Journal

of the

American Historical Society of Germans from Russia

Vol. 12, No. 1 Spring 1989

On the cover; These new and old (far left) buildings are located at the extreme north end of Rohrbach, Odessa

District. The house in the background is painted white and has a red tiled roof; the roof in the foreground is of a gray, corrugated material. The metal fence is painted a deep blue, and the brick columns supporting the fence are painted white. The grapevine in the foreground is about the only remnant remaining in the village of a once-thriving viniculture in this area.

Published by

American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 631 D Street • Lincoln, Nebraska 68502-1199 • Phone 402-474-3363

Edited by: Jo Ann Kuhr and Mary Rabenberg

® Copyright 1989 by the American Historical Society of Germans From Russia. All rights reserved.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

A VISIT TO ROHRBACH, ODESSA DISTRICT, IN 1988 William M. Wiest ............................................................. 1

THE DUNDEE, KANSAS, COLONY Marjorie Andrasek ........................................................... 13

THE YOUNGEST CHILD Hertha Karasek'Strzygowski Translated by Sally Tieszen Hieb .........................………………................... 15

BUKOVINA-GERMAN PIONEERS IN URBAN AMERICA Sophie A. Welisch ...........……..............................................19

BOOK REVIEWS THE MENNONITE KLEINE GEMEINDE HISTORICAL SERIES

Reviewed by Edward R. Brandt................................................ 27 DIE INSEL CHORTITZA

FINSTERNIS UND LIGHT

LICHT UND SCHATTEN Reviewed by Lawrence Klippenstein ............................................ 28

MONETARY VALUES IN 1909 ................……………………………………………….................................. .29

SCHOOL DAYS IN GROSSLIEBENTAL .............................…………………………………………............. .30

WE SING OUR HISTORY…………………….. Lawrence A. Weigel.......................................................... 31

GAMES AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE EARLY PART OF THIS CENTURY Solomon L. Loewen .......................................................... 33

THE POWER OF A PHOTOGRAPH Peter W. Schmidt............................................................ 39

A VISITOR FROM THE SOVIET UNION S.D.R.......................................................................41

BOOKS AND ARTICLES RECENTLY ADDED TO THE ASHGR ARCHIVES Frances Amen and Mary Rabenberg ............................................ 45

THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN KIND, VOLGA REGION ....…………………………….. .50

Three farm workers going to one of two stores on the east side main street in Rohrbach. The sign is for khieb, or bread.

A typical horse-drawn wagon in Worms. Note the German-style fence with white brick pillars.

The House of Culture (cultural center) near the center of Rohrbach. Note the statue of Lenin and the banner referring to the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union.

This older house with the thatched roof is the first building seen at the entrance to Rohrbach.

ii

A VISIT TO ROHRBACH, ODESSA DISTRICT, IN 1988 William M. Wiest

Members of AHSGR with ancestral roots in Rohrbach, Worms, Landau, Speier, or any of the other former German settlements north of Odessa in the Berezan' Valley may well wonder about the current status of these villages and the general surrounding countryside; for example, do the villages still exist, and does the area remain as productive and beautiful as our forefathers described it? John Philipps, writing as someone who grew up there in the early part of this century, wrote "Nature has made the Beresan Valley one of the most blessed areas along the coast of South Russia. It is richly endowed with vast meadows, valleys, level plains (Steppes), green vineyards, flourishing gardens, golden wheat fields and overhead a deep blue sky.... No other land in the world can pride itself on such an abundance of black earth."1 In August 1988 my wife Thelma and I with my parents, Mr. and Mrs. William W. Wiest of Reedley, Califor-nia, traveled to Rohrbach to see for ourselves; we found that, although Rohrbach is much changed in some respects, this ancestral home to many North American Germans from Russia retains many of its former pleasant features. Situated about 65 miles north-northeast of Odessa, Rohrbach (renamed Novosvetlovka in Soviet times) can easily be reached by auto in a two-hour drive on paved and mostly quite good highways. In hindsight, getting to Rohrbach was not difficult, but considerable advance planning, determination, and just plain good fortune were essential ingredients of our trip there in 1988.

While growing up between Loveland and Greeley in Colorado, my father frequently had heard his parents refer to Rohrbach, where they had been born in the early 1880s. His parents, Friedrich Karl Wiest and Katherina Croissant, with two small children, Friedrich F. and Lydia (and another on the way—my father), had immigrated to the U.S. in 1908 from Stavropol in the North Caucasus, specifically from the village Friedrichsfeld (renamed Zolotarevka). Ap-proaching 80 years of age, my father has long hoped that he would have the opportunity to see the ancestral village of his parents and other relatives. This unforgettable opportunity came for our family in August 1988 while we were traveling in the Soviet Union with Assiniboine Travel, Ltd. of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Our tour group was composed primarily of persons with similar interests in tracing roots in "South Russia"; the tour was designed especially to allow detailed exploration of former Mennonite

villages—those in Khortisa near Zaporozhye, and those in Molochna, about 50 miles south-southeast of Zaporozhye. The ease with which tourists now visit the former Mennonite colonies inspired the four travelers in our family to apply for permission to visit Rohrbach, even though Rohrbach has never, to our knowledge, been on an official Intourist itinerary!2 Our Canadian travel agency had informed us in advance that there were no guarantees about such side trips, and this advice had been confirmed when we first made our request to Intourist in Moscow several days earlier. We were told, "Maybe it is possible—it will be more convenient to wait until you get to Odessa to apply," a reply that we feared might be the beginning of indefinite postponement.3

My father's parents, Friedrich Karl Wiest and Katherina (Croissant) Wiest, in 1929. Both were born in Rohrbach in the early 1880s. They immigrated to Colorado in 1908 with two children, Fredrick F. and Lydia, and had ten more children in America. My grandfather had been a leather worker in Russia, but in the U.S. he and my grandmother became dairy and sugar beet farmers near Johnstown, Colorado, and later they had vineyards and fruit orchards near Dinuba in the San Joaquin Valley of California.

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In view of these uncertainties, we were delighted when our inquiry to the Intourist Service Bureau in Odessa produced a quick and favorable decision: "Yes," we could deviate from the planned itinerary in Odessa for one day, and "Yes," we would be allowed to go by auto to visit Rohrbach (Novosvetlovka)! I had described the approximate location of Novosvetlovka to our Soviet guide, though it was not listed on my road map (Eastern Europe, Freytag & Berndt, Vienna) which included the western U.S.S.R. Therefore, I was somewhat surprised when our Intourist guide so readily reassured us that we would be provided with a driver who would know how to find Novosvetlovka. It all seemed quite straightforward, and we were pleased that no further discussion seemed to be called for. Our car and driver were waiting for us outside the Krasnaya Hotel in Odessa at 9:00 a.m. the next day. Only a few words passed between our driver and the Intourist office personnel before we departed—at a wheel-squealing pace that made us all exchange concerned glances and hang on to anything in reach. Our driver spoke only Russian, and my knowledge of the language was quite rudimentary, so there was not a great deal of conversation. However, I could read the Cyrillic road signs and within 10 to 15 minutes became alarmed that we seemed to be heading in the general direction of Kiev or even more westerly. In response to my inquiry, our driver pointed out on my map the general area toward which he was heading—about 60 miles northwest of Odessa.4 To his consternation I then pointed out the area where we thought Novosvetlovka should be located, though neither his nor my map showed the village. I pointed to a region about 65 miles northeast of Odessa, about 10 to 15 miles west of the Bug river, somewhat south of Voznesensk and directly east of Berezovka. This description of the approximate location of Rohrbach was based on various maps by Karl Stumpp that I had studied before we left home, as well as on information about the location of Rohrbach provided by AHSGR. Though we had the Stumpp maps with us, I did not consider it quite politic to be waving "German maps" at our somewhat frustrated driver; so we agreed to return to the Intourist Service Bureau at the hotel for further consultation.

The flurry of discussion that followed made us increasingly concerned that the delay in our departure, as well as the general confusion about the location of Novosvetlovka, might cause our whole trip to be cancelled. Fortunately, personnel in the Service Bureau were quite willing to examine my Stumpp maps alongside their own

Three of Friedrich Karl Wiest's younger siblings in Russia; Katherina, Jakob, and Eduard. Only one of his sisters, Elizabeth, immigrated to North America; the rest of his family remained in Russia. After 1929 contact with them suddenly ended—until January 9, 1989, when a letter arrived from the Soviet Union. I had written to a Rudolf Wiest in Kustanai, Kazakhstan, to inquire if he had knowledge about my grandfather or any of his brothers and sisters who had stayed in Russia. The letter received on January 9 gave the names and current locations of the living children of my grandfather's four brothers and two sisters who had remained in Russia. By February we had received three letters from the Soviet Union, all in German. The whole family is now looking forward to continuing correspondence with my father's sixteen first cousins! We hope we will be able to meet these cousins soon.

2

and to take seriously the information on the postcard we had received from AHSGR showing the coordinates of Novosvetlovka (47 ° 12' N, 31° 11' E). The person in charge even placed telephone calls to a local Orthodox priest and to a Roman Catholic priest after I re-emphasized that Novosvetlovka had been a German (Lutheran and Reformed) village called Rohrbach; neither priest could confirm the location of Rohrbach (Novosvetlovka)—-nor even that it still existed. Finally, an hour and a half later, we left Odessa again, this time with the stipulation that there was no guarantee that we would get to our destination but that we should drive in the general direction and stop to ask for directions along the way. Earlier travelers to the Soviet Union hear this description of our being casually told to "go and look for it" with near disbelief—apparently glasnost is having impor-tant effects! Our driver seemed in good humor again and intent on making up for lost time by driving even faster than on our first departure.

To make matters worse, many trucks and tractors we passed were belching a black smoke screen. My family and I agreed that generally we were being driven about 50 percent faster than we considered safe. We later noticed that our driver was not atypical, and in fairness I should add that we witnessed only one minor accident in the relatively congested traffic of Odessa in the late afternoon.

The northeast side of Odessa ended abruptly. On one side of the road stood a mix of warehouses, factories, and rows of large, nearly identical apartment houses; on the other side, there was an alfalfa field that stretched almost to the horizon. In only a few minutes we were racing at 120 kilometers per hour along a straight four-lane divided highway6 that, for most appearances, could have been grazing land in the Texas Panhandle except for the long, swampy lakes ("limans") in many of the mile-wide swales breaking an otherwise flat land.

Street scene in Odessa as we were leaving for Rohrbach.

Before we were out of Odessa, we all hit the ceiling more than once as our too rapidly speeding car (an otherwise quite comfortable "Gaz") bucked like a bronco crossing railroad tracks or dips in the street; once we bypassed a very busy section where traffic was clogged with slow-moving tractors by leaping over the curb and doing a quick end run on a pothole-filled "frontage road." More than once we also found our two-lane road suddenly converted into three lanes when our driver impatiently passed a car, motorcycle, truck or tractor, in spite of oncoming traffic, all the while leaning hard on the car's horn.

Divided highway approximately 10 to 15 miles out of Odessa.

After about 20 miles the terrain became less hilly and the road narrowed to two lanes, still well paved and now bordered on both sides by a mixture of acacia, mimosa, and locust trees, many in bloom. Beyond the trees were fields of recently harvested grain (wheat or barley with the straw piled into round stacks every 50 feet or so), sunflowers in dazzling yellow bloom, alfalfa, corn, and other row crops, as well as pastures with grazing "Red German" and Holstein cattle. Very large tractors and modern combines were sitting in the fields along with somewhat primitive—looking wooden wagons, the latter

3

A pastel-colored (blue) house in Bere&ovka. 4

presumably for hauling straw. In the fields there were also smaller tractors pulling haying equipment—cutting, chopping, and blowing green alfalfa into trailers designed for unloading into trench silos by winch. Every half-dozen miles or so we could see clusters of large buildings about a quarter mile off the road; we supposed they were dairy and other farm buildings as well as apartments of state (or perhaps collective) farm workers. Only rarely did we see a single house or barn standing alone in a field or by the road. As we proceeded northward we remarked to one another several times on the surprisingly good condition of most of the roads; after we were about 30 miles from Odessa, most of the traffic consisted of large and small trucks and tractors pulling farm implements or trailers.

Approaching Berezovka we encountered our first intersection with a flashing red light. Our driver flagged another driver who stopped while they discussed how to get to Novosvetlovka. Apparently the advice was indirect for our driver continued to look puzzled, and shrugged his shoulders in a nye znayu (don't know) gesture,

as he turned left off the main road to drive a few miles into Berezovka. Except for a few random impressions, the town was rather nondescript: scattered, pastel houses (purple, yellow, blue, green, and pink) with embroidered curtains, several children and a mongrel dog dodging tractors and trucks scurrying on and across the road lined with dusty trees, rusting farm machinery, and the least appealing public rest rooms any of us had ever encountered. But profusely growing dandelions, pigweed, and other invasive green plants among the roses and dahlias of the public park were reassuringly familiar, and the warm, sunny, and slightly breezy midday (about 82° F) was quite pleasant.

Less than ten minutes after he left us to ask for further directions, our driver walked briskly back to the car. His gait and smiling face told the good news, elaborated by a head nod and hand gestures implying that he had learned something interesting. In my primitive Russian I asked him whether he now knew where to find Novosvetlovka and his reply was an immediate and enthusiastic "Da!"

This yellow arch is the entrance to Worms from the highway.

5

We were now off to Vinogradnoye,6 just a few miles up the road northeast of Berezovka. We stopped for about five minutes for further directions in this village (which we later learned was the former German village of Worms). The main part of this settlement seemed to be to the east of the highway; a large, yellow stucco-covered arch functioned as a kind of grand opening to the town; a gaggle of large black and white geese hovered near a clump of grass where a leaky faucet was dripping near the side of the road. Rubber-tired and wooden-wheeled wagons drawn by horses shared the streets with more trucks and tractors. I thought I recognized the pattern of a typical German village in the white-painted brick pillars that anchored ironwork fencing that ran alongside the road and in front of the village buildings. Beyond the fences houses were surrounded by locust trees in full bloom as well as an occasional walnut tree.

Our driver Grisha (we were now exchanging names, and he seemed to be becoming as enthusiastic about this adventure as we) used hand signals to say that we were within 10 to 15 kilometers of Novosvetlovka. A few miles up the road in a northwesterly direction, a small monument (displaying a schematic wheat plant and a red star) marked the spot where we made a sharp turn to the right, now heading south-southeast. Grisha said we were now within 7 to 8 kilometers of Novosvetlovka! We thought the countryside was particularly beautiful with very productive-looking, dark black soil, mostly level and planted into corn and alfalfa, but some freshly plowed. The road, now narrower and nearly straight all the way, was being re-asphalted for a few miles by grading equipment that looked much like any in North America.

At this marker the road to Rohrbach turns off from the main highway.

Sign, NOVOSVETLOVKA, at entrance to Rohrbach.

Most of the way the road was now thickly bordered on both sides by tall, healthy-appearing poplars.

We rounded a corner and saw a quite prominent sign, at least 20 feet high, "NOVOSVETLOVKA," followed soon after by the first building, a thatched-roofed structure with a woman standing nearby wearing the expected Russian-Ukrainian peasant head scarf. We proceeded all the way down to the end of "main street," a distance estimated to be about three-quarters of a mile. Main street ran along the east side of a quarter-mile-wide shallow valley; what appeared to be a small stream was about equidistant between this main street and another parallel street on the other side of the valley. Houses and larger buildings appeared to be much farther apart on the other street (west side of the valley); we pooled our estimates and arrived at the guess that there were from 150 to 200 houses and other buildings, and that 90 percent of all buildings appeared to be occupied houses. Only a small number of houses were clearly abandoned; these appeared to be very old, with crumbling stucco revealing the basic stone construction. All of the houses, even the few new ones, were built in a style described by Philipps; that is, most appeared to be about '*60 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 11 feet to the eaves" and have the gabled end facing the street.8 As was true in the past, most houses we saw were built of stone or brick; a few had reed-thatched roofs, and some older buildings still had red-tiled roofs with walls of stone or brick. The most common roofing material appeared to be a corrugated grey nonmetallic material, perhaps asbestos. The gables and windows of many houses, especially 6

the newer or better kept ones, were decorated with strips of wood carved in artistic patterns— perhaps reflecting recent Ukrainian influence.

As for the overall layout, we noted that the main street in Rohrbach looked very much like the descriptions given by Stumpp, Philipps, and others; for example, the wide street was bounded on both sides by a 50- to 60-foot-wide strip with trees (acacia, locust, and mimosa) and grass, with a narrow gravel-covered sidewalk between the trees and the fence fronting most houses. The continuous line of the fence, consisting of white-painted brick pillars supporting iron (and sometimes wooden) rods, was broken by a latched swinging gate in front of each house. Front and side yards of many houses had flower gardens with hollyhocks, morning glories, and ornamental plants, some rather overgrown, as well as apricot, walnut, and plum trees; other front yards were bare of any plants. We did not venture into any backyards, but what we could see suggested vegetable gardens, storage cellars (some caving in from disuse), chicken houses, wood piles, and

sometimes considerable disarray. The street scene was generally quietly pastoral, graced with the sounds of birds singing, mourning doves cooing in the trees, and roosters crowing in the backyards; this tranquil setting was frequently interrupted by passing trucks or tractors whose loudly whining transmissions seemed to this farm-raised witness's ears to call for lubrication! The main street was almost all paved, the exception being that part nearer the center of the village where two stores were located and where much of the truck and tractor traffic stopped or turned around. On the main street children (and some adults) rode by on bicycles, with playful dogs chasing them and chickens, ducks, and geese scattering. At midday most of the ducks and geese ceased wandering the street and the surrounding grassy strip, preferring instead to cluster in the moist shade of the acacia trees. During our less than three-hour stay in Rohrbach, we saw at least a half-dozen trucks and tractors, two horse-drawn wagons, and only two automobiles.

View of the main street (east side) from the north to the south.

