Remembrances

I warned you, from time to time I would write here about our family going back a few years. Family will remember in 1989 when we brought our Uncle Vanya from Russia to visit for a month. He was the youngest brother of Grandpa (Paul) Gerk and had not see anyone from our side since 1925. In 1933 when the iron curtain slammed shut, he was not even allowed to write to us. Of course, the days and weeks of his visit were filled with "catching up", mostly getting dates of loved ones and when and where they died in Stalin's GULAG. It was bittersweet for Granny because she at last discovered when her parents died and how. One place that Uncle Vanya and many of our family were sent (in 1941) was the labour camp situated in Krasnoturinsk, near Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. I've got a book now that lists 4000 of the dead from this camp, all of German origin, who died in horrible conditions. The city now has a web page and they've even published some photos of the special memorial set up to commemorate the dead from this concentration camp (you can see the one here). It's an interesting story that will be in "The Book", you know, the one I never have quite finished! Honest...this next year...it will be done...I promise!!

I've already been overwhelmed with requests to do "look-ups", which is merely folks trying to piece together what happened to their loved one and grasp on to anything printed about the camps in hopes of closing a sad chapter of their families life. We're still trying to obtain copies of the original KGB files (no easy task). I think I'd like to be an archivist in heaven.

1989-Uncle Vanya with Andrew & Elissa