The burial is my grandfather, Paul Gerk, who died June 3, 1954 at the age of 52.
The lonely figure standing there is my grandfather's best friend, Georg Stremel. Standing in an honour guard position, as both of the men were with the Knights of Columbus.
Georg Stremel was also from Josefstal, a little village near the Volga River, in Russia. Both the Stremel family, and my grandfather, escaped Russia at the same time, and even ended up in the same refugee camp in Frankfurt/Oder in Germany.
Both Georg Stremel and Paul Gerk will arrive in Canada at the same time, in April of 1924. Georg will write my grandfather and tell him to move from Saskatchewan to the Kelowna/Rutland area. In 1929 Paul Gerk, wife Elisabeth and their 2 children will do just that.
The Stremel and Gerk families would remain close all their lives. They had been through war, revolution, civil war, famine and escape, all together.
Best friends forever.
2 comments:
much better than episodes of 'Finding Your Roots" on PBS. I am reading your blog in reverse order. I too never knew my paternal grandfather, Georg Stremel - though his traits were apparently strikingly evident in each of his four sons. This is going to be an extraordinary journey tracing the focused work and study you have undertaken Ted; and allows our ancestral histories to live on in virtual eternity....
Thank you Wayne!
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