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We explicitly asked our driver to inquire regarding the location of the cemetery. It was about a quarter mile up a gently sloped road to the east—one of only two roads we saw perpendicular to the north-south orientation of the main street near the center of the village. The cemetery appeared to be square, perhaps 150 yards or more on each side; it was immediately obvious to us that even a cursory survey of the cemetery would require hours. In a hurried ten-minute glance, we did not find gravestones with German names, having time to examine only an ex-ceedingly small fraction of the rather large number of grave markers. Many graves had markers surrounded by fancy ironwork, and some had photos of the deceased and engraved words in the Cyrillic alphabet. We met a peasant

startled and became somewhat self-conscious: yet after a while she became very animated and friendly while talking to us in Ukrainian. After some frustrating moments of trying to communicate more about who we were and what we were interested in, we had to leave words aside and express our warmth to her with our smiles and gestures. She reciprocated in this nonverbal communication, and we all waved fond good-byes as we left the cemetery. Such an experience strongly reinforces one's intentions to learn more of the language before the next trip!

Grisha now took control, deciding that it was time for us to break into the sack lunches that Intourist had packed for us. He stopped at one of the two store-like places in the center of town, a building marked simply, Kafe, in Cyrillic. The

View of the cemetery in Rohrbach showing the ironwork surrounding many graves.

The KAFE where we ate our sack lunch prepared by Intourist. This was one of the two stores in Rohrbach.

woman in the cemetery who apparently had just laid fresh flowers at a grave. She seemed somewhat wary, yet curious about encountering four foreigners, two with cameras and a camcorder; a question put to her in German as to whether she spoke or understood German drew only an uncomprehending stare. But when I repeated the question in Russian she immediately answered 'Nyet' I then inquired (in Russian) whether she knew people living in the village now who could understand German, to which she replied in the affirmative. My further attempt to ask that she take us to these persons who spoke and understood German was apparently not successful—whether because she simply did not understand me or because she was hesitant to act on our request, I do not know. On learning that we were Americans, she at first looked

only other place in the village that appeared to be a store was directly across the street, with the simple sign for bread in Cyrillic, Khieb. After a moment Grisha motioned for us to come inside where he had arranged for our use of a table and chairs. The stop in a relatively cool place was a welcome relief, since the noon heat was approaching the upper 80s0 P. The main items available in the store seemed to be soft drinks, beer, coffee, tea, cold cuts, and cheese. But we had more bread, cheese, fried chicken, cold cuts, cucumber, mineral water, watermelon, and tomatoes than we could eat in our brown bags, so further purchases were not necessary. The woman in charge in the "cafe" sliced our watermelon and served it to us on plates with forks and spoons.

8

After our late lunch we continued to explore around the village. It was clear that we were somewhat unexpected curiosities to many of the villagers; yet they kept a polite distance and did not initiate conversation. We approached several groups of young people to say hello, to give them our best wishes, and to offer small metal "lapel pins" as gifts (of the sort that were received, even sought after, with great enthusiasm by Soviet youths in the cities). Three 18- to 20-year-old young men sitting on a motorcycle with sidecar seemed ill at ease by my offer, yet they accepted and said "Spasibo" (thank you). They seemed far more inhibited than the suave urban young people I had talked to the night before in Odessa— probably an unsurprising reflection of urban-rural differences in the amount of exposure to foreigners. It was easier to engage in simple talk with a group of four youngsters (three boys and a girl, all appearing to be 14 to 16 years old) who were sitting on a bench attached to the fence in front of a house. They were also quite shy, yet after we had visited awhile, they stood up and offered their seats to us (Sadites' pozhaluys ta). They seemed quite willing to try to understand my undoubtedly amusing Russian as long as I was willing to entertain them! Our general impression was that the current occupants of Rohrbach do not frequently see people from out of town, to say nothing of foreign tourists!

Other people we tried to talk to included three men who drove up in one of the two cars we saw in the village—to a large public building prominently displaying pictures of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. We thought the building, not far from the village center, might be a school, perhaps of 1950 vintage. One men wore a T-shirt with the English words, "SOS Marine" and a drawing of a ship's navigating wheel; we were not able to learn from them what the building was nor the significance of the shirt.

One of our most poignant encounters was with an elderly woman missing most of her teeth; she was carrying a bucket of fresh milk—foamy as if just extracted from a cow. (We later saw a milk receiving station a few hundred yards to the north toward which she was walking.) She seemed very eager to talk, but her speech was particularly hard for me to make out. My wife Thelma filmed our attempted conversation with a video camera while the woman gesticulated vigorously and spoke loudly (almost loud enough to be heard over the passing tractors and rattling, empty alfalfa trailers). I later learned from friends who understand Ukrainian that she was explaining that many of the houses in the village had been badly damaged or entirely destroyed during the last war, and that many of the houses had been rebuilt.

Three boys and a girl in front of a house in Rohrbach. The bench is attached to the fence.

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A view of the west side of Rohrbach taken from the center of the east side where an unpaved road connects the two parallel streets.

One more large building deserves comment. It

was too big and its style too Soviet to be considered a former church; it appeared to be a community center, with large red banners extolling the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The building also had another feature that marks most Soviet public places—a large statue of Lenin dominating the open square in front of the building.

As we were leaving town, I snapped a picture of a grapevine growing near a house at the edge of town; this vine was the only evidence of what used to be a thriving wine-growing industry, according to Philipps. A few hundred yards later, I asked Grisha to stop so I could take a picture of the sign, NOVOSVETLOVKA. While we were parked on the side of the road, two older men in a truck stopped to talk to us. In response to my question they answered, "Yes, this is 'Old Rohrbach' and there is another place (gesturing toward the north) that the former German settlers called 'New Rohrbach.'" I was pleased to have that bit of confirmation that we had indeed been in the village of my grandparents, especially because of the confusion at the beginning of the trip and because various Stumpp maps show a

small "N Rohrbach" [Neu-Rohrbach] a few miles north of the old original settlement of Rohrbach.

What did we learn by visiting Rohrbach? Clearly, not as much as we would have liked to find out, but perhaps of most importance for a first trip was the discovery that the village still stands in the same place, and that it is possible to drive there from Odessa in about two hours. Our family hopes that our trip will encourage others from AHSGR to visit Rohrbach, Worms, Landau, Speier, and other former German communities near Odessa. Changes now being made in the Soviet Union (glasnost, and perestroika, for example) make this an extremely opportune time to travel there and to make meaningful human contact with people; we experienced much warmth from many people and felt that they are eager for more interaction with North Americans. Our trip was emotionally meaningful to each of us—an experience we will never forget. We also realize that we have barely scratched the surface in beginning to describe the current state of our ancestral village; clearly, with continuing intensive exploration, there is much more to be learned about the history and current status of these villages where unsere Leute lived.9

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Notes

Philipps, John. The Tragedy of the Soviet Germans: A Story of Survival, (Privately published, 1983), p. 8. Intourist is the official Soviet agency that makes all travel arrangement's for foreign tourists. Such a fear was not entirely unfounded: when we first arrived in Moscow, we had also requested permission to travel to Stavropol while the remainder of our group went to Kiev or Yalta (with the plan to rejoin them at Alma Ata). In each city we visited, this request was met with, "Maybe, but it will be more convenient to apply in [the next city]"; eventually, the next city was the last, and we were not able to go to Stavropol. In fairness I should note that our request to visit Stavropol, from which we wanted to go to Friedrichsfeld (where my grandparents were married and where my father was conceived) was clearly of a different magnitude from the request to visit Rohrbach, in that it required changes in flight and hotel arrangements for several days. Unlike Saratov on the Volga (from which region my mother's parents, Karl A. Buxman and Maria Weber, emigrated in 1901), Stavropol is among the Soviet cities explicitly listed as available to foreign tourists; I intend to include Stavropol in the official itinerary on my next visit and hope that soon the Saratov region will also be open. On a 1986 Soviet map of the Ukraine and Moldavia, I later discovered that the area our driver was pointing to shows a small village named Novosvetovka, north-northwest of Tiraspol! (Note the missing letter"!" in this case!) To further confuse matters this Soviet map also shows a small town (less than 10,000) named Novosvetlovka a few miles southeast of Voroshilovgrad in the eastern Ukraine, north of Rostov-on-Don. A road map (Cartographia} of the Western Soviet Union printed in Hungary (1987) lists the latter Novosvetlovka, but not Novosvetovka; none of these maps show "our" Novosvetlovka, the former Rohrbach! The novice in matters Soviet should be aware that certain town and village names are used repeatedly; for example, the index for the aforementioned Soviet map shows four separate places named Novoselovka, two places named Novoselskoye, etc. Fortunately, one can find Novosvetlovka (formerly Rohrbach) on the Tactical Pilotage Chart (F-3B), produced by the Defense Mapping Aerospace Center, St. Louis, AFS, Missouri 63118. ATTN: PP (scale: 1: 500.000). On this map "Rohrbach" is shown as a village lying in a narrow valley with a small stream running through it in a southerly direction; the orientation and

shape of the village is nearly identical to that shown on Karl Stumpp's map Karte der deutschen Siedlungen im Gebiet (Oblast) Odessa (AHSGR Map ^2). The orientation and shape of the village is also shown quite clearly on a topographical map prepared by the Soviet Corps of Army Engineers in 1930, available at the Library of Congress. A photocopy of an RAF (Royal Air Force) aerial photograph taken directly over Worms and Rohrbach in the early 1940s also shows the two villages—in considerable detail-in precisely the orientation as depicted by Stumpp on his map. Further, one can make out the cemetery on the east side of Rohrbach on this photograph. I received this photograph from Mrs. Wilma (Wiest) O'Bannon of Stockton, California, just after we returned from the Soviet Union. This and aerial photographs of other villages may be obtained through the Cartographic & Architectural Branch (GSA), National Archives, Washington, D.C. 20408.

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Map of Rohrbach prepared in 1930 by the Soviet Corps of Army Engineers at a scale of1:50,000. Map courtesy of Brent Mai.

On my map {Eastern Europe^ Freytag & Berndt, Vienna), the highway is unnumbered and about midway between Highway 20 north to Kiev and Highway 23 east to Nikolayev. When we returned to the U.S., I was surprised to discover in the book by Philipps that Vinogradnoye is the Russian name of the village of Worms, approximately 5 to 7 miles from Rohrbach, and shares much the same history and fate. We regretted that we had limited time (only about 2'/2 hours) to spend in Rohrbach and were therefore unable to make a more complete and quantitative record of what we saw. We did not go across the valley to the other parallel street, in part because our driver was hesitant to drive on what appeared to be a very bumpy, unpaved road connecting the two and in part because we did not have the time to walk there. Of course, we would have preferred to stay all day or longer, to count houses and other buildings, to get a better sense of the number of graves in the cemetery, and to look thoroughly for the old churches or their ruins. Philipps wrote that Rohrbach had a Neo-romanesque-style Evangelical Lutheran church with a bell tower on one side of the church and that there was also a Reformed prayer house, later made into a club house by the Soviets (p. 34).

Unfortunately, our driver was quite insistent that we leave Rohrbach in time to be back at our hotel in Odessa by 4:30 p.m., perhaps according to his instructions. Now that we know precisely how to get to Rohrbach, it is easy to plan how we will use this opportunity "next time"!

8. Philipps. p. 52. 9. I will be glad to provide copies of maps and detailed

instructions about how to drive from Odessa to Worms or to Rohrbach for anyone who plans such a trip. I would also offer the following advice: if you are reasonably comfortable with the Russian or Ukrainian language you can rent a car in Odessa and drive by yourself, at your own pace, to the villages. To follow such advice you would need an International Driver's License, obtainable at AAA in Canada or the U.S. If you do not feel comfortable with the idea of driving in the Soviet Union, it is possible to rent a car with driver as we did. If your command of the language is not sufficient, by all means pay the extra cost of hiring a translator-guide to accompany you. Finally, unless Intourist policy changes, those planning extended research in any of the villages near Odessa will be required to return each night to an Intourist-arranged hotel in Odessa.

Approaching Worms (Vinogradnoye) on our way to Rohrbach.

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THE DUNDEE, KANSAS, COLONY

Marjorie Andrasek Shortly after the completion of the Santa Fe

Railway through Kansas in 1872, the railroad company, through its immigrant bureau, advertised extensively throughout all sections of Europe—including Russia—that it had land for sale for those seeking new homes. The railroad company often arranged transportation for the emigrants from Russia to their destination in America. Agents were stationed in New York to meet and guide the new immigrants to their new homes in Kansas. By these means, a large portion of the ancestors of the present population of Barton County was induced to settle here. They improved these lands to the present state of productiveness and became factors in making this country what it is today.

This particular group of Mennonites arrived in Kansas in the fall of 1874 and wintered in Pawnee Rock. The majority of them had lived in small communities or villages in Russia. They had been engaged in weaving, lumber sawing, and farming. In their villages in Russia, they had found it necessary to form a compact body with a responsible head. At first, they attempted the same manner of organization in Barton County in a colony they settled 1 mile east of the present town of Dundee, Kansas, in the spring of 1875. Although the original plans called for twenty families, only fifteen families came under the agreement and settled in this colony. They entered the whole of section 16 under the Homestead Act, and they bought the whole of section 9 from the Santa Fe Railway Company on payments that covered eleven years. Both sections were divided originally into twenty equal parts. This gave to each family a tract of 32 acres on each section, or 64 acres in all.

On section 16 they built houses out of lumber and made their gardens. On section 9 they planted their crops. The fifteen cottages formed a village. The colony at Dundee was fashioned after the colonies of Russia. Their homes were built in a straight line and placed an equal distance apart. The only house out of line was the house of the leader or Schultz of the colony. His residence served as a council house.

The church was built on section 17 in 1875. It was built of limestone hauled in by ox teams from a stone quarry at Olmitz, Kansas, 20 miles away. My grandparents, Christian Schultz and Helena Rudiger, were the first couple to be married in this church. The stone church remained for many years after the colony broke up. It was

no longer in use but stood as a memorial until destroyed by a tornado on May 4, 1950. I remember how sad Mother and Dad were about the destruction of the church. They often recalled special memories about it. They remembered walking with other young people to this church for the Singstunde, or "singing hour," on Sunday afternoons. After the church was completed, a cemetery was laid out about a quarter mile southwest of the church. My grandmother, Lizzie Rudiger, my grandparents, Christian and Helena Schultz, and my parents, Sam and Eva Boese, are all buried in this cemetery—as are many other relatives. Abraham Seibert was the first pastor of this Mennonite congregation. He was not a resident of the village but lived with his parents about 2 miles southeast of the settlement. The church was also used for German classes once they were started.

Interior of the stone church, built in 1875, facing east

Those who made up the village were the families of Cornelius D. Unruh, Cornelius Thomas, Henry Seibert, Christian C. Schultz, Mrs. Lizzie Rudiger, Andrew P. Unruh, Andrew A. Seibert, Mrs. Susan Unruh, Benjamin P. Smith, Jacob Seibert, Benjamin Unruh, Andrew B. Unruh, Peter Unruh, Cornelius P. Unruh, and Peter H. Dirks. Henry B. Unruh also purchased his first home from this colony, but he is not included among the original settlers as he was not a resident until March 1876.

One settler very important to this colony was Christian C. Schultz. When he first arrived in America in 1874, he worked in a wagon factory in Latonia, Ohio. The next year he came to the

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colony in Barton County, Kansas, to join his former neighbors from the area of Karolswalde, Volhynia. He bought a quarter section of land for the use of this colony. (We believe this was the land in section 17 on which the church was built.) He helped others not as fortunate as he with the financing of their homes. It is said that Christian's house was the best built of all in this colony. He helped build the stone church in 1876. On August 5 of that year, Christian was married in this church to Helena Rudiger, the eldest child of the widow, Mrs. Lizzie Rudiger. Christian and Helena lived in this colony for one year, then they homesteaded a farm 5 miles north of Pawnee Rock, Kansas. Here their fourteen children were born, one of which was Eva, my mother.

This photograph of Christian Schultz, age 69, and his two youngest daughters, Martha Schultz Koehn, age 18 (left) and Lena Schultz Unruh, age 20, was taken in 1911.

The last house to remain standing in this colony was that of the widow, Mrs. Lizzie Rudiger. My grandfather, Christian C. Schultz, helped build it for his future mother-in-law and her children. The house was built in the spring of 1875 on the north side of the Santa Fe Railway. It was built of drilled and pegged lumber. The Santa Fe Railway shipped the lumber for this house—as well as for all the immigrants' homes in this colony—from Michigan to Dundee free of freight charges. The approximate cost of the lumber for Great-grandmother Elizabeth's house was $40.35. The cost of the lumber for her beds, table, benches, fuel box, and shelves was $15.65 per 1000 feet. The house had dirt floors at first, and later wooden floors were put in. It was patterned after the Russian homes which had their house, fuel and storage shed, and barn under one roof. The attic in Great-grandmother's house was used for storing grain, which was carried in sacks up a ladder. Great-grandmother's sons also slept in the attic.

The home of Elizabeth Rudiger after it had been moved to land south of the tracks. A built-on cellar was added with a "walk-in" door from inside the house.

Later the house was moved to the south side of the track where Mrs. Rudiger had purchased 80 acres for $364.00. In 1969 the house was sold and moved to Pawnee Rock, Kansas, where it still stands today as a museum.

The original intentions of the Dundee colony were never carried out. The scheme was found impractical in the country after a trial period of three or four years. Because their holdings were independent of their village agreement, families one by one sold their first little homes and bought larger and better farms in other localities of the county. They are now classed among Barton County's most substantial and best citizens.

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THE YOUNGEST CHILD* Hertha Karasek-Strzygowski Translated

by Sally Tieszen Hieb No, it really wasn't a simple matter to sketch the

people in this village. The smaller children, who were left to themselves all day, were timid and easily frightened. The older ones had to be in school or faraway in the pasture tending the cattle. The ladies and the younger women would very gladly have posed for me to sketch them, but they worked in the collective [farm] from early morning till late in the evening. During the short noon break, the children had to be cared for, and their only cow had to be milked. They didn't return home till late in the evening, dead tired, and even then they had to tend to unfinished housework. Now, during the harvest season, there was seldom a day free from work, which they urgently needed for the small garden surrounding their house. They wanted to cultivate and harvest as much as possible in order to provide this very necessary subsidy to their meager living. The old women weren't required to work at the collective anymore, but they labored steadfastly around the house with the energy of their past peasants' life, or they performed light work in their home for the collective in order to earn a little money for them-selves. They thought that sitting still for an hour and doing nothing during the middle of a workday was being presumptuous and the work of the devil. On the other hand, Sunday had strict regulations: worship service, hours of devotion, singing, and reading the Bible filled the day. Nonetheless, I succeeded in persuading the people to sit and pose during the scant free time they had. Slowly and steadily my portfolio filled.

