A story that can now be told

Just shortly after the Russian revolution, during the time of the civil war in Russia, scores of young men found themselves trying to eliminate Bolsheviks that ruled them with an iron hand. While the Red Terror spread across Russia, one of my grandfather's older brothers, Jakob Gerk, fought alongside various groups of men trying to oust the commissars that ruled them. Communist officials sought to arrest Jakob, couldn't find him, so they arrested my grandfather instead. While languishing in prison, my grandfather heard a familiar voice...that of his brother Jakob who they had found after all! Not quick to correct an error, it took the forging of documents by Josef Hoffmann to arrange the release of all the men from our village. Near death, my grandfather and his brother returned to the village, with my grandfather having made the decision that he would flee Russia.

Uncle Jakob, for whatever reason, chose to stay. The next few years would see him marry and have children. One of those children, Lydia, we would meet at our family reunion.

The Stremel Family (Lydia Gerk Stremel on far right)

Lydia would fill in for us the missing information on what happened to this brave man. He would go out of his way to look for ways to feed his children, even as communist officials would make it more and more difficult for people to survive. "Sow what you have hidden" was the command from these cruel taskmasters, to people who had nothing. Thousands would starve in the 1930's (that's another story). Jakob would be arrested in 1938, charge with the crime of stealing grain to feed his children. He would be sentenced to 5 years in a labour camp, where he would die of starvation sometime in 1942. I say sometime, because our family never heard from him again. A fellow prisoner would later contact the family to let them know how Jakob perished. But this would be years after the fact.

But Jakob was a hero. I have one of the secret documents detailing communist officials disdain with Jakob and my family, dated 1938, from the archives. It's a fascinating read...accusing members of my family with anti-soviet activity...even my great-grandfather is accused of fighting against the Bolsheviks, and of course, our family was branded as "Kulaks".

One of my kids once suggested I worked on this hobby to show how we were related to royalty. How wrong that is! No royal blood flows in our veins. Instead, our family is made up of simple people who were, in my opinion, heroes. They loved their families, protected them, fed them, and then died for them. These are the stories I want to pass down to my children and their children.

I was proud to get a copy of a photo of Jakob and his wife, which I've posted here. It's amazing to see how our lives are made up of such stories, and that in the midst of hurt and tragedy, there are hopeful stories of faithfulness.