Although I can't comprehend all the years that have gone by.
I clipped this article from the Soviet German-language paper "Neues Leben" in 1980.
Searching for our family in the USSR, I would clip any articles that mentioned our family name of Gerk.
This one article was a congratulatory letter to Albert Gerk on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Meaning, of course, that Albert was born in or around 1920 in the Volga German village of Koehler. I placed it in a file...hoping that one day the mystery of Albert Gerk would be solved.
Accessing more historical records the last few months, I was able to get a copy of Albert's birth record. Born September 5, 1920 to parents Johannes Gerk and Magdalena Immherr.
Albert passed away sometime in the late 1980's near the city of Karaganda...where thousands of Volga Germans were deported to in the fall of 1941.
40 years.