There were always guests in Mother Fenske's kitchen these days, women and young girls from the neighborhood. The first ones arrived at the break of day; they were already sitting in the kitchen between four and four-thirty. From my bed in the next room, I could overhear what they were talking about to hard-of-hearing Mother Fenske and how she had to tell them just exactly what "her artist" had accomplished. The women who had watched while I sketched said, "She draws everything exactly as it is—the hair, the

*This is the twelfth chapter of Wolhynisches Tagebuch to appear in translation in the AHSGR Journal. The original book, in German, may be borrowed from the AHSGR archives through the interlibrary loan facilities of your local public or college library.

eyes, the moustache of Old Wenzler—and one can easily see that he is a good man and that God has laid many burdens on him." "And in Old Steffen," said one of the other ladies, "one can see that he cannot hear. And because she sketches everyone so precisely, then everything she tells us about Germany must also be exactly so." But then when one of them said, "She is just like we are, she speaks like we do, I believe she must be from Volhynia," then my heart beat with joy, because I now knew that they thought of me as one of them. They couldn't have expressed it more plainly or impressively.

The women also came often during their short noon break and sat in a row on the long bench in front of the large, sky-blue stove, like swallows on a wire. They chewed and spit out their sunflower seeds in an amazing rhythm. Their bright eyes beneath their white head scarves looked at me confidently and expectantly. Every day I saw the same thing when I came with my portfolio; a childlike enchantment lit up their faces. Naturally, I always had to start with the first page before I dared show the last, unseen sketch. Of course, they knew exactly what was on each page. I would not have dared to skip a single one. They always discovered something new in the expressions of the familiar faces of their friends and neighbors which had escaped them before. They critiqued and compared until one or the other of the women would say with a deep sigh, "Such pictures! If only we could have them of our husbands and brothers."

One day Father Wenzler, too, stood at the door with his gnarled walking stick in his hand, his quilted vest buttoned high, and his boots covered with white dust. Hurriedly, almost sternly, he demanded to see my "sketched photographs," as if it were his duty as village elder to watch carefully over what this artist was doing in his village. He tapped the floor with his stick domineeringly and impatiently, as if he had to have the pages in hand more quickly. He was always in a hurry on his daily rounds.

With a furrowed brow and a tightly compressed mouth, he looked at the sketches thoroughly, one after the other, from top to bottom—and naturally also the back side—as one would observe a cow from all angles to determine whether everything was in order. He was dead serious about it. It was only when he saw his own portrait that a faint smile came over his

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wrinkled face. Then immediately a very stern inquiry followed. "Soon you will have sketched all the old ones and also the oldest one. All that is missing now is the youngest one."

The youngest! Dear God, to be able to sketch a child! After all these faces stamped with pain, after all of these sorrow-laden eyes, to draw a carefree, small child with a dreamy, delicate expression imprinted on its face, and a smile, light and untroubled! How relaxing to be able to sketch such a little, innocent human being!

Now I suddenly felt how much my work here had torn at my heart and how much I had empathized with them from their sketchy narrations in all their misery and distress, how aware I had become of each smallest, harsh line of their faces. "Yes, I would like to sketch the youngest," I exclaimed ardently. "The youngest one! An infant!"

"An infant!" It sounded almost harsh from the lips of the old one. "We don't have such a one in all of our village." Suddenly his face seemed to turn to stone, every line as if chiseled with a knife. He pointed through the open door with his walking stick at a small house somewhat apart. "Over there is where our youngest lives! Liskes' Elfriede! Four years old!"

His voice was very stern. One felt that he almost took it as a disgrace that there were no longer any infants in the village, no longer any colonist children? Don't they signify happiness, wealth, and blessings? They are gifts from the hand of God which one was to guide with strictness and kindness in order to please God and man. In earlier times it was taken for granted that there were ten, twelve, or more children, and all were provided for, and their future was secured.

Oh, what a joy it was at that time, such a growing, healthy, overflowing village which grew far out into the surrounding countryside! There was never a lack of joyous children's laughter, of busy hands. The old people never lived in want or solitude.

At the time of the First World War, wasn't there enough misery when they were deported and so many children died from fatigue, starvation, and typhoid fever enroute to the distant east? At that time, however, one knew that many more children would be born, and that was a consolation in their sorrow. But now all hope was in vain. Indeed, of all the inevitable grief which they had already endured, this was now the most difficult affliction which God the Lord had sent

them—sent them and all the villages without men throughout all Volhynia.

Toward evening, a wisp of smoke climbed over Frau Liske's house, straight as a candle into the fading, clear-as-glass autumn sky. "Well, you can go to see her now," said Mother Fenske. "She is at home. Oh, she keeps everything nice, the house, the furniture, the poultry, and the garden; everything is meticulous. All this for her husband. She is the only one who still believes that he will return." She said this almost compassionately.

The little, whitewashed house stood there almost like a little island of tranquility, completely surrounded by tall sunflowers, dahlias, and asters. A new, young rose bush, the first I had seen in this village, sent forth tendrils in front of one of the polished windows.

The young woman with the pretty, suntanned face, standing at the draw well, looked almost girlish. She was happy that I was finally coming to her too. With what pride she showed me the small house; the room, with the luxuriantly looking potted flowers at the window, with sparse but clean furniture. On the table was a red-embroidered linen cloth which gave the un-pretentious room an almost festive character. A dark, painted chest stood against the wall. "Old Steffen built this for our wedding," said Frau Liske, and she lifted the heavy lid. There lay her entire wealth, clean and delicately kept. One piece after another was shown to me: new, coarse linen hand towels, a small bolt of linen. "Everything was woven by Frau Bonn on her old weaver's loom." Carefully wrapped in a piece of cloth were several snow-white balls of wool from her own sheep. A flowered lady's dress "From the time when my husband was still here," a warm, little dress of Elfriede's, and at the bottom, covered with a clean cloth, were infants' shirts, a tiny, pink bonnet, a few small jackets, and next to that, a carefully folded man's white shirt, a woolen shawl, a few new, heavy woolen men's socks, and a pair of dark trousers. Indeed, it really seemed as if everything stood in readiness to welcome home the distant, missing husband.

In the kitchen was a monstrosity of a stove such as the peasants in this village without men built. This particular one was washed in a lustrous light green with many areas built into it and many protuberances. It looked like an ancient fortress. A little girl, wrapped in a large, white shawl, sat on a bench in front of it. Light blond strands of hair fell in her face to her overly serious blue eyes.

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A stove typical of the type used by the peasants in Volhynia. Note the many nooks and shelves.

So this was Elfriede, the youngest child in the village. Her mother nodded to her encouragingly and stroked her slender shoulders with a restrained, tender gesture. "She is four years old now and has never known her father," the woman next to me said quietly as her almost happy face took on a grave and helpless expression. "In 1937 they deported him, shortly before Christmas. And now we wait and wait, day after day. But no one knows when he will come." It was as though her thoughts circled constantly around this grief and clung desperately on a small hope.

At that time they worried for weeks and listened in the cold winter to hear whether the auto would come which would break into the village like a wolf and take out their men. Until one day in the severest winter it actually happened, and the last fifteen men were carried away. "We couldn't say a word that night because of our pain and sorrow," the young woman next to me said quietly. "Two months later this child was born, a gift from God and a comfort in sorrow. Oh, how one would have liked to have had more children."

It was not the first time that I had been aware of how much these young women without men longed to have additional children. I almost had the impression that this yearning was greater and more natural than the longing for the missing men whose picture slowly faded. Indeed,

these women themselves had grown up with a multitude of brothers and sisters, eight or ten were average. That meant an active life in the house of one's parents. Everything was planned together—work, pleasure, and sorrow were experienced together. No one had known such lonely hours as little Elfriede had to bear day after day, And every year again a little baby brother or sister, which needed to be tended, lay in the cradle. The half-grown girls already learned then to lend a motherly hand and so grew into their future, early motherhood naturally. But that was now all wrenched away from them, and to many young women it seemed as though life had lost its true meaning and value.

However, it had never occurred to such a woman to look at another man without positive verification of her widowhood. For that matter, where was there a suitable man for her anyway? She could have run through all the German villages in a wide area. It would have been futile. They were without men just as was her village.

There seldom was a woman who decided to marry a Ukrainian. That was against the colonists' precepts. Of course it wasn't the same anymore as the oldest ones reported it had been in the earlier times, that when a maiden transgressed against this strict colonist rule and had anything to do with a stranger or married him, she was disowned by the family and the com-munity. In the most intimate circles one heard cruel, harsh stories secretly repeated by the older ones in order to warn the youth, even though these customs had been loosened since—and particularly at the time of—the "New Order."

So the women remained lonely and waited. In-deed, God had laid a difficult destiny on them, but they had to bear it and had to bury all their yearning for additional children.

I sketched little Elfriede, the youngest child in the village, the next day. She sat there on the stove bench again, waiting for her mother, tightly wrapped in her woolen shawl. A fainthearted smile brightened her small face for just a moment. Then she again sat quietly and frightened, holding the apple which I had brought her tightly in her small hand. I told her simple, short stories and several jokes, but she did not lose the very serious expression in her large eyes. No doubt, too much loneliness had already impressed itself in her little child's heart; she was too conscious of her mother's distress. Perhaps already at the time when she was still in her mothers womb....

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BUKOVINA-GERMAN PIONEERS IN URBAN AMERICA*

Sophie A. Welisch The New World has acted as a magnet, attracting

Europeans since the time of its discovery by Christopher Columbus in 1492. People abandoned the Old World for many reasons, among them to escape religious and political oppression, to seek adventure, and most importantly, to improve their economic status. Until the mid-nineteenth century the British Isles, the German states, and Scandinavia provided the majority of America's newcomers. But with the political and economic upheavals in southern and eastern Europe in the last decades of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the focus of immigra-tion shifted to Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary, with 2,145,266 coming between 1901 and 1910 from the latter country alone.

Impoverished, unskilled, and functionally illiterate, most of these so-called New Immigrants arrived after the closing of the frontier in 1890, that is, after the free land available under the Homestead Act had already been settled. Too poor to buy land, they congregated in America's cities, creating ethnic ghettos the existence of which gave established Americans the impression that these last newcomers were truly inassimilable and should be barred from entry into the country. Subjected to bigotry, discrimination, and economic exploitation, it has been estimated that a full third of the New Immigrants eventually returned to their homeland.

Among this latter group we find the first Bukovina Germans, whose total number-included in the overall statistics for Austria-Hungary—cannot be determined with any degree of accuracy. This essay attempts to describe the three waves of emigration from Bukovina, the conditions they encountered, and their response to their new environment. The author, the daughter of Bukovina Germans who came to America in 1923, has had first-hand acquaintance with several hundred Landsleute (compatriots) and their descendants over the past five decades. With few exceptions this narrative is limited to the men and women from the villages of Bori, Gurahumora, and Paltinossa—people

* Translated into German and published as "Deutschbohmische Pioniere in den Stadten Amerikas," in Bori, Karlsberg und andere deutschbohmische Siedlungen in der Bukowina, ed. by Rudolf Wagner (Munich, 1982), pp. 41-59; reprinted in Der Sudostdeutsche (Munich), Apr. 15, 1982, pp. 3, 7 and May 15, 1982, pp. 3,5.

within the author's range of contact—and in no way claims to be an exhaustive or definitive study of the subject.

Bukovina-German immigration can be divided into three periods: 1860-1914, 1920-1924, and 1947-1957, coinciding with historic events of global significance. During the first period, immigration to the United States was unrestricted except to those of Chinese ancestry and those deemed criminals, derelicts, and prostitutes, who had been excluded by congressional legislation as early as 1882. All others who could afford the passage could freely enter the country where, indeed, they were welcomed as a source of cheap labor. In New York Harbor newcomers passed the world-famous Statue of Liberty which offered its own special welcome in the form of an inscription on its base:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breath free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

After a superficial medical examination at Ellis Island, the immigrants were set ashore on the streets of New York to fend for themselves. But once inside the golden door, difficult conditions awaited them, especially if they had no friends or relatives to receive them. After leaving Ellis Island they wandered through the streets of New York hoping to find someone who could speak their language, and more often than not, they spent their first few nights sleeping out-of-doors. Sometimes potential employers met ships at the docks and offered the immigrants jobs and temporary shelter.

We find anywhere from one to seven or eight members of the following families arriving from southern Bukovina before the First World War: Belina, Boca, Brandl, Braun, Croiter, Czicek, Davidowitsch, Ducke, Dumka, Erbert, Fuchs, Gall, Haas, Habatsch, Harti, Hellinger, Hilgarth, Hoffmann, Horn, Joachimsfchaler, Kisslinger, Klostermann, Kraus, Kuczyncki, Lakota, Lang, Lohmer, Loy, Marczan, Moritz, Neumayer, Nowecki, Pelczar, Reichhardt, Sawilla, Schaffhauser, Schindelar, Schmidt, Seidi, Spitzschuhe, Stranacher, Sturza, Swoboda, VoUmuth, Wamsiedler, Winzinger, Wlodkowski, Zigelli, and Zim-

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mermann. Drawn to America by economic need, most were either unmarried men and women in their late teens or early twenties or married men who had left their families behind until they became established. Aside from their inability to speak English, their job skills found little application in the urban economies of New York, Detroit, or Chicago. Coming from an agrarian, pre-capitalistic society, most had been farmers with a side profession such as forestry, black-smithing, shoemaking, barrel binding, or carpentry. Bukovina's women were even less prepared vocationally than its men. With none but domestic skills, they took employment as housekeepers, seamstresses, cooks, waitresses, or factory workers, sharing the lowest ranks of the American labor market with thousands of other immigrants of their generation. They were poor, but they did not know it. Josefa Braun of Gurahumora, now ninety-two years of age, recalled that in 1912 she earned three dollars per week, of which one dollar went for rent, the second for food, and the third she spent as she saw fit, for which she considered herself the most fortunate of women. Joseta Kraus, writing to her mother shortly after her arrival and working as a counter girl in her brother-in-law's bakery commented, "Mother, you can't believe how good things are here. In Paltinossa we had Krapfen (doughnuts) only twice a year; here I can eat them every day."

Before the First World War, no social services for the sick or the indigent existed. If one wanted to eat, one had to work. America's laissez-faire philosophy held that poverty was an evil of one's own making, so one had best see to one's own needs. But work was nothing new to the Bukovina Germans, most of whom willingly accepted any available employment, often with German-speaking entrepreneurs who had arrived earlier and were already established. They had to learn new trades and crafts, with some becoming bakers, stone masons, machinists, seamen, butchers, and tailors. Twelve hours per day, six or seven days per week, at $12 per week were typical working conditions at the turn of the century. At this time beef sold for 10 cents a pound, chicken for 7 cents a pound, sausage for 12 1/2 cents a pound. One could get bread for 2 cents a pound and a quart of milk for 6 cents, a pair of children's shoes for 50 cents and adult shoes for twice that amount.

About one-fourth of one's monthly income had to be set aside for housing. For $4 per week one might rent two small rooms. In some cases four to five families had to share a common toilet and sink in the hall of the building. As relatives

joined family members already here, they moved in with them, adding to further overcrowding. Landsleute usually congregated in similar sections of the city, sometimes in the same building, sharing their rooms with newcomers as needed.

Saving a little from their salaries, many sent money to their relatives in Bukovina, awaiting the time when they had sufficient funds to return to their homeland to buy that extra acreage. The influx of money back home served as a motivation for others to immigrate to America. In addition, letters—typical of travel literature throughout the ages—often exaggerated the conveniences and glamorized the lifestyle, so some who came in response to rags-to-riches stories faced considerable disappointment. The author is reminded of Stefanie C. who arrived in America as a young woman of seventeen years. Shortly after disembarking in New York, she asked her relatives for a rake. When asked why she thought she needed a rake in the city, she answered candidly, "Why to rake up the dollars from the street." Instead of a rake she settled for a mop and worked for the next forty years as a cleaning woman in a large insurance company.

While economic conditions gradually improved, social adjustments still remained difficult. Coming from small villages in which everyone knew and cared for one another, where a high degree of intermarriage and familial interrelationship existed, and where people readily became involved in other people's business, the immigrants now found themselves in an impersonal city where one could live for years without speaking to or even knowing the names of one's neighbors. Some returned to Bukovina either to escape exploitative labor conditions in a cheerless city or because they had saved enough money, or simply because of homesickness. Rosina Kisslinger departed the United States on three dif-ferent occasions, each time disposing of all her possessions and intending to stay in Gurahumora. But it was not the same as she had remembered it. Used to urban conveniences, she would strike a match and walk to the stove, looking for the gas jet, and then realize that before making a fire, she first had to go outdoors to chop wood. Another time she took a drinking glass and started looking around for a faucet, forgetting that water had to be drawn from the neighbor's well. These people became true displaced persons, no longer comfortable in their native villages and not at home in the New World.

The American immigrant experience proved to be a sobering one in other ways as well. Those

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whose families had been more affluent in Bukovina or who had attended Volkschule (elementary school) for an extra year or two initially thought of themselves as a bit superior to their less fortunate Landsleute. But what one's family owned in the old country did one little good in America. All started on a reasonably equal basis and moved ahead by their wits and by the sweat of their brow. Moreover, the American social structure, considerably freer and less rigid than that of Europe, provided daily lessons in equality. When a young immigrant from Bori saw a Catholic priest kicking a football around with some boys on the street and later recognized his daughter's fourth-grade teacher working with a pick and shovel on a highway construction job during his summer vacation, he experienced a culture shock which remained with him all his life.

