, construction worker and in a millwork shop. He confirmed that he had apprenticed as a blacksmith in his youth, and he took incredible pride in his ability with the fruit trees and grape vines he raised in his back yard.

UNNRRA records show that my father listed his Uncle Wilhelm as his father, presumably to increase the chances that they could stay together as a family unit. Relocation to Belgium was confirmed by UNRRA records.  Other than one document found in his papers showing a British entry stamp, little is known about his time in England, although I do know he went there with another cousin, who stayed on and raised a family. I have yet to reach out to his survivors.

When my dad went in search of his two brothers, whom he had not seen since the end of their military training, he found that neither one of them made it out of the Soviet Union. One brother was sent to a labor camp in the northern Ural Mountains, where he was put to work in an iron and copper mine. He was released there after twenty years, moved to Yekaterinberg (then Sverdlovsk), then onto Kazakhstan, where he and his family were eventually granted permission to emigrate to Germany. By this time he had become married and had raised two children, who are my cousins.

The other brother was relocated to Turkmenistan, where he married and started a family. He was arrested in 1957 when someone reported to the police that he had been in the German army in World War II, and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. His family subsequently relocated to Siberia. When the first brother visited them and saw the conditions they lived in, he brought them to live with his family in Kazakhstan. After serving nearly all of his twenty-five year sentence, his brother died in a tragic construction accident one day before his scheduled release. He apparently had known things about the prison officials that may become embarrassing if made public.

Dad stayed in touch with his relatives in the Soviet Union, sending them money and care packages, with the help of the German Red Cross and intermediaries in Germany. To correspond with them directly would have put his brothers and their families in danger, since the Soviet Union took a harsh stance against western contact. When the oldest son of his brother was finally able to immigrate to Germany, which started the chain for his parents and cousins, my dad sent him money to get him on his feet. Finally, in 1983, dad was able to visit his surviving brother in Germany, whom he had not seen in some forty years

Descendants of my dad's two brothers and uncles, my first and second cousins, live throughout the Unites States and Germany. 

I try to visit often.

On Immigration Policy

Over the years I have listened to arguments over immigration from many different perspectives. As an immigrant myself (I was six years old when my parents immigrated from Germany), the perspectives that resonate with me are those expressed by first or second generation arrivals.

First, my story. My father was from a small village in southern Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union. Germans had settled the region in the early eighteen hundreds with land grants provided by the Russian government, and they had become successful farmers. When Josef Stalin ascended to the helm of the Soviet government, he instituted a series of five year plans aimed at industrializing the country. Out of this came the collectivization of land, which meant that the landowners were required to cede their land and assets to the government, which turned agriculture into a monopolistic enterprise. Instead of working their individual farms and trying to eke out a profit, the farmers gave up their possessions and became mere employees of the government. The plan was met with wide-spread resistance throughout the country, including in the German communities. Those that resisted, or expressed less-than-enthusiastic support, were arrested, sent to labor camps in far-off Siberia or northern Russia, or executed. This happened to my grandfather and great grandfather.

World War II offered a hope for the German settlers of Ukraine. When Germany and their allies occupied the region, the native Germans were treated as the vanguard of a new German nation. My father and his brothers enlisted in the German army to fight against their communist oppressors. When the German army was defeated, my father was captured and sent to an American prisoner of war camp in southern Germany. His brothers found themselves on the eastern front. One was sent to the northern Ural mountains to work in the iron mines and the other ended up serving a twenty five year sentence in a Soviet prison.

When my father was released from the POW Camp, he was sent to another camp for refugees, where he met up with relatives who had been evacuated from his village in Ukraine. There was no hope of going back to his village, so he waited in the camp while the refugee agency looked for a home in another country. After brief stints in England and Belgium, he returned to Germany, where he would meet my mother. They were married and moved in with her parents. He took jobs as a concrete laborer and then a truck mechanic while my mother worked as a sales clerk in a grocery store. After eight years of living in two rooms of my grandparents' home with their three sons, they still yearned for a better life. By this time relatives from dad's village had been able to immigrate to the United States. The chain had started in the late 1800’s, before the revolution, when one of my great-grandfather’s brothers had decided to immigrate to Nebraska and had obtained land through the Homestead act. In 1908 he was joined by his nephew, who eventually settled in North Texas. This nephew, a brother of my grandfather, then sponsored my father’s cousin and her husband, who had also been living in the refugee camp. This cousin then sponsored my family, who immigrated to north Texas in 1960. This was a classic case of ‘chain migration’, denounced under the Trump administration, in which the first arriving immigrant applies for other family members, and can result in multiple generations of immigrants allowed into the United States.

In the immigration debate, there should be no argument about illegal immigration. It’s wrong, plain and simple. That being said, it’s nearly impossible to prevent. All countries attempt to prevent it, some more humanely that others. Truth be told, if someone is desperate enough to escape their homeland, they will endure any risk. I know of someone who arrived on our shores on a raft with his mother as a young boy. He has been here over forty years, raised a family, works a regular job, and has never been in trouble with the law. Others risk their lives, pay smugglers exorbitant fees, and risk imprisonment and deportation once they arrive. It’s no different in Europe. During my travels in Europe, I constantly see immigration officials board the trains at border crossings to check passengers’ documentation. This in itself does not prevent illegal individuals from simply disembarking at the last station and walking through the woods and crossing the border. Of course this means that they will forever be at risk of arrest and deportation, but for some the risk is worth it. Vast expanses of water serve as a natural barrier, but even then we find desperate refugees risking their lives in appalling conditions.

