"The devil got Stalin"

Growing up my grandmother would tell me the story of a conversation she had with my grandfather on the day Stalin died.

For the record, Stalin died on this day, March 5, 1953.

My grandmother went out to the orchard where my grandfather was working...at this time of year he was probably pruning.

She told my grandfather: "Paul, the devil got Stalin!". My grandfather's response was "No....we must never say that....it is not our place...it's up to God".

Imagine!  Here was a man who could have hated Stalin with a passion, given his entire family was shipped off to labour camps in Siberia..with no word if they were dead or alive.  And he still allowed the final decision about the fate of Stalin to be placed exactly where it should be...in the hands of God.

That keeps something my Dad used to say to me in perspective.  Dad was all about "Everyone has to answer for himself".  I saw my Dad live that out in his own life time and time again...even when he had good reason to be angry or upset over some way he was treated.

When my Dad was in the hospital for the last time, shortly before he died, folks would come and visit and if the discussions moved towards someone who had wronged him, he would still say...."Everyone has to answer for themselves."

These two men...my grandfather and father...I am in awe of them. How they lived their faith...no matter what.

Stuff

When both your parents are gone, the difficult task of going through "stuff", or personal posessions, has to take place.

I was starting to look at things and say "These don't belong to me, they're Mom's.  I don't want them!", or, "I shouldn't have these, they don't belong to me!".

Funny.  My sister was thinking the same.

We found the odd thing of Dad's too.  It's been rough.  Finally, everything was cleaned out of the apartment by February 13th. I guess it helps to have a deadline.

Embrace grief.  That's what I've been told. 

Both parents are gone now.  A strange feeling indeed.

And at the end of the day, I miss them both so much.

The Great Story....

The things that began to happen...were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.       -C.S. Lewis: The Last Battle

A difficult season once again....

The fall of 2013 started out like any other...then, unexpectedly, my Mom took ill...and was diagnosed with cancer on November 9th, 2013.

Oh how I hate that word.

In 1992, cancer took the life of my Dad at the age of 59. My Mom and the rest of us were devastated.

We would have 2 months with Mom. We hoped and prayed we would have 2 years...but it was not to be.

On January 9th, 2014, in the early morning, my Mom, Margaret Gerk, went home.

Oh how I miss them.

In an age where everyone complains about their parents, and this and that...I want to tell anyone who will listen that I had good parents.

Strict, yes.  But they loved us.  The took care of us. They were the best parents anyone could ask for.

How I miss them.

Until we meet again!

Remembering a friend....

There are people that come into your life and you never forget them.

When I was 6 years old, my best friend was a chap named Robert Dorssers.  We called him Robbie.

I remember Robbie in the school yard, being carried around pretending he was Superman.

I remember being invited to his house for his birthday, April of 1967.  We played with his GI Joe in the bathroom sink.

I remember how kind his parents were.

Sadly, I remember the day he died....hit by a car while riding his bike.  I was at the Church...receiving my first communion with my Dad...when I noticed one of Robbie's brothers walking toward the Church...letting our Priest know that Robbie was in the hospital...and could he come quick...

That was June 24th, 1967.

June 27th, 1967...my birthday, I was a pallbearer at Robbie's funeral.

Through the years....as I have had my own children, I have often thought of Robbie.  I can't imagine the utter devastation the family must have gone through during this time.  Even as my own children struggled with life, including one needing major surgeries, whom we almost lost.

I can't imagine.

But I remember Robbie.  I just need to say that I have not forgotten him.  That his friends remember him.

The poem inscribed on the back of Robbie's funeral card seems abt:

Lord he was yours...

And not our own...

You have done us no wrong;

We thank you for the precious loan

Afforded us so long.

I do indeed look forward to seeing my friend again...

I have not forgotten you Robbie!

Our grandson: Carter Levi

Well, life has a way of getting out of control.  Earlier this year, we were blessed to have a new grandchild, courtesy of our daughter Becky and her husband Brandon.

Carter Levi arrived on the scene...and he has to be the happiest little boy on the planet!

He has a great Mom and Dad...so no wonder!

A great addition to the family...we are loving watching him grow and experience new things!

The Book Project: Done

After many, many years...the book is finally done.  There were so many kind people that assisted me in my quest...and I could not have done it without them.

I was 18 years old when I told my grandmother I would be writing a book about my grandparents...and what they went through to escape Russia.

It grew to include how the family even ended up in Russia, and now includes data on Gerk's all over the world.