Another area of adjustment concerned religious life. Some New York churches, including Most Holy Redeemer at 131 East Third Street and St. Nicholas Church at Second Street

and Avenue A, under the care of the beloved Father John Nageleisen, offered religious services in German until the late 1920s. But the American Catholic Church, dominated by an entrenched Irish hierarchy, by and large seemed insensitive to the needs of the immigrants and often seemed overly concerned with financial issues. In Bukovina the state subsidized the clergy whereas in the United States a constitutional separation of church and state forced the former to be entirely self-supporting. Johann W. of Gurahumora learned this on his very first Sunday in New York when he was turned away from the church door for lack of a 10-cent admission charge. The commercialization of Christmas and Easter, the de-emphasis on processions and on devotion to the Blessed Mother, and the non-observance of saints' days and of fasting changed at least the external aspects of the religion which traditionally had given the Bukovina Germans spiritual strength. Not sur-prisingly, this led to a degree of alienation and in some cases to a total break with the church.

The funeral cortege of Wenzel Kraus in Paltinossa, Bukovina (1937), the Reverend Sigmund Muck officiating. Almost the entire ethnic community turned out for occasions such as funerals. On the day of interment, the funeral party proceeded on foot from the home, where the deceased had been waked, to the church for a final religious service, and finally to the place of burial. Standard bearers with church flags and crucifixes led the way.

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Before World War I New York had a thriving German district on the Lower East Side with restaurants, shops, newspapers, a theater, and later a movie house. But long hours of work left little time for recreation. By far the favorite pastime became spending a day at the beach at Pelham Bay, accessible for only a 5-cent subway fare. Sunday after Sunday our Landsleute met at Pelham Bay for swimming, football, picnicking—often their only relief from the factories and sweatshops.

Not used to the high level of consumerism in a capitalistic system, the Bukovina Germans invariably commented on the wastefulness of American society. Perfectly good clothing, furniture, and appliances were simply discarded, daily, generating tons of garbage per city block. Occasionally our Landsleute sifted through what others had thrown away and took what they considered functional. Moreover, they often found it impossible to part with their own worn-out items, even long after they ceased being ser-viceable. The author recalls one gentleman who throughout his fifty-seven years* residence in America owned only two overcoats. But frugality, thrift, and self-denial brought results. In time the immigrants became established, bought their own homes, and provided their children with a better education than they themselves had acquired. Many a long-established American wondered how these newcomers managed to get ahead, considering they usually held low-paying jobs and had only marginal command of the state language.

The children of Bukovina Germans born in the United States or coming with their parents as infants quickly learned English by exposure to America's many institutions for assimilation, especially its schools. By their tenth or eleventh year, they usually had lost their fluency in German. When parents spoke German, children responded in English; in time the parents shifted to English also. Causes for the rapid loss of German identity are several: first, parents, often bordering on illiteracy and speaking a dialect laced with Romanian idioms, lacked the educational background to give their children an in-depth linguistic experience; secondly, the anti-Germanism unleashed by the world wars made it desirable to avoid drawing attention to oneself by speaking the language of America's foe; in addition, if the children were to succeed, they needed a good command of English; and finally, as a small dispersed minority in a sea of English-language speakers, assimilation at best remained only a matter of time.

With the outbreak of World War I, immigration from Bukovina temporarily ceased, not to resume again until 1920. By the terms of the Treaty of St. Germain, signed September 10, 1919, Bukovina became an integral province of the Kingdom of Romania, with its German population acquiring the status of an ethnic minority. Subjected to Romanization, to discrimination in land reform programs, employment and education, and with its young men facing twenty-one months of compulsory military service under what they viewed as barbarous conditions, a second wave of Bukovina Germans left for the New World in search of a better life. But economic motives no doubt outweighed political considerations in opting for emigration. A population explosion, begun in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the first decades of the twentieth, threatened to proletarianize the peasantry. Families with less than a half-dozen children were the exception. Unable to assure the livelihood of their many offspring by further subdividing their already meager land holdings, parents urged their more adventurous progeny to seek their fortunes in America. So, for example, we find immigrating to the New World ten of the twelve children of Marie and Wenzel Neumayer (Gurahumora); five of the ten children of Theresia and Josef Braun (Gurahumora); three of the seven children of Marie and Leon Loy (Paltinossa); three of the seven children of Theresia and Wenzel Kraus (Paltinossa); five of the eight children of Marie and Ignatz Schaffhauser (Bori); and seven of the nine children of Karolina and Wenzel Hilgarth (Bori).

Daughters for whom dowries had to be provided and who upon marriage joined the extended family of their husband were often the ones encouraged to leave. Asked why she immigrated to the United States, Anna B. quite frankly replied: "I was superfluous at home." Theresia Kraus considered her four daughters as "stones around her neck," while Susanna Loy noted:

Since we were considered better off than most, the community expected my mother to provide me with a substantial dowry; but as a recent widow with five young sons, she felt it would take all her resources to see that they learned a trade and had sufficient land to eke out a living. In order to insure that my brothers got my share of our father's legacy, she suggested I go to America.

22

Between 1920 and 1924 we find the arrival of younger members of families already here as well as some new ones: Balog, Bedner, Brandl, Braun, Burkowski, Czicek, Ducke, Dumka, Gall, Haas, Habatsch, Hassi, Hilgarth, Horn, Kisslinger, Kraus, Lang, Loy, Miller, Moldowan, Neumayer, Niedzielski, Nowecki, Pelczar, Pilsner, Schafarczek, Schaffhauser, Schindelar, Stauber, Tanda, Tomaschefski, Turczany, Winzinger, and Welisch. As with the earlier immigration, most came as unmarried young men and women, poorly skilled for urban pursuits, but ambitious and willing to learn. Although impoverished, usually coming with a small wicker suitcase, the clothes on their back, and indebted for their travel expenses to some relative already in the States, no Bukovina German, to the author's knowledge, ever turned to criminal activities or to vagrancy. On the contrary, within a short time they found suitable employment, sometimes even acquiring a small business of their own (bakery, barber shop, dress factory, grocery store, cement block factory), bought homes, and

settled down as stable taxpayers and law-abiding citizens.

An exception to the Bukovina Germans' usual compliance with the law and respect for authority came with their response to the Volstead Act (1919). This federal legislation made provisions for the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating beverages of more than 0.5 percent of alcohol per volume. Prohibition had long been a political issue, and with the First World War the movement gained rapid momentum. Wartime conser-vation policies necessitated limiting liquor output in addition to which the closing of the breweries, owned and operated by Germans (Schlitz, Anheuser-Busch, Budweiser, Pabst) became a patriotic duty. Our Landsleute responded by frequenting "speakeasies," that is, places where intoxicating beverages were sold without a license, or by distilling their own alcohol. 'Josefa Schaffhauser, a great-grandmother of seventy-seven years, points with

Bakery of Karl Schaffhauser (extreme right) in Brooklyn, NY, ca. 1923. Karl immigrated to the United States from Bori, Bukovina, in 1912. By the eve of the First World War, his economic circumstances were so strained that he was on the verge of borrowing money to return to his homeland. Yet by the 1920s he was not only an experienced baker but also owned and operated his own bakery with adjacent restaurant. Typical of small entrepreneurs of the period, Karl hired members of his own family to assist him in his business. With the onset of the Great Depression, he was forced to declare bankruptcy and died shortly thereafter at the age of 39.

23

pride to a still her husband used during Prohibition to make whiskey from plums, grapes, or cherries. Nor has the still had time to accumulate rust since the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933. Son Karl makes frequent use of it, Tante Josefa explained as she handed the author a jigger of 100 proof Kirschbranntwein (cherry brandy) to sample. In the Detroit area some Bukovina Germans indulged in isolated instances of "bootlegging" alcohol across the Canadian border; this involved great risk to life and limb, not so much from the intervention of the law as from organized crime.

With America's return to isolationism after World War I and in response to nativist pressure groups, the United States government moved to curtail immigration. In 1921 Congress introduced a quota system, restricting immigration to 3 percent of those of a particular ethnic group here in 1910, for an overall total of 367,803 annually. Considering this number still too generous, Congress in 1924 further reduced immigration to 2 percent of those nationalities living in the United States in 1890. This legislation favored populations from northern and western Europe and drastically limited those from the south and east. Immigration from Bukovina, included in the Romanian quota of 377 per year, came to a virtual standstill overnight. But Canada, with extensive uninhabited lands, still welcomed settlers. Some Bukovina Germans opted for immigration to Canada after 1924, later entering the United States illegally somewhere along its poorly patrolled 3000-mile border. Those who had become American citizens and had returned to Bukovina after the war could reimmigrate freely and without difficulty at any time.

The second wave of settlers found life in America considerably better than did the first, primarily because the status of the working classes had improved. Although labor enjoyed higher wages, shorter hours, and better job conditions during the prosperous 1920s, this all ended abruptly with the Wall Street stock market crash in 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression. A number of Landsleute lost heavily through speculation in stocks and bonds, while others who had opened small shops and busi-nesses, faced bankruptcy. The great majority ex-perienced unemployment or underemployment during the entire decade of the 1930s, and in several extreme cases, individuals lacked sufficient food for their daily needs. Zita Panas, whose mother had emigrated from Gurahumora in 1922, recalls that in the spring of 1933, as a child of four, she subsisted on Suiz (jellied meat)

several weeks; her father was among the nation's fifteen million unemployed. In the absence of a male wage earner, the wife often sought temporary employment in order to provide the family's basic necessities. One common occupation, making passementerie (trimmings of braids, cords, beads, and the like), could be pursued in the home while still keeping an eye on the children. Paid on a unit or piecework basis, a fast operator might earn as much as $2.50 in an 8-hour day. Elisabeth Neumayer, a very exacting, meticulous but slow worker, averaged $.25 per day, enough for four rolls, a quart of milk, and a half pound of Wurst (sausage) with a little left over for rent. The Salvation Army, a private philanthropic organization, opened "soup kitchens" to provide free meals for the indigent, but pride prevented the Bukovina Germans from availing themselves of this service. Better to go hungry than to take charity!

The effects of the Depression were slightly eased by the New Deal legislation of the Roosevelt administration: labor unions won the right of collective bargaining in 1935, and later that year the Social Security System, guaranteeing old age and disability pensions, came into being. But not until its entry into World War II did the United States experience full economic recovery. The return to prosperity in the 1940s brought with it swifter and easier upward mobility, with immigrant children now able to get a better education, often finishing high school.

The third and final immigration of Bukovina Germans occurred between 1947 and 1957. Evacuated en masse to Germany after the Soviet seizure of northern Bukovina in 1940, the Bukovina Germans had become homeless refugees by war's end. Along with the Germans of eastern Poland (Galicia, Volhynia), Bessarabia, and the Baltic States, most Bukovina Germans had been transferred to the newly acquired Polish territories of Warthegau, West Prussia, and Upper Silesia. Some remained in camps in Austria, while a small number relocated in Lor-raine and in the German-controlled Yugoslavian district of Marburg/Drau. By extending the German-language frontier, the Third Reich had hoped to consolidate its hold over these areas as well as to prevent the inevitable assimilation of the scattered German minorities in Eastern Europe.

But these outposts could not be maintained. With the advance of the Soviet armies, the Bukovina Germans shared the lot of millions of refugees who fled westward in treks during January and February 1945. Those without horses set out on foot, their possessions in baby

24

carriages or in wheelbarrows. While the evacuation of the civilian population proceeded in a reasonably organized manner, the harsh winter, the air attacks, plus the long passage through hostile territories reaped a bitter harvest. Twenty percent of the Bukovina Germans perished as a result of the war while the sur-vivors faced an uncertain future as a dispersed, dispossessed Volksgruppe (ethnic group). Between 1945 and 1947 more than twelve million refugees and expellees from the Sudetenland, Yugoslavia, and the German provinces placed under Polish administration poured into war-devastated Germany and Austria.

In response to overwhelming economic need, many Americans sent food and clothing packages to their families and friends overseas and in some cases also forwarded the necessary papers to facilitate their emigration from displaced persons' camps. In 1947-1948 came those Bukovina Germans who held American citizenship as well as children and parents of those already in the United States. The Bishop's Resettlement Committee of New York sponsored or-phaned children and sought foster homes for them, some of whom came from Bukovina. With the McCarran-Walter Act of 1952, which liberalized the quota system, Bukovina Germans again began entering the United States in greater numbers. This time they came in family groups, frequently widows with minor children, including; Brandl, Burisch, Busek, Czicek, Ducke, Dumka, Eisenkolb, Fernath, Harti, Hellmann, Hellinger, Hollaczek, Honig, Horn, Karasiewiz, Kirila, Lohmer, Loy, Mirwald, Neumayer, Movis, Pilsner, Rosenbeiger, Schafarczek, Schaffhauser, Schindelar, Straub, and Tanda.

Taking permanent residence in Canada during the second and third periods of immigration we find: Braun, Czukeinski, Gall, Hellinger, Hellmann, Hilgarth, Horn, Klostermann, Kwasnicki, Loy, Neumayer, Nowecki, Pekar, Pilsner, Sawilla, Schaffhauser, Schefczuk, Seidi, Stauber, Welisch, and Zerfass. To Cuba went Kolb and Schaffhauser.

By the 1950s the United States had become a superpower, the most advanced technocracy in the world, with the highest standard of living yet achieved by man. The newest wave of immigrants benefited from an abundance of well-paying jobs, easy credit, good housing, mass transit systems, supermarkets, and social services programs. Some achieved in one decade what the first settlers had gained in three.

However, behind the facade of abundance and prosperity lurked the specter of human tragedy. Elderly parents, rejoining children whom they

had not seen in decades, found themselves isolated and alienated in their new surroundings. Strangers to their children and unable to communicate with their grandchildren or with the outside world, some spent their last years abandoned in nursing homes. Children returning to their parents in America likewise faced a difficult adjustment after a long period of separation.

Misfortune in the form of chronic illness stalked others; a long-term chronic illness can reduce a family to financial ruin in a matter of weeks. Viktor K. of Manisteriska, a suburb of Czemowitz, recounted that after his massive coronary in the early 1950s, only the financial assistance of his children spared him from having to scavenge the garbage cans of his neighbors. America was not a utopia for all. The young, the skilled, the healthy, and the adaptable enjoyed the greatest probability of success. As with the earlier immigrants, some in this last group also became disillusioned and returned to the Old World, no longer to Bukovina this time, but to the Federal Republic of Germany or to Austria. Here they faced yet another fresh start, usually their fifth or sixth since those fateful days in the fall of 1940.

With economic recovery of Germany and Austria, immigration to the New World effectively ceased. Even the Spaetaussiedler (those immigrating to Germany from Eastern Europe after 1970) show little interest in relocating to the United States and feel more than satisfied with life in the Federal Republic of Germany.

The Bukovina Germans in the United States are today thoroughly integrated into American society. Yet when they gather, one can still detect the inevitable nostalgia for their homeland, especially among those who romanticize their roots and those who had happier days in Bukovina than in the New World. The American-born generations, with only a very fuzzy notion of Bukovina and of their ethnic origins, are not certain if their forebears were German-ized Romanians or Polonized Austrians, or exactly where and under whose administration Bukovina now finds itself. Nor is this vagueness isolated to those several generations removed from their ancestral homeland. The author recalls the example of Stefanie S. who, although having immigrated to America in 1912, had not become a citizen by the time of the Second World War. Accompanied by her twenty-year-old son, who, she hoped, would help her with any language problems, she proceeded to the immigration office where she had to register as an alien. Here she was asked a series of questions, including the most obvious, "What is your country

25

An Americanization class for immigrants. Fifth Street School, New York (1924). Susanna Loy (from Paltinossa) is standing third from right; Ottilia Hilgarth (from Gurahumora) is seated in front of Susanna Loy. of origin?" To this she answered, "Paltinossa." The immigration official wanted to know to which larger political unit Paltinossa belonged, to which she replied, "Kreis (district) Gurahumora." He told her he knew of no such country, but she steadfastly insisted that she came from Paltinossa. Extensive interrogation by about a half-dozen higher officials elicited no further information. In desperation they began asking, "Do you come from Afghanistan?" "No!" "From Argentina?" "No!" "From Armenia?" "No!" Finally the senior official, no doubt convinced by now that Stefanie S. posed no great threat to the security of the United States, suggested, "Put down she comes from India!" Although the modern, well-traveled reader may find this anecdote amusing, he would do well to consider that before coming to America the first and second waves of immigrants had probably spent their entire lives within a ten-mile radius of their native village.

After the war some Bukovina Germans returned for a visit to their homeland only to find the experience a depressing one, with their ancestral graves leveled, their former homes dilapidated, and the warmth and familiarity of their Heimat (homeland) only a faint memory. Of the more than 76,000 Germans residing in Bukovina in 1930, fewer than 2000 live there today. As the noted American novelist Thomas Wolfe observed, "You can't go home again." What is true of the German Americans applies equally well to the Bukovina Germans: similar in language, customs, values and attitudes to the dominant English group, they

have assimilated into the mainstream of American culture. Intermarrying readily and sometimes Anglicizing the pronunciation or spelling of their name (e.g., Pelczar to Pelzar, Schindelar to Schindler), they have become honorary Anglo-Saxons. New York City has been abandoned to more recent arrivals: Blacks from the South, and Hispanics from Puerto Rico and Cuba. Its German section is gone and with it the ethnic newspapers, restaurants, religious services, theater, and movie house. Those few Bukovina Germans who have remained in New York must contend with increasing social alienation and its concomitant crime and drug problems. The elderly no longer feel safe in the streets or subways, and whenever possible, they venture out of their locked, double-bolted apartments in the company of a friend.

Dispersed far and wide throughout the United States, Bukovina Germans and their descendants can today be found in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, and as far west as California and Washington. Some of their offspring have moved into managerial positions with large corporations or are pursuing professional careers. As their forebears col-onized the virgin fields and forests of Austria-Hungary's easternmost province almost two centuries ago, developing a flourishing cultural life and contributing to the larger society of which they were a part, so America's Bukovina Germans have carried on the finest pioneering tradition in the cities and suburbs of the New World.

26

BOOK REVIEWS Plett, Delbert F. The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde

Historical Series: (Steinbach, Manitoba: DFP Publications, varied years), varied pagings, pb.

Reviewed by Edward R. Brandt.

This series will consist of five volumes when completed:

Volume One: History and Events: Writings and Maps Pertaining to the History of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde from 1866 to 1876. (1982), 166 pp.

Volume Two: The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia (1812-1849). (1985), 355 pp.

Volume Three: Storm and Triumph: The Men-nonite Kleine Gemeinde (18SO-1975). (1986), 337 pp.