As for legal immigration, the debate revolves around how many and what sort of demographic should be allowed. The Trump administration has expressed a preference for white-skinned, well-educated young adults, once even calling out Sweden as an ideal candidate. Of course, Swedes have it quite well in their own country, and one would not find a large number willing to come here. If an education test were applied to my parents, they wouldn’t have qualified. In fact, I would venture to guess that ninety percent of our immigrant forefathers would never have qualified. The school in my father’s village was shut down due to a lack of teachers, and he ended up with an equivalent of something like a fourth grade education. My mother had eight years of formal schooling, followed by some technical training in shopkeeping, leading to her work as a cashier. They had no money when they came to America. Mom found a job in a Levi’s jeans factory sewing blue jeans, and later on took jobs cleaning houses and working in the local school cafeteria. My father worked as a mechanic, concrete laborer and a millwright in a factory before retiring.

Immigrants from what we would deem as ‘first world countries’ will generally fall into the well-educated category, arrive with some level of financial means, and would soon be able to fit into society and thereby stay off of our welfare rolls. These immigrants have gone through rigorous screening, and have likely prepared themselves for the transition by studying our language and culture. Some will be inclined to resent fellow immigrants who have come in illegally or as refugees under a quota system, who have not learned the language and culture, and who have a propensity to stay within their own ethnic groups. Nevertheless this describes the overwhelming numbers of our immigrants, be it Irish, Italian, German and more recently Latin, Asian and Middle-eastern. It takes several generations for the assimilation into the greater society to take place. When the assimilation is slowed, ethnic tensions increase. In the end, however, assimilation does happen. I see first hand suburban communities with Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese, and even Arabic immigrants living next door to second, third and fourth generation Americans.

If our immigration policy is skewed highly to the well-educated and financially secure, an imbalance occurs in the working population. It is no secret that the lowest tier jobs in this country are dominated by recent immigrants, from agriculture and construction to cleaning, janitorial and food services – jobs not desirable to middle-class American citizens. Bottom-line, we need unskilled immigrants as well as the educated.

The solution could very well mean that we need to offer language and job training, as well as civic education. This means they need to learn our language, laws and systems of governance - not from their neighbors but from a structured curriculum. If this were done, the assimilation process might occur quicker and less dramatically.

World War II

Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, was launched on June 22, 1941. 

When the invasion started, the Soviet authorities immediately began to relocate valuable machinery and industrial goods eastward. Recognizing that the Germans of the region could become an enemy of the state, the Soviet government began to deport them to the far east, to places such as Siberia and Kazakhstan. Fortunately for many of the Black Sea Germans, the invaders came at such a rapid rate that  many of them were spared deportation. The southern front, which included the German villages, was overtaken by Germany's ally, the million-strong Romanian army. After the occupation, this part of Ukraine was called Transnistria and was under Romanian control.

The Romanian forces were not kind to the Germans, pillaging their fields and requisitioning livestock and machinery, whether it be from the collective farms that had been established during the collectivization period of the last decade, or from the villagers' personal possessions. Villagers that resisted were beaten and killed, and rape was not uncommon. To protect themselves, the villagers formed loosely organized local militias, called Selbstschutz.

The horrors of the holocaust did not escape this region. The Romanians' focus was to drive the Jewish people eastward, and killing them en-mass was merely a by-product of this effort.  Temporary camps were established with the eventual goal of moving them to the far reaches of the Soviet Union, as more of these regions were conquered. 

September of 1941 saw the arrival of the German SS Einsatzgruppen. The purpose of these units was to begin the process of ethnic cleansing, in preparation for the establishment of the Third Reich in these frontier regions. As such, they were seeking the extermination of the entire Jewish people. Along with that, they sought out anyone who had collaborated with or was sympathetic to the previous Soviet government. Until they could prove their loyalty to the Third Reich, the German settlers were held under suspicion. They had had little contact with the German homeland and were not indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda. The arrival of the SS, followed closely by 'Sonderkommando R', which had the longer-term task of indoctrinating the German population, or Volksdeutsche, with Nazi ideology, gave some of the settlers an opportunity to exact revenge on the neighbors who they felt had slighted them or had aligned themselves too closely with the hated communist government.

Even though the area of Transnistria was still officially under the control of the government of Romania, the Sonderkommando exerted a tremendous amount of influence, particularly when it came to oversight of the German villages. The Germans of the region - those that had proven their loyalty to the Reich - were treated as the vanguard of a new society. Land and livestock that had been confiscated during the collectivization years was gradually returned to their previous owners, and  food, clothing and other much-needed goods were dispersed freely to the German population in an effort to win them over.

Sadly, many Germans, especially the younger men, became willing recruits of the Sonderkommandos, first as part of the local Selbstschutz, then later as part of the Sonderkommando. We can not escape the reality, borne out by post-war interviews and other records, that some of these men may in fact have taken part in the atrocities committed against jews and other enemies of the Reich.

Later, in 1942 and 1943, as the war had turned against Germany and her allies and losses were mounting, young Volksdeutsche were heavily recruited for newly-established SS Panzer Divisions (not to be confused with the SS Einsatzgruppen). My father enlisted in 1943, at the age of twenty-four.

My Great Grandfather in 1932

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 tried at first to gain the cooperation of the local community, but were soon forced to resort to more persuasive methods.

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.

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. My dad's cousin, who grew up with dad in Rohrbach, whom I interviewed in Germany in 2012, corroborated this conclusion.

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.

A Post-war Re-unification in Haunstetten

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

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 a relative who was the son of my dad's aunt Lidia (hence dad's first cousin through marriage), and had known dad in Rohrbach. He had kept in touch with dad over the years, 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 Petrokevich 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.

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.....