Adventures?  I've had a few.  Working in former Soviet archives and even visiting the site of where my grandparents were born and raised, as well as standing in the abandoned cemetery where so many of my ancestors were buried.

I kept my promise.

Kimmy's Grad

So our dear daughter Kim has now graduated....here is a wonderful shot of my girls, minus Stephanie and Natalie....who were out of town at the time.

I love each and every one of them....and at this time I just want to say how proud we are of Kim and all her hard work!

You are More....

In Memory of Georg Gerk

 This is an example of what a typical file looks like of someone in the Soviet GULAG.  It is the file of an older brother of my grandfather, Georg Gerk.

I wrote about Georg in a previous post.  This past week we received an official copy of his labour camp file.  Imagine....after all these years...through the wonder of technology, we now have a copy of a secret file that authorities of the day never dreamed would be made public!

My previous post about Georg stated:

Georgiy Georgievich Gerk Was born the 27th of December 1897 in the village of Josefstal, near the Volga River in Russia.

He was an older brother to Paul Gerk, my grandfather.

Married 6th of January 1916 in Josefstal to Kristina Rausch. They had 4 children, Georg born 1916; Jakob born 1927; Johannes 1929 and Elisabeth born 1937.

Georg had moved to the Caucasus area of Russia in order to work and provide for his family.  He was, as all Volga Germans, caught up in the mass deportation of Russian Germans to Siberia and slave labour in August of 1941.

Here he was sent to the Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Then he was transferred to the “Chelyabmetallurgstroy” (Chelyabinsk Metal Factories) - a mass labour camp that had over 40,000 prisoners.

As was the case with another brother named Jakob Gerk, and written about here, our family had no details about his death.  Just one of the nameless victims of communism who was lost in Russia's vast Gulag.

But, alas, there is no photograph of Georg Gerk.  I have recently found some of his grandchildren who have emigrated to Germany and asked them if they have anything.  I will post the response here.  In the meantime, all we have left is a complete set of fingerprints as part of his GULAG file.

A copy of the complete file can be found here.

All that remains of a life lived.

Our family remembers this hero.

Our Family in Bogoslovlaga Labour Camp

This Labour Camp had over twenty-thousand Volga German inmates, all performing slave labour for the government of the USSR.

This one camp saw over 18 male members of the Gerk family live and work there.  They included:

Gerk, August Ivanovich born 1923 Kamenskii

Gerk, Adam Johannevich, born 1913 Iosefstal

Gerk, Georg Mateasovich, born 1912 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Georgovich, born 1911 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Jakoblevich, born 1911 Marienfeld

Gerk, Johannes Johannesovich, born 1903 Keller

Gerk, Johannes Mateasovich, born 1900 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Iosefovich, born 1908 Marienfeld

Gerk, Iosef Mateasovich, born 1910 Iosefstal

Gerk, Iosef Robertovich, born 1923 Iosefstal

Gerk, Iosef Jakobevich, born 1909 Marienfeld

Gerk, Iosef Iosefovich, born 1921 Kamenskii

Gerk, Klementii Iosefovich, born 1908 Pfeifer

Gerk, Kospar Michaelovich, born 1904 Marienfeld

Gerk, Nikodemus Petrovich, born 1913 Iosefstal

Gerk, Robert Davidovich, born 1909 Iosefstal

Gerk, Franz Ivanovich, born 1912 Pfeifer

Gerk, Emanuel Iosipovich, born 1923 Pfeifer

The camp was located near the Russian town of Krasnoturinsk, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. 

Source: Kirillov V.M. , Kuz'mina P.M. (ed.)
GEDENKBUCH: «Kniga pamiati nemtsev-trudarmeitsev Bogoslovlaga. 1941-1946»

Our Family: KULAKS!

Have worked on some more on the family history book. This is what we would call a denunciation document. It declared, after an investigation, that my great uncle, Jakob Gerk, was a "Kulak" from a "Kulak" family, and listed the evidence...my great-grandfather, Jakob's father, was complicit in anti-soviet activities, he had land, they had about 5 people working for them, and Jakob was regularly writing my grandfather in Canada. Under socialism, where all people were to be equal...some were more equal than others. Basically our family were labelled "enemies of the people". Jakob was also involved in some of the insurrections against Soviet power. Shortly after this document was created, my great-uncle was arrested for stealing grain to feed his children. He was sent to prison, and, in 1941, sent to the Chelyabmetallurgstroy camp were he died within just a few short weeks.