Volume Four: Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874. (1987), 312 pp.

Prospective Volume Five: Pioneers and Pilgrims. The First Decade of the Kleine Gemeinde in Manitoba and Nebraska, 1874-1884.

The fact that over a thousand pages have been written on the history of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde (literally the "small congregation"), now known as the Evangelical Mennonite Conference, is in itself remarkable. This church was formed 1812-15 and has never had more than a few thousand members. Furthermore, the series relates almost entirely to the first 75 of the church's 175 years of existence.

It is all the more astonishing that so much historical documentation exists when one considers that the church once had the reputation of being hostile to learning that went beyond the basics essential for a simple life. It is quite clearly Mr. Plett's goal to refute this reputation, which many trace back to P. M. Friesen's classic Alt-Evangelische Mennonitische Bruederschaft in Russland 1789-1910, published in 1911. This was translated into English and published in 1978 under the title The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia (1789-1910).

This series deals with four kinds of history: church history, social and cultural history, migration history, and family history. In addition, it includes a considerable amount of material which is of interest chiefly to theologians, or at least to persons interested in the development and interpretation of religious ideas.

Briefly, the specific contents of each volume can be summarized as follows:

Volume One is an annotated translation of two important writings concerning the history of the Kleine Gemeinde just before and just after the migration to North America in 1874. Anhang (Appendix) No. 1 by Elder Peter Toews (1841-96) to his collection of historical letters and documents relates to events in 1866-74 that would interest church historians.

The account of "history and events" (from which the first volume draws its title) by John W. Dueck (1865-1932), however, is of interest to a much broader group of readers, viz., anyone concerned with such topics as: daily life in nineteenth-century German settlements in Russia, the whole subject of emigration from Russia to North America from why to when to how, and the pioneer experience in Canada and the U.S. in and after 1874.

Volume One also contains twenty maps of Mennonite settlements in Prussia, Russia, Manitoba, Nebraska, and Kansas, as well as a few more general ones.

Volume Two deals with three topics: the religious and historical roots of Anabaptism; the Molochna Settlement (church, government, agriculture, education); and the founding, development, beliefs and writings of the Kleine Gemeinde.

Individual chapters are devoted to Klaas Reimer, co-founder and first elder of the Kleine Gemeinde; Heinrich Balzer, the author of Verstand und Vernunft (Faith and Reason), and probably the most significant theologian and philosopher of the Kleine Gemeinde; and Abraham Friesen, second elder and author of Eine einfache Erkldrung ueber einige Glaubenssaetze der sogenannten Kleinen Gemeinde (A Simple Declaration About a Few Beliefs of the So-called Kleine Gemeinde).

Volume Three includes such items as : "The Life and Letters of (Various Individuals)"; the writings and activities of Abraham F. Thiessen, an early and vigorous champion of the cause of the landless; numerous church schisms; the establishment of several daughter colonies; and an extensive treatment of the 1874 emigration and the events leading up to it.

Volume Four is a treasure-house of genealogical information. Over 400 European and European-born individuals are listed in the index, with the vital statistics on most of these

27

ancestors provided. Quebec and New York passenger lists, census records, tax records, property lists, fire insurance subscribers, etc.. pertaining to the immigrants to Manitoba and Nebraska are included. There are eight chapters of specific family histories and six chapters of personal accounts of pioneers.

Some of this information will be of value to people interested in the history and genealogy of other Mennonite groups (and, to a lesser extent, non-Mennonite Germans in Russia), because it goes back to the times preceding the creation of the Kleine Gemeinde and it discusses the broader environment within which Kleine Gemeinde members (and others) functioned.

The series includes translations of many original documents or of excerpts from them (letters, petitions, published books, unpublished manuscripts, diaries, poems, etc.).

The books are in small print, so readers with serious vision problems may have to use magnifying glasses. But this also means that the con

tents are even more substantial than the number of pages suggests. In fact, more readers are likely to use this series as a reference source than will read the works in their entirety.

Although Mr. Plett does not make his living as a scholar, the books are amply footnoted. Fifty to seventy-five citations at the end of a chapter are not unusual. However, there is no bibliography, with one important exception: Volume Four has a bibliography of 125 sources of information about Kleine Gemeinde genealogy.

These books may be borrowed from the AHSGR Library via the interlibrary loan services of your local public or college library. They may be purchased from DFP Publications, Box 669. Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada ROA 2AO. The price for the four-volume series is $59.95 Canadian or $50.00 U.S. The prices for individual volumes are: Volume One, $5.95 Cdn. or $5.00 U.S.; Volume Two, $19.95 Cdn. or $17.00 U.S.; Volume Three, $19.95 Cdn. or $17.00 U.S.; Volume Four, $25.00 Cdn. or $20.00 U.S.

Klassen, Isaac P., Die Insel Chortitza. Stimmungs-

bilder. Gedanken. Erinnerungen. (Winnipeg; Privately Published, 1979), 126 pp., pb., illus.

__ , Finsternis undLicht [drama]. (Winnipeg: Privately Published, 1982), 49 pp., pb., illus.

___, Lickt und Schatten. 1. Toil: Gedichte. (Winnipeg: Privately Published, 1981), 92 pp., pb.

Reviewed by Lawrence Klippenstein.

This trilogy of Isaac P. Klassen, a retired minister in Winnipeg, Canada, has been in print for some years. Few people have known about it though. Its private publication and the reserved personality of the author have kept the books from circulating widely and hence out of the public eye. The German "mother tongue" of the author has restricted readership as well. [All three books are in German.]

A "come lately" review of these materials is apropos nonetheless. Klassen's generation of Russian Mennonites, as they have come to be

called, is almost gone. Their leaving a homeland, the Ukraine on the Dnieper River, was a traumatic event which none of those who made the pilgrimage to Canada and other places in the 1920s could ever forget. It would shape all the rest of their years—till they were 70,80,90 years of age or more.

That experience—"the beautiful years" in Ukraine, then a time of changes, the "Revolution" of 1905, then World War I, the 1917 Revolution, the Civil War, and finally emigration for many—is the matrix for these publications. Die Insel Chortitza nostalgically recalls the settled and relaxed village life of that Mennonite community, naming each family in residence as the author remembers them, a close-knit community, then broken up and scattered. Always, in all the books, there is the question: Why? and the effort to come to terms with what happened there seventy years ago.

Licht und Schatten, a book of poems (called Part I because there were to be more) evokes the conviction that Providence is in control of things, even if it seemed then, that all was chaos and

28

destruction. The reprieve of settling in Canada, eventually, is an upside, too, in the meditation on the lights and shadows of those times. There is a seasonal cycle structure for bringing forward these themes. Nature has a constancy, after all, which can provide security when history, for reasons beyond control, sometimes cannot.

That fact is dramatized in Finstemis und Licht (Darkness and Light), which is a play in which the characters of suffering, of innocence, of destruction and revolution are brought to the stage. Who could withstand the holocaust of the revolutionary whirlwind, idealistic in its own way but in a totally different, so terribly destructive manner? Many were crushed, but others, miraculously, did survive.

As a poet and philosopher, the author refuses to give in to those who might want to hand it all over to Fate, wherein meaning is almost impossible to find. Klassen's memories, thoughts, reflections and statements spring forth from a faith that the Creator in Heaven is a better explanation for these things. He wants us to remember those who paid the high, often ultimate, price of submission to these tumultuous events. He is still waiting to be heard and read.

All the books are available via interlibrary loan from the AHSGR Library in Lincoln, Nebraska, or may be purchased from the Mennonite Heritage Centre, 600 Shaftesbury Blvd., Winnipeg, Canada R3P OM4. The author is presently working on another manuscript, for which we are all waiting

MONETAHY VALUES IN 1909

The following chart may be of interest to those wanting to know the value of the ruble when their ancestors came to North America. This information was taken from the 1909 Odessaer Kalendar.

29

Country

Germany

France, Belgium, Switzerland

Austria-Hungary

England

Denmark, Sweden, Norway

United States

Holland

Greece

Italy

Romania

Coin

1 Mark = 100 Pfennige

1 Franc = 100 Centimes

1 Krone = 100 Heller

1 Pound Sterling == 20 Shillings

1 Shilling == 20 Pence 1 Krone = 100 Ore

1 Dollar == 100 Cents

1 Gulden = 100 Cents

1 Drachma ==100 Lepta

1 Franc ==100 Centesimi

1 Leu == 100 Bani

Rubles Kopecks

47

37

40

45

52

94

78

36 37

37

SCHOOL DAYS IN GROSSLIEBENTAL

This photograph of the pupils at the school in Grossliebental, Odessa District, South Russia, taken in 1904 or 1905, is courtesy of Katherine Diets Pahl. Her mother, Elisabeth Dietz, nee Dietz, has made the identifications of the children. Elisabeth is in the front row of girls, fifth from right. The other children are:

Top row: Johann Schneider, Edward Ottmar, Jacob Himing, Andreas Maier, Carl Ottmar, Johann Heinrich, Gottlieb Hein, Johann Ottmar, William Stotz, Henry Otto, Edward Schneider, Fritz Schneider, Edward Klein, Gottlieb Ruff, Jacob Miller, and Johann Ottmar.

Second row from back: Wilhelmina Schmied, Christina Plocher, Emma Hein, Josephina Ammon, Katherina Stotz, Katherina Gruebele, Teacher Mosskovich, Bingham Glutt (Klundt?) Karolina Praegitsser, Katrina Praegitzer, Katherina Becker, Katherina Otto, Emelia Ammon, and Katherina Litz.

Third row from back: Rosina Schneider, Johann Amman, Christina Gaugel, Magdalina Fischer, Lydia Plocher, Karolina Kaefer, Bertha Otto, Louisa Bader, Christina Hoehn, Elisabeth Diets, Carolina Neu, Emma Gruebele, .Rosina Litz, and Lydia Heinrich.

Front row: Theodor Trick, Fritz Fetzer, Jacob Maier, Heinrich Ammon, Jacob Hein, Frits Hummel, Theodor Herz, Johann Anderst, and Heinrich Hirning.

The boy sitting in the front is Eduard Hoehn. Christian Anderst is the adult in the back row.

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WE SING OUR HISTORY

Lawrence A. Weigel

The fate of the Volhynian Germans is a story of hardship, deportation, resettlement, and eventually the termination of these people as a unified group.

In the Winter 1987 Journal of AHSGR, Vol. 10, No. 4, appeared an excellent article entitled "Homeland for a Time." Written by Josef Weiss and translated by Leona Janke, it describes the sad fate of these unfortunate people. During WWI, as the war front moved eastward, the German population of Volhynia was forced to abandon their colonies. Mr. Weiss writes, "The expulsion of the Juljan6w school district occurred on a Sunday.. Wilhelm Drews, who during the conscription of the teacher (Kantor) read the sermon, was still holding the service in front of a small group of frightened women and children, when suddenly police and Cossacks appeared in the colony. They threatened to hang anybody who did not leave within the hour. Amidst tears, horses were hitched in front of the wagons, which had been packed for days by order of the police. Slowly the trek set off...."

Truly, the history of the Germans from Russia is recorded in their songs. In 1970 Emma Haynes, the noted AHSGR researcher, sent me a number of songs from Germany which relate the deportation of the various groups of Germans from Russia. Among them was a song entitled "Aus Wolhynien sind gezogen." The song tells the story of the Volhynian expulsion in 1915, so vividly described by Mr. Weiss in his article in the Journal.

Attached to the song that Mrs. Haynes sent me, was a comment written by the folk-song collector in Russia. A translation of his comments about the origin of this song follows:

This song is truly very typical of the folk songs of the Volhynian Germans. It has its origin in the middle of 1915. In August of that same year, the song spread literally with lightning speed through letters to all lands of the Russian Empire to which the Germans of Volhynia had been exiled. It must be mentioned here that to this group of designated Volhynian Germans, all Germans who at that time belonged to the Government of Poland were also included.

The number of these Russian Germans was very large and exceeded far more than 1/2 million. They spoke almost exclusively a High-German dialect. This resulted in the rapid transition of the Low-German dialect, particularly of the Mennonite Plattdeutsch, and the acceptance of the universally understood spoken language.

In the course of 50 years, the song was published nowhere. But it lived from mouth to mouth in this simple form until today. The author remains unknown. As is the case with all true folklore, the people were not concerned about who the author actually was,

The application of the melody for this song also remained characteristic of the folk writer. In the early years it was sung with a variety of melodies borrowed from hymnbooks. In recent years it is heard exclusively with the "Stenka Razin" folk melody.

Aus Wolhynien sind gezogen

Stenka Razin Melody

Aus Wo - lhy - nien sind ge - zog - en, Die Ver - jag - ten arm und riech

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Kei - nem ging der Weg auf Ros - sen. Al - le wa - ren sie jetzt gliche.

1. Aus Wolhynien sind gezogen Die Verjagten arm und reich Keinem ging der Weg auf Rosen Alle waren sie jetzt gleich.

2 Sonntag fruh, am zehnten JuliGrade zu der Erntezeit Mussten durch die Truebsalsschule Alle arm' und reiche Leut!

3. Angespannt und schwer beladen, Stand der Wagen vor der Tuer Manche Sachen, oh wie Schade Blieben liegen, nichts dafuer!

4. Es ging fort auf Pferd und Wagen Nach Befehl der Obrigkeit. Niemand fand dort einen Retter, Der ihm aus der Not befreit.

5. So ging's fort durch Sturm und Wetter, Bis es zu dem Bahnhof kam. Und dort haben wir gewartet Auf den Zug der Eisenbahn.

6. Endlich war es aufgeladen, Und die Menschheit fuhr dahin, Und der Weg mit schnellen Sckritten Fuhrt uns nach Sibirien hin.

7. Es ist gar nicht zu beschreiben Diese grosse Traurigkeit, Jeder lenkt' den Blick nach oben; Ach, wann werden wir befreit/

8. Und zu diesen Truebsalkeiten, Kam der Tod mit Hiesenschritt Kleine Kinder, alte Leute Junge Blueten nahm er mit.

Volksdichtung

1. They moved out of Volhynia, The expelled, the rich and the poor. For none was it a path of roses, No difference between them any more.

2. Early Sunday, on the tenth of July Just as harvest was ripe The school of misery spared no one, The poor and the rich alike.

3. Hitched and heavily loaded, The wagon stood before the door. Some things, what a pity, Remained lying, it couldn't be helped.

4. The trip began with horse and wagon, As ordered by those in authority. No one found there a savior, Who would deliver them from this misery.

5. On they went through storm and weather, Until to the railroad station they came. And there they waited, By the railroad, for the train.

6. At last it was loaded,And the humanity drove away With swift steps the journey took us To Siberia far away.

7. It is impossible to describe This terrible sad fate. Everyone directed a glance upward, For deliverance, they prayed.

8. Death came with giant strides, And added to their misery. Little children, old people,the young From death no one was free.

Translation by L. A. Weigel *

*Mr. Weigel will be one of the speakers at the Folklore Forum during the convention in Lincoln, July 24-30.

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GAMES AND ENTERTAINMENT IN THE EARLY PART OF THIS CENTURY

Solomon L. Loewen In response to a request to write something about

what kind of games and entertainment children and young people were occupied with during the early part of this century, I'll try to share something out of my own experience. Games and entertainment among Mennonite youth a century ago might not have been very much different from those of other ethnic groups, yet there were differences in the mores and home training that might be noted. I would like to discuss this topic from three different aspects.

In the first place, we need to consider the family situation and how children played together in the home. Naturally, this would vary considerably; families of one or two children would be different from those with many children. My wife came from a home of only two children and no father, whereas I came from a family where we had a full baseball team of boys with four sisters to cheer us on. My wife says that her childhood life was a very lonely one. Her brother, two years older, would go his way, and she had to find something to entertain herself. That was not very exciting. In our home we had a lot of things going almost every day. I was the youngest of three little boys that stuck together like three peas in a pod. We were called de dreh kleine yunges, "the three little boys." When something happened, such as a broken barn window, the question was asked, "Who did it?" The answer usually was "The three little boys." I suppose we got some "collective" spankings for misdemeanors like that. I remember only one distinct occasion when that happened. I do not recall what the accusation was, but I suppose that we deserved it. We were "farming" in the dust under the grove of mulberry trees where small straw particles were mixed with the dust, making ideal farming conditions for us. We had our threshing machine, plows, wagons, every-thing homemade, of course. Trees—chicken feathers—lined our roads and were around our homesteads. We had beautiful farms, and we spent a lot of time here in the dust playing to our hearts' content. One hot summer afternoon while we were busy "farming," mother called us from the house. We dusted our blue overalls a bit and ran in, having no inkling of what to anticipate until we got into the kitchen and saw a chair standing in the middle of the room. That was a foreboding sign. Mother cited an accusation and then the verdict. Comeil, the oldest, had to kneel by the chair and bend over while mother

took the razor strop from the hook by the washbasin where the big boys did their shaving. She then proceeded to execute judgment; Dan was next, then I. We got a really good spanking; whether it was forty strokes minus one or not, I cannot say. It was enough for us to remember not to repeat the "crime" again. I do not recall whether any tears were shed, but I remember going back quietly to our "farming," where we did not need to use the sore spot of our anatomy.

We each had chores to do as small boys, but even then we found occasion to have fun doing them. I recall one evening sister Justina asked Dan and me to get a dishpan full of corncobs for the kitchen stove, for she was to make supper. On our way to the cobs, we encountered a calf. Dan suggested that we tie the dishpan to the calf's tail. He caught the calf, and I got the twine, and pronto, it was done. The calf started out slowly, but when the tinny noise kept on following it, it took off at high speed into the field as fast as it could go until a quarter of a mile later it shot through a hedge where the pan got hung up. We laughed until our sides felt like splitting, By the time we retrieved the dishpan and had the bumps hammered out, the calf showed up in the corral, where it should have been in the first place. When we came into the kitchen, Justina was furious. "Where have you been so long? Now I'll be late with supper." We told her the best we could between laughs. She said, "You kids need a spanking." Well, we didn't get one. Another episode occurred when Uncle Peter's Leghorn rooster, which lived a quarter mile down the road, had taken a liking to our beautiful Rhode Island Red hens for some reason or other. One time we caught the rooster in the corner of the pen, tied a tin can with some pebbles in it to his leg, and turned him loose. Slowly he started out, but that rattling noise followed him, and he took off and soon was airborne until he got home and found refuge in the corner of the hen house. Here Uncle Peter found him, still with fear in his eyes. I understand that Uncle said, "The Loewen boys must have done that." The rooster never returned, and we had a good laugh.

Pets also can give us much joy and entertainment. We raised a small chick that became a real pet and turned out to be a rooster with inch-long spurs on his legs. Soon he became very aggressive and liked to attack us when we did not watch him. We were always very careful when

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we went out into the yard, but one day a stranger came over, and before he knew it, the rooster came up on his back, scratched him, and tore his clothing as he went. Mother said, "That is enough of him." The next day he was on our table floating in some good noodle soup. We had a lot of fun with him while it lasted. Another pet we had was a lamb that was bottle-fed. We played with him as he grew up, but he also began to reveal his male instincts. He would like to come towards us with his head down, and we had to get out of his way, or he would bump us. We would take a board and hold it in front of us. He would back up, then come with full force and hit it, knocking us backwards. At times, just before he would hit, we would jump up and land on his back, and he would go down on his knees. But that just inspired him to do more of it. He would sometimes surprise us in the corral when we did not expect him, so father disposed of him before he would do real damage. The wool father got from his sheep we had to help card. Mother washed the pelts and dried the wool. We children had to help card the wool for evening entertainment. Mother used it for making warm comforters. Father and Mother also did a lot of knitting, spinning the wool yarn themselves.

I had two pet dogs I played with a lot. Fritz was a small, short-haired dog that had a twitch in one of his front legs, causing it to jerk every four or five seconds day and night; otherwise it did not seem to bother him. Fido was a shepherd dog that would go out into the field with us. He would catch rabbits occasionally. One day while Brother Pete and I were plowing in a field a mile from home and were at the far end of the field, a coyote came through the hedge. He soon spot-ted Fido and took after him, but Fido, when he became aware of it, pulled his tail between his hind legs and took off towards home. Soon they were lost from sight in the tall grass and weeds. When we came home at noon, Fido was there still panting, lying under a manger in the barn. He did not show any battle scars, so he must have stayed ahead of his pursuer.

As small boys we each had our chores to do; Corneil had to slop the hogs, Dan had to take care of the chickens and gather the eggs, while I took care of the ducks. They were my ducks, pets they were, and I called them by name; they followed me wherever I went. I would feed them soaked corn, oats, or other grain. I could pick them up at will almost anytime. But one day they got hold of the wrong food which gave them a lapse of memory. Father made vinegar and wine every fall from the grapes we raised in the backyard. As church deacon, father would furnish

the wine for Communion; he would also use it as medicine sparingly, as he was a "country doctor." When we had special guests, he would sometimes serve it before mealtime as a cordial. One day after fermentation of the grapes was complete, he skimmed off the skins and pulp that floated in the 50-gallon barrel and tossed it out behind the hedge. The ducks smelled something and soon found the source. They gobbled the skimmings with gusto, and before long they were stretched out on the ground as "dead ducks." Mother said she did not want to lose all those feathers, so she plucked them off clean. They make good soft pillows and warm bedding for the winter. One of the older boys carried the carcasses out into the field for the coyotes. Early next morning we were awakened to a chorus of duck music as they marched bare-breasted across the yard, making no qualms about their appearance nor about their hangover. I learned what not to feed ducks.

We would make slingshots for shooting pebbles. We would shoot sparrows—of which we had an oversupply at all times. One day Dan tried to shoot a short piece of splintered wood; instead of hitting a target he aimed at, the wood hit the back of his hand and came out in front. He had a bandaged hand for a long time and scars for a lifetime. We would also make arrows out of cedar shingles. We shot these with a yard-long flexible twig and a short string. They would sail the length of a football field. We passed many pleasant hours with homemade kites; the open pastures were ideal for flying them. In the evenings in winter, we would play dominoes, checkers, and with playthings we got for Christmas. One Christmas I got a monkey on a string; when I stepped on one end of the string and pulled the other end, the monkey would scramble up and down; he gave me many happy hours. We also made button buzzsaws with a large button strung on a store string, passing the string through two holes and tying the two ends together. When we pulled the two ends apart, the button would whirl on the string and buzz like a bee. When the buzzing button would get into someone's hair, it would be hard to extricate. We raised our own popcorn and peanuts, as well as black walnuts, which we would consume in large quantities on cold winter evenings and Saturdays. At times we made popcorn balls and strung popcorn for Christmas decorations. We also raised many different kinds of apples, some of which were stored in an outdoor cave for the winter. Father would make apple cider, and Mother would cut apples for drying. We had three different orchards, and I would go with my

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little wagon to collect and bring home Jonathan, Missouri pippin, Mclntosh, or Winesap apples again and again. As a small boy I enjoyed this type of "entertainment." I would help pick strawberries and gooseberries which, however, were too prickly for me. We three little boys and Sister Marie would sweep mulberries together under the many mulberry trees we had, crush the berries in a big tub with our bare feet, and then wash out the golden seed. Mulberry seed brought a good price in the store, which was our pin money. The blue color on our feet would eventually wash or wear off, and for Sunday we would put on shoes and stockings, then the color did not matter. We did not get regular allowances, although whenever we got to town, which was not often, father would give us a nickel or a dime for candy. He would give us a nickel if we saw bees swarm and told him about it, and a quarter if we would hive a swarm of bees. My brother Ike tried it when he was a young teenager. A swarm of bees had settled on a low branch of a tree. Ike was barefooted, so he put on a pair of felt boots the big boys wore in winter; certainly the bees could not sting him then. He placed an open beehive just below the swarm. All he needed

to do was to jerk the tree branch in the right direction, and they would all fall into the hive. When he jerked the limb, a bunch of the bees fell right into his felt boots. He had a piercing and painful experience which he never forgot.

What gave us the most joy in the summer months as boys was the big pond we had in our yard. Father had built one about 50 yards from the house. It was excavated about 32 x 100 feet with the sides boarded up with planks. It was filled with well water, the windmill running day and night when there was a breeze. The 65° water would flow in a trough into a milk house near the windmill, into a tank where cream, butter, and watermelons were cooled, and then on out to the pond. The pond had a mud bottom, and when full it would be about 2 1/2 feet deep along the sides and 7 or 8 feet deep in the center. At one end was a diving board and at the other end a hops arbor we used as a dressing room. Father taught us all how to dive, swim, and float; he had learned that in the Dnieper River in Russia as a teenager. Father told us that we could go swimming in the months that did not

This photograph of the Jacob Loewen family on the home farm was taken in 1901. The "three little boys," Dan, Corneil, and Sol, are standing in front of the horse on the road with their sister Marie.

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have an "r" in them. In summer we were in the water in the morning, afternoon, and/or evening. The neighbor kids would come over occasionally, and we would have water fights, etc. We would make small boats and float them in the water. Father also raised German carp in the pond; they had fewer scales and smaller bones than the American carp, and they were good tasting when prepared properly—and mother knew how. In winter the pond would freeze over, and we would have a good skating rink which gave us many happy hours of exercise and sometimes blue bottoms. Besides the fish we raised in the pond, we also liked to go fishing in some of the streams in the neighborhood. For this we had to travel from 3 to 8 miles; we would go either with a buggy or a wagon and at times stay for a good part of a day. We liked to go after a good rain. In spring we first had to cut the firewood for the kitchen stove before we could go. That was the first priority for us, but sometimes Father would relent if we begged long enough and had good reasons.

Growing up on a farm was wonderful, especially when one had some siblings to play with. There was much work, but often this would be fun or there would be episodes that gave a lot of entertainment. I look back on these days with a great deal of nostalgia.

Games and entertainment in school is another area that needs to be discussed. Usually boys and girls had separate games they played during recess. In some games a larger number of participants was desirable, and then the students would play in mixed groups. That would depend on the number of boys and girls that were in school at the time. During my early years in school, the number of pupils was in the low forties, but in later years it was only in the upper twenties. We attended a one-room rural school with one teacher. The lower-grade children would play together while the upper-grade pupils had their games. All my years in the elementary school we had five months of English and two months of German school.

The girls in the lower grades played black-man, drop the handkerchief, run-for-supper, tag and other similar games, or they would play on the swings. We boys played marbles, a very popular sport with us. I do not know that we played for keeps, but I know I always had marbles in my pocket, both glass and agate. We had at least two versions of the game. In one we tried to shoot the marble into a hole in the center of a circle with our thumb. In the other we moved the marbles with a long stick, preventing the person who was "it" from getting his marble into

the hole. This became a very exciting game for us. In fall some of us enjoyed enticing ground spiders to come to the surface of their holes by lowering a small ball of soft wax on a thread. The spider would bite into the wax and come up as we slowly pulled the ball up. When the spider got to see daylight, he would often release his hold and retreat, but we prevented this by sticking a pocketknife blade into the ground just below him. We were cruel, for we usually killed the spider, but we would see who got the biggest one.

One year a man teacher wanted to separate the boys and girls entirely by having the boys play on the north half of the school yard and the girls on the south half. We did not like that, for the north half did not give us enough room for baseball, so we all had a sit-down strike. We boys sat along an imaginary line in front of the school while the girls sat on the south side of the line, and then we visited while the teacher watched us from the school porch, looking perplexed. His suggestion to go and play did not help. Soon the rules were rescinded. Baseball was the most popular game for us larger boys, and at times the girls would join us. We used a soft rubber ball and a flat board for a bat with which we at times would hit the ball out of the "park" for a home run. If the ball was caught on a first bounce, it was an "out." We did not have enough boys to choose sides, so we played rotation. When a batter was "out" he would go out into the field; the catcher would become the batter, and the pitcher would become the catcher, etc. In spring we would play the boys of an adjoining district on a Friday afternoon, and on the following Friday we would reverse the place. School would be dismissed for the rest of the pupils, many of whom would go along with the team. This was an exciting time.

One warm, windy day a neighbor lady came running into the schoolhouse breathless saying, "Please come and help me put out the fire in the pasture." She had burned some trash, and the fire had gotten out of hand and started a prairie fire. The teacher told us older children to grab a gunny sack in the coal shed, soak it with water by the cistern, then run out and fight the fire. With some effort we were successful, tired, and dirty. A week later she came back with sacks of candy and treated the whole school. This was the best part of the deal, we thought. We liked Mrs. Lichthaler for that kindness.

From marbles we went to shinney, a type of hockey. We cut our shinney sticks from our hedge apple (osage orange) trees, a branch which had a bend in it at one end. The puck also was from a hedge apple tree and took a lot of beating.

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The Bbenfeld School basketball team, 1913-1914. The game was hard on shinbones; I guess that is where the name of the game came from. One time a flying puck hit me square on my forehead and knocked me out cold. A few minutes later I was up and playing again. One year the older boys played a type of Rugby football. I was one of the smaller boys on the team and stood guard, holding my hand in front of my face to stop the ball. The kicked football hit the tip of my hand, bent it backwards, and cracked a wristbone in the process. We also played basketball, but we had only one basket, so it never got to be very popular. In winter when there was snow on the ground, fox-and-goose was the popular game for both boys and girls. We would have several rings on the school ground for the different grades. When the snow started to thaw, then either a snowman would be made or forts and a lot of snowballs made; then we had snowfights. The children of one family would always come with a larger sled pulled by a donkey; we used that sled to go downhill just west of the school yard. It was a drop of about a hundred or more feet; the sled would hold four or five kids at a time. We had to raise a barbwire on the fence near the bottom for the sled to go under. The person in front of the sled would holler "Duck" when we approached the fence lest we might get to the bottom without a head. For pulling the sled back up, we used "donkeypower." During inclement weather the teacher would have some games that could be played at our desks or on the blackboards. Jumping rope was a sport more common among girls than among boys.

Then there were times for special programs, such as Christmas, Easter, and other occasions when we had a lot of extracurricular activities. The programs we prepared were specially for the patrons, our parents, and guests. This involved learning new songs, recitations, dialogues, and various skits to entertain the audience. Towards the end of the school year, there was an all-school picnic to look forward to.

The third area of entertainment I want to consider involves the young people in the community between grade school and marriage. Very few of the young people would go to high school at that time. In fact, most of them did not even finish the eighth grade; many quit school when they got to be fourteen years old. My class was the first one in our school to take the county examination and be promoted to high school. Most of the young people joined the church about this time and became active on another level.

Since dancing was not permitted by the church, a special program was introduced by the church leadership almost from the beginning of its organization here in America. A Jugendverein, a young people's fellowship, now called Christian Endeavor, or CE, was organized. Young people in their late teens and early twenties were in charge of a program that met at least once a month. Solo and group music, readings, a Bible questionnaire, short messages and talks on temporary and practical topics were part of the program. Young people would give their

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Christian experiences and testimonies and share their life journeys with the larger group. This organization is still active after about a hundred years. We attended a meeting just recently where my young, teenage grandniece played a piccolo number very beautifully as well as a piano duet with her older sister. In addition, there were numbers by a mixed Sunday school class. Then a young man who had been in Nicaragua for several weeks with a Christian consortium on a special project gave an illustrated report, which was informative and challenging. During the early years these programs were given in German, but now very few of the young people can speak or understand the mother tongue.

Some of the boys got interested in instrumental music, so they organized a band consisting of violins, mandolins, guitars, horns, and drums. They played for their own enjoyment and also provided music at wedding receptions, Sunday school picnics, etc. Some of the young people were asked to sing in the church choir, which they enjoyed very much. An outstanding event for them was the annual Saengerfest, a song festival held by all the Mennonite Brethren church choirs of central Kansas, which drew large crowds and was held in a large tent set up for the weekend. This also provided a social outlet where the girls could meet their friends. My older sisters told me that is where they first met their boyfriends. Then came the time for caroling at Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and at Easter time. Before the age of the automobile, the young people would go by wagon and team of horses. They drove from farmyard to farmyard and sang the joyous songs of the season. When it was very cold, they would sit on the floor of the double box of the wagon and cover up well in order to keep warm; when there was snow on the ground, they would take a few large sleds. At times they would use hot bricks to keep their feet warm. Occasionally they would be invited into a home where they could warm up and enjoy some refreshments and hot coffee. The young people of the church also got involved at church conference time, which sometimes lasted two or three days. The large tent was set up, and the guests and delegates, who came from many churches, would be fed at least two meals a day. The young people would wait on tables and do the dishes, to which the boys and girls looked forward. Here they would fraternize, and the guys would pick the girl they thought would make a good cook and homemaker. It was work, but also good, wholesome entertainment.

During summer months after the pressing time of harvest and threshing, some of us boys

would assemble at my uncle Wiens' place on Saturday evenings where we would play ball and other games. The Wiens' girls would sometimes join us. We came from three families of cousins plus boys from the neighborhood. Later in the evening we would visit; sometimes the girls would pop some popcorn or we would join in making ice cream. This would top off a good evening. The older boys started to cut each other's hair; soon someone picked up an old barber's chair, so they charged 15 cents to 25 cents to pay for the chair. On Sunday afternoons we sometimes would go swimming. Two of my uncles had ponds in their pastures away from the road and homes, so we swam without swimming suits. Swimming suits were unknown to us in those days. We would also play horseshoes at times.

Bicycles became popular and available about that time, and before long most of the families in the community had at least one bicycle. This enabled us boys to get together more easily, and it was remarkable where we would find each other in groups. We might have a bicycle race or play ball, or just hang around and gab. Most of our entertainment in those days was unorganized and unscheduled. It was very seldom that some of the boys would get into mischief, such as raiding a farmer's watermelon patch.

One form of entertainment became available when Tabor College students started a literary society and gave public programs. The college was organized in 1908 in Hillsboro, Kansas, only about 6 miles from the Ebenfeld community. That was the year Father bought a Model-T Ford, the first car any of the farmers in the area had, so that enabled us as young people to go to hear a good program about once or twice a month. There were some good singing, discussions of various topics, often with good humor, chalk-talk artwork, instrumental music, debates, or some good literary readings. It was an easy 7-mile drive for an enjoyable evening and had parental approval.

My presentation of entertainment has been largely for boys and young men, because that is what I remember. The girls did not have quite the opportunities the boys had to gather over weekends. The girls, I think, did more reading, and some had reed organs or pianos with which they entertained themselves at home. The mode of transportation was much different then than it is at present, which limited communication.

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THE POWER OF A PHOTOGRAPH

Peter W. Schmidt In 1933 my mother and father were living on a

farm in Garner, Iowa, when they received a photograph of my mother's mother and the family of her brother Michael. When my mother received the letter and picture, she cried for two days. She had been born in Marienfeld, Volga Region, Russia, on January 27, 1894. My father had been born in Marienfeld on January 31, 1893. They were married in Saint Rochus Catholic Church in Marienfeld by Father Ochs on September 4, 1910.

My father, Adam Schmidt, came to the United States at the age of 19 along with his brother Peter, who was 25 years old. They arrived in Baltimore, Maryland, on the S.S. Neckar on July 16, 1912. They originally went to Topeka, Kansas, and worked for the Santa Fe Railway as boilermakers. They were able to get this job because my mother's brother Joseph was an engineer for the Santa Fe Railway.

My mother, Marie Stang Schmidt, also left Marienfeld at the age of 19. She and my oldest brother Adam, who was born in Marienfeld and was 19 months old at the time, arrived in Baltimore on the S.S. Main on February 28, 1913.

My parents lived in Topeka for four years and then moved to Fort Dodge, Iowa, where my father was a sheet metal worker. In 1928 they moved to the farm in Gamer, Iowa. They bought the 160-acre farm in 1937, and it is still in the Schmidt family, although both of my parents have since passed away. My mother often spoke longingly of her family left behind in Russia. As I grew up, I often wondered what had happened to the family after they sent us the picture.

When I first contacted AHSGR, I was told about a map showing the location of Marienfeld, also known as Spatzenkhutor, and also about the research Ed Gerk of Canada was doing on the village. I immediately wrote him a letter, telling him that my parents had come from that area and that I wanted a name and address of someone in that village I could write.