Last Letters & the Great Silence

Now working on the chapter "Last Letters & the Great Silence" An analysis of the last letters we received from my great-grandmother in January of 1933. Her name was Maria Eva (Heit) Dieser. She was pleading for help to buy food. Soviet postal authorities stole the money and letters my grandparents sent. She starved to death in August of 1933. There was then a 51 year period of silence, as the family were told they would be shot if they corresponded with our family in Canada.

My grandmother did not find out until 1984 that her Mom had starved in 1933.

All the letters are pretty much like this one...they had two things on their minds...thanking God for health and survival January 5, 1933. Written in old German dialect, it reads:

May God grant you warmest greetings from your mother and mother-in-law to you children Paul and Elizabeth and your two children. I thank the dear Lord I am still halfway healthy and hope this letter finds you as healthy as when you left me. Further I want to tell you where the father has gone with the two children. They have gone further into the Kavkas (ed. note: Caucasus) and I am home alone. Dear children, conditions are difficult here with respect to food. Times are tough dear children. Yes dear children we are having a hard time getting food. Some people have had money sent to them. For one coin (taler) one pound of flour can be bought in Kamyshin. If you could come to my aid could you send me 5 (taler) which would give us five pounds of flour. Perhaps then I wouldn't starve to death, dear children. Again I ask if you can help me so that I don't have to starve. Now I will close this letter and greet you again and ask you to write quickly

Currently Reading.....

This book has been a great help as I have worked on my family history book.  When I started this project about 30 years ago, I had very little original research material.  Soviet archives were closed....top secret, and I never would have imagined that it would ever change.

 Now, after a number of trips to the former USSR since 1992, I can say that I am amazed at what material I was able to collect!  But how to present it, and back up each and every thing I want to say?

 So I made the decision to basically not say anything in the book unless I could produce a document to back it up.  More difficult when dealing with Soviet era documents.

Dave Chang writes:

In the internal evidence test we determine whether the contents of the document itself point towards its reliability or otherwise. According to historian and legal scholar J. W. Montgomery, “historical and literary scholarship continues to follow Aristotle’s dictum that the benefit of doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself. This means that one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualifies himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.”

 My cousin Alex, who was born in the former USSR, once told me to be careful when using Soviet-era documents, because so many of them were tainted by false accusations against people.

 So  when using some of them, I have to use the principle of "internal criticism".  That has been helpful.  I've used a document that is basically a transcript of a denunciation of one of my grandfather's brothers.  In it, it lists "anti-soviet" activities as the reason our family were so bad, and then how much land we owned.  It also gives a list of names of people that used to work for our family.  So...what do I do with this? Well, because of my numerous interviews with my grandmother, I can confirm at least one name of a person working for our family is accurate. This means that the rest of the document has a high probability of being accurate, also because of the fact I also knew that my great uncle was indeed involved in various insurrections to try to usurp communist power.

Fascinating.

Our Family book...finally after 30 years!

Some things just take a long time to complete.  When I started this project over 30 years ago, I had no idea I would be able to stand in the lonely cemetery that contained our ancestors, or be able to work in former Soviet archives to collect information on our family.

Not surprisingly, I was able to confirm many of the stories my grandmother told me of her life in the "old country".

I'll provide ordering information when it is available, as well as price. For those family members who think I'll be making a ton of money on this...all I can say is "Ha!". You will never know how much time it took to compile this history.

The book is schedule to be published in June of 2012. The final product may or may not look like this, but I'm leaning pretty close to keeping it like this. It will be over 100 pages, and will have a roll call of the descendents of the first Gerk to Russia, Sebastian Gerk....about 3-thousand people.  Also included will be lots of photographs and copies of old documents from Russian archives.

I truly hope folks, especially my family, will find this of interest.

Another victim of the Gulag....

Georgiy Georgievich Gerk Was born the 27th of December 1897 in the village of Josefstal, near the Volga River in Russia.

He was an older brother to Paul Gerk, my grandfather.

Married 6th of January 1916 in Josefstal to Kristina Rausch. They had 4 children, Georg born 1916; Jakob born 1927; Johannes 1929 and Elisabeth born 1937.

Georg had moved to the Caucasus area of Russia in order to work and provide for his family.  He was, as all Volga Germans, caught up in the mass deportation of Russian Germans to Siberia and slave labour in August of 1941.

Here he was sent to the Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Then he was transferred to the “Chelyabmetallurgstroy” (Chelyabinsk Metal Factories) - a mass labour camp that had over 40,000 prisoners.

As was the case with another brother named Jakob Gerk, and written about here, our family had no details about his death.  Just one of the nameless victims of communism who was lost in Russia's vast Gulag.