He sent me the name and address of Irma Dieser, to whom I wrote a letter. She answered me in January 1988, stating that she knew nothing of our family but that she had given my letter to a Joseph Krenz. He wrote me in March 1988 and said that he had given my letter to a Stang family. I immediately wrote back to Joseph Krenz and sent two pictures of my uncle

Mike's family. Fortunately, he gave one picture to the right Stang family; Susanna is on the picture taken in 1933. In June 1988 I received my first letter from Susanna Stang (written in Russian) and have since received several more. She and her family live in Petrov Val on the Volga River, about 27 miles east of Marienfeld (now known as Novonikolayevka). She wrote that they had been exiled to Siberia in 1941 and she hasn't seen some of her relatives since that time. She said that, except for her family, her relatives are still living in Russia where they were sent in 1941. She has seven children, all living.

Susanna's Letter

Warm greetings from Russia! Dear Peter and all who are there. All of our family

of Stangs warmly greet you. Joe Krenz visited us and gave us the photo of our family. The oldest woman on this photo is the grandmother of my husband, Jacob Stang. The man and woman next to her are my husband's parents. His [father's] name was Michael and his mother's name was ? My husband Jacob and his brother Peter are not on this photo. At the time of the photo they were out in the field with their cows. First from the left with a moustache is Ivan [Johann],. then next to him is me (Susanna), in a white jacket, then Barbara, Justina, and Maria with her husband Joseph.

Seated in the second row are Adam, Grandmother, Michael and his wife, who are the parents of Susanna's husband Jacob. Standing in front of them are Michael, Barbara's daughter Justina, Angelina, and Alvis.

Alive now are only Adam, Michael, Angelina, Alvis, Peter, and myself. My husband died in 1948. I had seven children, and all are alive. I live with the youngest. His name is Alvis; he is forty. His wife's name is Rosa, and they have four children. I will be seventy-eight in October. I have lived forty years without a husband. I am grateful for this photo. I have not a single photo of that time. There is now something to look at and remember.

We can find and send you addresses of your cousins Peter, Adam, Michael, Alvis, and Angelina if you want them. Michael and Alvis live in Alma Ata District in Kazakhstan. Adam lives in Tashkent. Angelina in Chelyabinsk. Peter

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lives in Siberia, in the Omsk District. My son and his wife work. I'm a pensioner. The grandson is serving in the army; he is twenty. This fall he will come back. There is a granddaughter; she is eleven and is in school. There are two more grandsons: Anton is five and Jacob is three.

It's spring now, everything is growing; life is not bad. Certainly, after Jacob died, I had a very hard time. I was pregnant with my son Alvis at that time. You can imagine how hard it was to become a widow at thirty-eight with such a large family and the difficult post-war years. If you are interested in something, then ask, and we will answer everything we know. This letter is written

by my daughter-in-law Rosa. I am illiterate. I cannot write.

Good-bye. Kissing and hugging all of you, we are awaiting your reply. May 12, 1988.

My brother John and I are now planning a trip to Russia to visit our cousin and her family. This reunion will be possible because of the work of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia and its members who are willing to share their information with others. We hope this article will encourage others seeking to locate their families in the Soviet Union.

This photograph of the Stang family of Marienfeld, Volga Region, sent from Russia to Iowa in 1933 and returned to Russia in 1988, was instrumental in reuniting a family. In the top row from left are Johann, Susanna, (who wrote the letter above), Barbara, Justina, Maria, and her husband Joseph. Seated from left are Adam, Grandmother Stang, Michael Stang, and his wife. Standing in front are Michael, Justina (Barbara's daughter), Angelina, and Alvis.

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A VISITOR FROM THE SOVIET UNION

S.D.R. For personal reasons the visitor will remain

anonymous. Let's call her P. She is the daughter of my sister. After my sister's death, P. took over the correspondence, and we are keeping it up to this day.

In the past few years, I had heard about some Soviet citizens coming to America for a visit. I even had the privilege of meeting a couple of them who came to my city. In one of my letters, I asked P. if she would like to come for a visit. She hesitated at first, but then she agreed.

In 1985 I got all the necessary documents ready and sent them to P. by registered mail. With these documents in her hands, she went to the local authorities with negative results. Since the documents are valid for only one year, she tried hard every two to three months but always got a harsh "Nyet." In the meantime, the term of the documents had expired, and she had lost hope.

Our letters went back and forth, and in 1987 P. asked me for new documents. (Gorbachev's relaxation reached her territory in the far Kazakhstan too.) I got busy and mailed her new documents. This included a round-trip air ticket from Moscow to my city, assurance of room and board, and assurance that any necessary medical expenses would be covered. Equipped with new documents she went to her county police chief and the KGB six times—with no results. One of them gave her hope and told her to come again in a week's time. With so many disappointments P. had lost all hope and courage. She wrote that she didn't get permission, and she apologized for all the trouble she had caused me.

A few days after she wrote that letter, she again went to the police office. The official told her to go to a certain building and room and get her passport.

On February 1, 1988, P. wrote me that she had gotten permission and that she was coming. On February 2 she left home (she lives in southwestern Kazakhstan) and took the bus to Frunze, the capital of the Kirghiz Republic. Here she took the plane to Moscow—a 41/2-hour flight. She was in Moscow, and I didn't know anything about it.

She had to wait for her ticket. Then she got her visa from the American Embassy, which was the easiest part of all. Finally, on February 13, she left Moscow for Frankfurt, where she changed planes to New York. Here she was put

on a plane to Los Angeles. On February 14 at 1:30 a.m. our phone rang. My wife and I were sound asleep, of course. I answered, and a man's voice called me by my first name. He identified himself and told me that my niece was in Los Angeles and we should meet her at the airport of our fair city. She arrived at 10:35 a.m. on February 14, and we were there to greet her. We had not seen each other for sixty years; she was six years old when I was a teenager. Because of pictures we had sent in the past years, there was no doubt that I was the right uncle. A better present for Valentine's Day we could not expect.

P. is a widow; her husband died eight years ago at the age of sixty-six. He was also a German—his parents came from Donhof. They had one daughter, and she lives with her mother. (The daughter's husband died in 1982 at the age of forty-six in an industrial accident. His name was George, and his parents came from Norka. He was an electrician. He was always asking about and looking for an uncle, Ludwig Schnell, here in America.)

P. was a nurse and retired at the age of fifty-five. She had worked for thirty-five years in the same hospital. ("Ich war ah barmhersige Schwester," she said.) Her daughter is also a nurse and works in the same hospital.

So far we had done nothing but talk. A sixty-year period is not that easy to cover in two months. P. has a granddaughter who is twelve years old and goes to school. She speaks Russian, German, and Kazakh and takes French in school. P. has two brothers and a sister. The brothers each have five children; the sister has six. All are working in different professions and trades: teachers, truck drivers, office workers, and in the dairy industry. Her sister's six children all have higher education. One daughter is a dentist; the other daughter is a doctor. One son is an engineer, another is a veterinarian, and the third is an agronomist specializing in cattle feeding. The youngest daughter is graduating this year as a pharmacist. This is nothing to be ashamed of.

Their lives are fairly well organized. P.'s brother and her brother-in-law and some of her nephews drive their own cars. The rest use public transportation—mostly buses, and they are scheduled every few minutes.

P. and her daughter live in their own house. It has two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen,

41

a bath, and what she called a chulan, which is a pantry. The walls of the house are clay brick (Lehmsteine), and the roof is slate. A small boiler supplies the heat for the house and hot water. They cook with gas. They receive 3 tons of coal per year free-of-charge from the medical workers' organization. They also receive 30 rubles per year to subsidize their electric bill.

They have a garden (1/4 hectare) by the house. They grow vegetables and also clover for hay for the cow in winter. The clover is cut five to six times a year. They have their own well and pump to irrigate the garden. Besides the cow they keep one or two pigs and chickens. Products they don't use are sold on the open market, and they pay no taxes on that income. There are no property taxes, but they pay 15 rubles annually for insurance, and that includes the cow.

We had a welcoming party for her. All the relatives living in our area were invited. A cake reading Willkommen in Amerika brought tears to her eyes. It was one highlight of her great adventurous trip halfway around the globe.

I took P. to one of our chapter meetings where she received a very warm welcome. There were so many questions the members wanted to ask until our president had to stop and close the meeting. Many came to shake hands and said in German, "Ach, Du lieber Holland, die schwatzt jo grod so wie mer." (0 dear Lord, she talks just like we do.)

We took her to different stores to shop. She didn't say very much; she only looked and looked. Once in a while she would say, "We are still 100 years behind you." What amazed her most was the checkout in the supermarket—the scanner. "Herr Gott," she said, "die brauche gar nichts rechne." (My God, they don't have to figure anything.) While driving around and show-ing her the city, the different places we had lived, and points of interest she would say, "Don't you have any dirt roads?" or "Ei, yi, yi, ihr macht euch ewe Schuh gar net dreckig." (Ay, ay, ay, you don't even get your shoes dirty.)

I also took her to church. Even though she speaks no English, she followed the service, and we took Communion together. When I introduced her to our pastor, she said with tears in her eyes, "I don't remember when I ever received Communion by an ordained minister." On Easter we went to a German service, which I think was one of the highlights of her visit.

We'll now let P. do the talking about her parents and grandparents and their lives:

Before our deportation to Kazakhstan in 1930, my father was arrested and sent to Siberia. My grandfather was too sick, so

they took his oldest son—my father. The rest of the family, branded as kulaks, was loaded with many others in boxcars— destination Kazakhstan. We were unloaded in a desert area which had no shelter and hardly anything else. Even the water was rationed and distributed by the cup. Fights broke out over every cup of water. Many people died here because of lack of food and water. After a few months we were moved again to a place on good land and near a river. People were sheltered in barracks, three to four families in one big room. My family consisted of my paternal grandparents, my mother, and four children. I was nine years old and had to work in the fields.

While we were struggling to survive, my father was in a prison camp in Siberia. He escaped and came to our original hometown only to find that his family had been deported to Central Asia. Relatives knew already where his family was, so he left to search for us. On his way he stopped in a neighboring village. He had a friend he had done business with in earlier years who owed him some money. The man welcomed him like he always had on previous occasions. When the question of the money came up, the man said, "You stay here, and I'll go and get it." Sure enough a few minutes later he returned—not with the money but with the police. My father was arrested again and this time sent to a prison camp in the Karaganda area. Worried and concerned about his family, he and another prisoner escaped again. They "found a stray camel" and with that means of transportation they traveled southwest, most of the time by night. After many weeks, many en-counters and difficulties, they reached their destination, and my father was reunited with us again.

The conditions he found us in were in-describable. Three or four families were in one room. They were half-starved and half-naked, plagued by lice and bugs. Something had to be done, so my father went to work on a tractor in the fields. He also looked for a house for his family and found one in a village called Muyun-Kum. It was rundown, but it was much better than the barracks, and it didn't take us very long to clean it up and make it livable.

My dad worked day and night. He was a workaholic and in a short time was promoted to brigadier (foreman) of a tractor

42

brigade. He made good money and received public praise in the press for outstanding work and ''Planer fullung1' (fulfillment of norms on schedule). He received bonuses in money and grain after the harvest. A bigger house was bought, and things looked much better. The most important thing was that now we had plenty to eat after many years of hunger and suffering.

My father was not a selfish man. He never lost faith in God, and he helped others whenever he could. One day a woman with four children appeared in our village. Her husband had died in a work camp (trudar-miya, they called it) where hundreds of thousands of men and women had perished during the war and after the war period. That woman's body was barely covered with rags. After my dad had seen that poor woman, he told my mother, "Give her one of your dresses." My mother had only two dresses, but she complied reluctantly. The oldest child of that poor woman was a 14-year-old boy. My father took him under his wing. He hired him to do odd jobs in his brigade. He earned a little money and had his regular meals—a great achievement for a 14-year-old who had known nothing but misery and hunger.

One day my dad bought a steer and said, "Yasha (the boy's name for Little Jakob), take care of him and train him for work." To make a long story short, that's what Yasha did in his spare time, and one day he got the proper gear and a wagon. My father said, "Now, Yasha, you can transport all kinds of things for people, you are in business." Yasha probably was the happiest boy in Kazakhstan. He did pretty good transporting things for people and supporting his mother and family. This was only one case; my father helped others.

As kulaks we were restricted and under constant control of the police. We couldn't go anywhere without special permission until Stalin died in 1953. One subject has to be mentioned: During the war almost all the men and women were mobilized and taken into the trudarmiya. My father was spared as a successful foreman in a tractor brigade and farm expert. Through his influence he saved many men from being drafted because he needed them to produce farm pro-ducts for the army and city workers. When the war was over, many didn't return from those work camps. To this day some families don't know what happened to their

father, husband, or son; or they "know" but were never officially notified.

My brothers, sister and I always relied on our father's advice and sound judgment. In 1958 he died at the age of fifty-six in the prime of his life. "Der hot sick tot geschafft" (he worked himself to death). Our mother died in 1972.

After I retired I decided to travel through the country and visit relatives and friends. I visited an uncle in Siberia and a cousin in our original village on the Bergseite of the Volga. My cousin had returned with his family after Stalin's death. Other German families had returned also.

When I arrived at my birthplace (where only Germans had lived when our family was deported), I saw a different picture. Instead of friendly faces and well-kept houses, I met Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, and other ethnic people, and over half the houses were torn down or were in ruins. The church and other landmarks, even the creek where we swam as kids, had disappeared. The house I was born in and the one that my uncle was born in are still in fairly good condition and occupied. I was well received and welcomed by my cousin and his family. He worked as a machinist, and he and his family lived well. I enjoyed my visit there, but to see my hometown in such a devastated condition was a great disappointment. That trip took place in 1981.

I traveled by train and bus to Siberia then to the Volga and other places. It took me over a month and many kilometers to close the circle and to get back home to Kazakhstan, which I have called home since I was nine years old.

This is in short the story of our family, especially my father, who had to leave us so early. My trip to America to meet my uncle and his family has so far been the highlight of my life, and I will be forever grateful to them for making it possible. Special thanks to their daughter who couldn't do enough for me. Thank you for all the presents and the shopping trips you took me on and for your big heart. I LOVE YOU, MARIECHEN!

My thanks to all the relatives and friends who showed only kindness and friendship. If our governments and leaders would show each other that friendship and respect, we would not have to worry about a war and the destruction of mankind. Yes, I prayed

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a lot to get to my destination, and I made it, and I'm going to pray a lot to get home. May God bless you all.

Sincerely, Your guest from the Soviet Union

P. * * * * * *

According to letters P.'s trip home went fairly well except for a few difficulties on her arrival in Moscow. There was no luggage. They told her to come the next day. A cousin's son, who is in the military service in Moscow, knew when she was arriving, and he met her at the airport. He even had found a place for her to stay. The next day she went to the airport for her luggage, but only two pieces were there; the third was still missing. She had to wait another night in Moscow for her third suitcase. When she arrived at the airport the following morning, the suitcase wasn't there yet. She made a lot of noise and commotion to get attention and service, so a woman employee went to the computer to look for the lost suitcase. She called Frankfurt, and by 3:00 p.m. they finally found it.

For the third time she had to go through customs. They just hurried her through without checking anything—they knew her already. The first two suitcases were not checked either. She got everything home including two Bibles she had stacked between her clothes. "I'll take those Bibles even if they put me in prison," she said before she left.

Her cousin's son took her to the other airport to catch the plane to Frunze. On April 14 at 10:00 p.m. she was home. "It was a tiresome trip, and I will never forget it," she writes. It was from one climatic area to another. From our city (60° to 65°F) to Moscow (-6°F and snowstorms) to Frunze (80°F and sandstorms). She was very tired, but for the first two to three weeks she never got to bed before midnight. In the daytime she worked in her garden. In the evening the house was full of people who wanted to hear about her trip and about America. In her last let-ters she complained about the 100° to 110°F temperatures (and on some days even 120°F). She can only work until noon, then she has to go into the house.

This concludes my story of a visitor from the Soviet Union and the experiences she had on her adventurous trip.

Twentieth International AHSGR Convention Lincoln,

Nebraska

July 24-30, 1989

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BOOKS AND ARTICLES RECENTLY ADDED TO THE AHSGR ARCHIVES

Frances Amen and Mary Rabenberg

PLEASE NOTE: When a number has a R before it, that indicates that the item does not circulate. This means that patrons may use the item in the AHSGR library itself, but they may not check it out for use elsewhere. The items mentioned below and other library materials may be borrowed from AHSGR Archives through the interlibrary loan services of your local public or college library via an interlibrary loan request form or the OCLC computer system. Most of the items below are not for sale by AHSGR. Please consult your current Order Form to see what is available for purchase. DK 254 .A5A3 1973x Alexandra, Empress, Consort of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1872-1918. The Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914-1916 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973), 462 pp. Donated by Donald Darner.

DK258 .A25 1973x Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia, 1868-1918. The Letters of the Tsar to the Tsaritsa, 1914-1917 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973), 325 pp. Donated by Donald Darner.

These letters reveal the characters of Nicholas and Alexandra. They clearly present the part that the Emperor and Empress played in the developments which led to the tragedy that overwhelmed Russia in October 1917.

BR936 .B2 Baker, Alonzo L. Religion in Russia Today (Nashville, TN: Southern Publishing Association, 1967), 141 pp. Donated by Allyn Brosz.

An informative report which traces the de-velopment of Christianity and other religions in Russia and explains current religious conditions. Includes photographs, in color and in black and white, of churches, mosques, and synagogues which are still in use or which are being used as museums.

BX8080 .F43B3 Barton, Peter F. Ignatius Aurelius Fessler: vom Barockkatholizis-mus zur Erweckungsbewegung (Wien: Boehlau, 1969), 634 pp. Donated by Dr. Irma E. Eichhom.

A detailed, well-documented biography of Fessler, whose personal spiritual development reflected the spiritual and church history of Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and Russia 1750-1830. Fessler began as a Capuchin monk of the era of Baroque Catholicism. He became an enlightened professor of theology in Galicia. His stand against religious intolerance made it necessary for him to flee to Prussia. Here he turned to Protestantism, and his works became more and more reflective of the spirit of ecumenism

and the Age of Enlightenment. He was called to Russia where he became the Protestant Bishop of Saratov Consistory (1819-1832) and was a spiritual leader of the Volga Germans. In German.

CS71 .B5378 1986x Bierwagen, Paul A., compiler.

The Ludwig Bierwagen Sr. Family Genealogical Record (n.p., 1986), 38 pp. Donated by compiler. A

compilation of genealogical charts of a family whose ancestry began in Bessarabia and who later

homesteaded in the Dakota Territory. CS71 .B821 1988bx, Supplement Brandt, Edward R. BrandtRoots, (1605-1988), 2nd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: E. R. Brandt, July and October 1988), 78 pp., 14 pp. Maps. Donated by author.

According to the author all of his known ancestors lived in the Molochna Settlement at one time. In this genealogical record he lists origins of ancestral names, emigrants from Prussia to the Ukraine and those who immigrated to Canada and the United States. He concludes with an index of ancestral names at birth. The Supplement includes revisions to the second edition. An added feature is "Current Polish Names of Old Prussian Hometowns." CS71 .E234 1950zx Cooper, Lydia Eck, compiler. The Zacharias Eck Family Record (n.p., 195?), 126 pp. Donated by Peter Koop.

This Eck ancestor, a Mennonite, came from Montau, West Prussia. His descendants came with a large group of Mennonites in 1874 and settled in McPherson, Kansas. The book is a compilation of genealogical records.

BX4603 .T66S63 1980zx Danielson, Bruce L. "A History of Saint Joseph German Catholic Church." Typewritten. 30 pp. Donated by Isadore Appelhanz.

This is a history of a church organized in 1887 to serve the German Russians in Topeka, Kansas. It is still an active church.

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D809 .G3D46 1985x Deportation, Flucht und Vertreibung: Ein Ruckblick nach 40 Jahren (Muenchen, West Germany: Bayerisches Staatsministerium fuer Arbeit und Sozialordnung, 1985), 71 pp. Photos.

Compilation of speeches and articles presented in Bavaria in 1985 and dedicated to the theme "40 Years Deportation, Flight, and Exile." Approximately one-fifth of the population of Bavaria in 1985 was composed of persons displaced after the Second World War. Many photographs, map of German settlement areas in Central and Eastern Europe, reproduction of a number of pieces of art depicting the plight of the refugees. In German.

F1079.5 .E3D68 1980x Down Memory Lane in Colchester (Colchester, AB: Glenbow Alberta Institute. 1980), 347 pp. Photos. Donated by the Colchester Women's Institute.

This community in Alberta, Canada, was founded in the 1890s. Among the family histories are some German Russians—Schmidt, Siegel, Seutter, Soch, Paul, etc. The Bruderfeld Moravian Church was active in the early history of the settlement. Includes many interesting pioneer stories.

BX8027 .E223x Eberhard, Ernst. "Evangelical Faith Between Destruction and Toleration: 400 Years Lutheran Church in Russia." Typewritten. 17 pp.

This article (in English), which was based upon a collection of essays (in German) edited by the author entitled "Und siehe, wir leben!" Der Weg der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche Russlands in vier Jahrhunderten, recounts the history of the Lutheran Church in Russia.

GR880 .E53 1987x Engebrecht-Schaff, Nadine. "The Acquisition and Efficacy of the Folk Healer Position: A Profile." (Thesis: Fargo, ND, 1987), 70 pp. Donated by Red River Chapter, GRHS (Fargo, ND).

A master's thesis that explores folk healing by examining the life of a German-Russian healer, Katherine, from Western North Dakota. She is compared with folk healers in Comanche and Hispanic cultures. Concludes with remedies for cure and prevention of various maladies, vitamins for healing, and Brauche— charms and remedies. DB975 .B5E5 1987X Engelmann. Nickolaus. The Banat Germans (Bismarck, ND: University of Mary Press, 1987), 134 pp. Maps, photos.

A detailed history of Germans who are a part of a larger group called the Danube Swabians. Chapters relate information on their churches, schools, and customs in addition to their fate as refugees and survivors of World War II. Abundantly illustrated.

F782 .W4G529 1984x Glavmick, Jacquelyn Gee. Marriages 1864-1888, Weld County, Colorado (Greeley, CO: Genealogical Society of Weld County, 1984), 35 pp. F782 .W4G529 1985x Glavinick, Jacquelyn Gee. Marriages 1889-1899, Weld County, Colorado (Greeley, CO: Genealogical Society of Weld County, 1985). 37 pp.

Each volume has both bride and groom listed in alphabetical order with name of spouse and date of the marriage or date when license was issued. Contains notations for some for whom a license was issued but never used.

BX8143 .G63 1949x Goering, Violet. "The Life Story of a Pioneer Woman—Anna Schrag Goering." Research paper for Bethel College, North Newton, KS., 1949. 20 pp.

Anna's parents were Swiss Mennonites who eventually settled in Volhynia. Her first marriage was arranged by her father in 1871. In 1874 she and her husband came to America where they settled in Kansas.

HC337 .U53F354 1986X Harvard University Library. Famine in the Soviet Ukraine 1932-1933: a Memorial Exhibition, Widener Library, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA: Harvard College Library, 1986), 83 pp.

A catalog for the commemorative exhibition that recalled through pictures, eyewitness accounts, and scholarly studies the tragedy of the famine which occurred fifty years ago.

CS71 .N877 1987x Headley, Judith, Verline Herrboldt, and Stella Nusz, compilers. The Philipp Nusz and Katharina Mettler Family History, (n.p., 1987), 328 pp. Maps, family tree, and photos. Donated by North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies.

In the late 1800s the Nusz family emigrated from Kassel, South Russia, to South Dakota. In addition to the general family history, there are many endearing recollections of individual family members.

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DK4121.5 .G4H442 1981x Heike, Otto. 150 Jahre Schwabensiedlungen in Polen 1795-1945. 2nd ed. (Leverkusen, West Germany: 0. Heike, 1981), 364 pp. Maps.

Only 8 percent of the Germans who settled in Poland came from Swabia. This book deals with the history of the colonies founded by Swabians in Central Poland, or "Congress Poland." Discusses development of some individual Swabian settlements, including lists of names of German landholders in 1945. Appendix includes bibliography, photos, documents. Maps showing locations of Swabian settlements in Central Poland and Posen and a map showing villages of origin in Southwest Germany. In German.

CS71 .S347 1979x Henderson, Dorothy Mae Schleuning.

Sckleuning Family History (n.p., 1979), 192 pp. A pictorial genealogy and history interspersed with

letters, poems, and news clippings. Family members live in Illinois, South Dakota, and Washington.

CT1213 .H472A3 1900zx Herzog, Valentin A Watcher at the Gate. The Memoirs of Valentin Herzog (n.p., 19??), 133 pp. Donated by Michael Herzog.

This personal narrative begins in Krasna, a Catholic daughter colony in the Berezan' Valley in South Russia. The author vividly describes the customs and educational system of the Russia he knew. He continues by describing the events in the lives of his family in South Russia during World War II, their flight to Germany, and the family's eventual move to the United States in the early 1950s. He eventually became an assistant professor at Gonzaga University in the state of Washington.

DK511 .V7W64x, 5. Folge Historischer Verein Wolhynien e.V. Wolhynische Hefte, 5. Folge [No. 5] (Schwabach/ Wiesentheid, Germany: Historischer Verein Wolhynien e.V., 1988), 251 pages, village maps, pb.

The fifth in a series of journals published by the Historical Society of Volhynia in the Federal Republic of Germany, which is dedicated to the preservation of the history of the Germans once living in Volhynia. This volume has articles addressing the following topics: the banishment of Germans from Volhynia in 1915; the fate of those who remained (with two maps); the resettlement of Volhynian colonists in the Baltic States 1907-1913; the takeover of the Volhynian

Lutherans by the Warsaw Consistory; the resettlement from Volhynia to Germany in 1939; the resettlement as portrayed in Nazi literature; and the theme of humanity in the midst of inhumanity. In the appendix are plats of ten German villages in Volhynia including names of inhabitants as of approximately 1939 and other data. In German.

DK511 .B4H6 1983x Hoffnungstal (Bietigheim, West Germany, 1983), 150 pp. Maps, photos. Donated by Curt. Renz.

A history of Hoffnungstal, the youngest mother colony of Bessarabia, founded in 1841. Has list of original settlers and notes about each family as of 1940. Also a list of those killed or missing in action in the two World Wars and a list of people living in Hoffnungstal at the time of resettlement in 1940. Includes brief histories of daughter colonies Gnadenheim and Philippowka. Numerous photographs, village plat. Most of the book is in German, but the chapter on the history of the village and the list of original settlers have also been printed in English.

CS71 .S773 1988x Issinghoff, Martha Stremel. The History and Genealogy of the Descendants of Anton and Christine Schaefer Stremel: The Stremel Family in Russia and America (M. Issinghoff, 1988), 188 pp. Photos, maps. Donated by author.

The Stremel family history in Russia and America spans the years 1815-1988. It begins in Kamenka in the Volga Region and eventually moves to Pfeifer, Kansas. A thorough family history is presented.

CT226 .E37B3x Jencks, Miriam E. " A brief Account of the Life of My Mother, Clara Hildennan Ehrlich." Typewritten. 1977. 14pp.

Biography of a woman who was born to Volga-German parents in Colorado and who pursued an education that included graduate work at Columbia University.

PS8571 .L375F55x Klassen, Isaac Peter. Finstemis und Licht: Drama (Winnipeg, MB: Privately published, 1982), 49 pp. Donated by Mennonite Heritage Centre.

A provocative drama concerning the fate of the Germans in Russia, particularly the Mennonites, at and following the time of the Russian Revolution and the reign of terror directed by

47

Makhno. Includes synopsis of each act and sug-gestions for stage settings. In German.

DK611 .K5K53 1979x Klassen. Isaac Peter. Die Insel Chortitza: Stimmungsbilder, Gedanken und Erinnerungen (Winnipeg, MB: Privately published, 1979), 126pp. Illustrations. Donated by Mennonite Heritage Centre.

History and memories of the Mennonite colony on the island of Chortitza (Khortitsa) in the Dnieper River, South Russia. Includes many anecdotes in Plattdeutsch, the Low-German dialect of these Mennonites. In German.

PS8571 .L375L53x Klassen, Isaac Peter. Licht und Schatten. 1. Toil: Gedichte (Winnipeg: MB: Privately published, 1981), 92 pp. Donated by Mennonite Heritage Centre.

Collection of sensitive poetry depicting the author's relationship to his heritage, to nature, and to his Creator. Includes an index to the themes of the poetry. In German.

F702 ,B45L62x Locke, Ruby. Sayre, OldDoxey, Mulberry Cemeteries & Obituaries (J. Ferguson, 1986), 193 pp. Donated by Jo Ferguson.

A listing of those buried in named Oklahoma cemeteries along with tombstone inscriptions. Also gives obituaries of people buried at the cemeteries as well as many who are not. Concludes with name index containing a listing of all names found in book. including survivors and pallbearers if they were listed in obituaries.

CS71 .R4G5 1987x Neufeld, Herman A. Mary Neufeld and the Repphun Story from The Mohtschna to Manitoba (North Hollywood, CA: The Carole Joyce Gallery, 1987). 234 pp. Photos. Donated by author.

The author relates his mother's life through letters, reminiscences, numerous pictures, etc. She was born in Schoensee in 1903, later moving to Fuerstenau where she lived with a foster family, Wilhelm and Maria Neufeld. Other chapters describe the Revolution and famine in Halbstadt. Fuerstenau, and Alexanderkrone. Her family moved to Michigan. Short biographies are given of her siblings and parents.

GR306 (Perm.) "News Accounts of the Volga Germans of To-peka and Ellis County, Kansas." 63 pp. Donated by Isadore Appelhanz.

Photocopies of news clippings gathered from various sources—newspapers, magazines, and books. Some date back to 1899. Included are parts of letters from Russia during the famine years of the 1920s.

BX7255 .B54P55 1985x Pilgrim Congregational Church (Billings, MT). Pilgrim Congregational Church, Billings, Montana, 75th Anniversary (n.p., 1986?), 118 pp. Donated by Elaine Frank Davison.

A pictorial directory and history of this church in commemoration of its seventy-fifth anniversary. It includes photographs of pastors who served during the life of the church, confirmation classes, and members.

BX8129 .E82P42 1985 Plett, Delbert F. The Golden Years (Steinbach, MB: D. F. Plett Publications, 1986), 365 pp.

This book commences with the origins and founding of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in 1812 and outlines its subsequent historical development to 1849.

BX8116 .P543x Plett, Delbert F. History and Events (Steinbach, MB: D. F. Plett Farms, 1982), 166 pp. Donated by Delbert F. Plett.

A miscellany of translated and annotated writings pertaining to the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde from 1866 to 1876. The book concludes with a section of twenty maps showing the Soviet Union, Nebraska, Kansas, and Canada which have relevance to the Kleine Gemeinde.

BX8129 .E82P423 1987x Plett, Delbert F. Profile of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde 1874 (Steinbaeh, MB: D. F. Plett Publications. 1987), 312 pp.

This book provides genealogical, socioeconomic, and historical reference material for two hundred Mennonite families who moved to Manitoba and Nebraska in the 1870s. There is an index to surnames.

BX8129 .E92P422 1986x Plett, Delbert F. Storm and Triumph (Steinbach, MB: D. F. Plett Publications, 1986), 337 pp.

A continuation of the history of the Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde from 1860-1875 concluding with its immigration to North America. All of Plett's books are extensively documented and suggest further reading on the Kleine Gemeinde.

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CS71 .R327 1988x Rasch, Ruth Vaagen. The Rasch, Maas, Kruckenberg Triology (Anaheim, CA: Shumway Family History Services, 1988), 385 pp. Maps, photos. Donated by author.

A detailed genealogy of three familes with an index to the surnames. Arzis, Bessarabia, was the origin of these families who later homesteaded in the Dakotas.

JX1547.3 .R3 1988x Raschhofer, Hermann, and Otto Kimminich. Die Sudetenfrage: ihre voelherrechtliche Ent-wicklung vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Gegen-wart (Muenchen: Olzog, 1988), 2nd, enlarged edition, 352 pp, pb. Donated by Dr. Sophie A. Welisch.

The term "Sudeten Germans" is applied to the Germans living in the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and the area of Silesia in the Sudeten [Sudetic] Mountain Range. Until 1918 they were part of Austria-Hungary. These areas were incorporated into the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, and the discrimination against the Sudeten Germans began. When Czechoslovakia was restored as a nation in 1945, all property of the Sudeten Germans was confiscated and the people were expelled from the area that had been their home for centuries. In West Germany they joined thousands of other displaced persons from Eastern Europe. This book analyzes their history from 1918 to the present in detail and includes a short chapter about Germans still living in Czechoslovakia. In German.

CS71 .R356 1986x Reimer, John B. Stammbaum des Johann A. Reimer, Margaretka Funk und Nachkommenschaft 1780-1985 (n.p., 1986), 98 pp. Donated by Dr. and Mrs. W. E. Hieb.

This family history has its roots in the Mennonite group founded in sixteenth-century Holland. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, they migrated to Russia, north of the Black Sea. Seeking better conditions in 1874, they migrated to Canada. In 1926—mistakenly fearing compulsory military training—they moved to Paraguay. The book, which is bilingual English/ German, has many family-group registers.

F737 .Y45S63x Sod 'n Seed 'n Tumbleweed; A History of the Huntley Project, Yellowstone County, Montana. Written and compiled by the Huntley Project History Committee. (Ballantine, MT: Huntley Project History Committee, 1977), 512 pp. Map, photos. Donated by Elaine Frank Davison.

This historical account is filled with information, pictures, and recollections of those who lived in the Huntley Project Irrigation District. Many of the families had come from the Volga Region.

NA705 .A493 1986 Upton, Dell, editor. America's Architectural Roots: Ethnic Groups That Built America (Washington, D.C.: The Preservation Press, 1986), 193 pp.

A pictorial compilation of the architecture of ethnic America from Native Americans to Ukrainians. Six pages are devoted to the structures of the German Russians.

F782 .W4W44 1982, v. 1, v. 2 Weld County, Colorado, Tombstone Inscriptions (Greeley, CO: Genealogical Society of Weld County, Colorado, 1982, 1988), 468, 778 pp. Maps.

Volume I begins with a brief history of Weld County. This is followed by the cemetery records of all cemeteries except the Greeley cemetery, ap-proximately 50 cemeteries. Concludes with an index for the cemeteries (some of which are known by various names) and an index of names of the people buried therein.

Volume II contains the cemetery records for the city of Greeley. Has a surname index.

BX4603 .E45V72 1983x Vrail, Patty. The History of St. Joseph's Parish, 1876-1983, Ellinwood, Kansas (Ellinwood, KS: St. Joseph's Parish, 1983), 79 pp. Photos. Donated by Ulanda Nichols.

A historical narrative with numerous photos. In addition there are lists of the priests, nuns, and early Ellinwood parishioners of the Mission Saints Peter and Paul. Also cemetery record for the first Catholic cemetery at the Mission Saints Peter and Paul (1871-1879) and cemetery record for the early settlers in Ellinwood, Kansas.

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THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN KIND

Kind was founded on the Wiesenseite (meadow side), or east side of the Volga River, in 1767. It belonged to the parish of Naeb, as did the neighboring villages of Naeb, Unterwalden (a.k.a. Meinhardt), Susannental (a.k.a. Winkelmann), Brockhausen (a.k.a. Hummel), Hockerberg (a.k.a. Bohn) and Orhvskoye (which had formerly belonged to the parish of Katharinenstadt). Each of these villages had its own church. The church in Orlovskoye was made of stone; the others were wooden.

This church was built in 1875 and had seating for 1200 people. By 1905 there were 2388 parishioners in Kind. The roof of the church was metal, and at one time the wooden exterior was painted white. The interior was also painted white. The altar had paintings of Christ and the Last Supper. The windows were of plain glass.

The organ was located in the steeple. One person played the organ and one person pumped the bellows. The older men and women sat in the front of the church, men on one side and women on the other. The young women sat at the back of the church, and the young men sat in the balcony.

This photograph is courtesy of Alexander F. Schneider, whose mother, Marie Katherine Schneider, nee Schumann, was born in Kind.

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END OF VOLUME 12, NUMBER 1, SPRING, 1989