No more. We received word this week from the official archives in the Chelyabinsk Region, of the card file on Georg Gerk.  While, at this time, this is all the information we can glean, it does offer a glimpse into Georg's ultimate fate.

The card reads: (Thanks Olga for the translation!)
Georgiy Georgievich Gerk, born 1897, Place of birth – Autonomic Soviet Socialist Republic (autonomic t republic Germans – Volga region, Kamensky area, Iosifstal village). Social background – peasant, nationality – German, education – 4 grades, not a party member, last place of residence is Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Profession – carpenter, woodworker. No criminal record.
The card is filled out on August 6, 1942.

The text on the back of the card: arrived 17/03/1942, died 05/03/1943.

There might be additional information in a file, and we are requesting that. Georg is one of the brother's whom we have no photographs. To remember him I've posted a photograph of his wife, Kristina Gerk, and child, probably son Georg.

The hunt continues for his photograph.

Seconds - I Am Second

Seconds - I Am Second

Father's Day

Sand in the Gears:

There’s certainly no distinction to breeding, and so Father’s Day must be intended to celebrate something other than one’s ability to procreate. It began in tragedy, which is maybe the truth of too many things, the world’s way of daring us to bring beauty from ashes. Two hundred and ten fathers erased from their homes, one thousand children orphaned in a day, and all anyone could do — all any of us can ever do — was remember.

So on Father’s Day we remember what our fathers have done for us, and unless we and they are saints, we remember what they have not done for us, and so perhaps on Father’s Day we forgive, too. We forgive, and we pray, those of us who are fathers, that we might be forgiven as well, some day, for the thousand little neglects, and the dozen graver sins. We pray forgiveness for the stretches of time when we are not fully their fathers, when instead we yearn to belong more fully to ourselves, forgetting that you can never love richly and deeply so long as it is yourself you seek.

This morning I huffed atop the rickety elliptical machine in our basement, when Isaac stumbled into the room, bed-headed and bleary-eyed, to tell me happy Father’s Day. Then he set himself to love’s labor, making art and then cleaning the art table, two things he knows will make his father and mother happy. He did it smiling, and with intention, and I saw in his face what it must be to fully enjoy giving oneself to others.

As always, I am humbled by the open-heartedness of these sweating, striving, stinky little boys. I don’t know if I was ever that way, but it is the way I would like to be, and so I stretch toward this goodness I see in them, even as they look to me to learn how they should live.

Truth

1 - God is always with me. I will not fear.
2 - God is always in control. I will not doubt.
3 - God is always good. I will not despair.
4 - God is always watching. I will not falter.
5 - God is always victorious. I will not fail.
-Always True: God's 5 Promises for When Life is Hard by James MacDonald

Carolyn Arends Contemplates Her Own Death, and Yours

Carolyn Arends Contemplates Her Own Death, and Yours

Going down singing: Why we should remember that we will die.

Carolyn Arends | posted 4/18/2011 12:00AM Christianity Today

The day before he died, my father wore what his doctors called the "Star Wars mask"—a high-tech oxygen system that covered most of his face. Pneumonia made his breathing extremely labored, but that didn't keep him from chatting.

"Pardon?" my mom would ask patiently, trying to decipher his muffled sounds. Exasperated, he'd yank off the mask, bringing himself to the brink of respiratory arrest to ask about hockey trades or complain about the hospital food.

After several hours, he gave up on conversation. He started singing.

"What are you humming?" my mom asked. My dad repeatedly tried to answer through the mask before yanking it off again. "With Christ in the Vessel, I Can Smile at the Storm," he gasped. "Wow," murmured my mom, before singing it with him.

My dad learned "With Christ in the Vessel" at Camp Imadene in 1949, the summer he asked Jesus into his 8-year-old heart. Six decades later, hours before his death, that silly old camp song was still embedded in his soul and mind, and he was singing it at the top of his nearly-worn-out lungs.

I have never liked thinking about my own death. But I've considered it enough to know I hope I go down singing, or at least speaking or thinking, something about Jesus. 

I suppose that is why I found myself sobbing on an airplane while reading Margaret Guenther's The Practice of Prayer. In one section, Guenther discusses the Eastern Christian discipline of continuously repeating the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." She reports her own efforts to incorporate the practice into her daily life, even sizing up the logs she chops for firewood by the number of Jesus Prayers she'll likely get through before they are cut.

I love the idea of having such truth-giving words ingrained into my routine. But here's Guenther's line that really got to me: "I hope that by imprinting [the Jesus Prayer] on my subconscious, it will be with me for the rest of my life, especially at the end, when other words will perhaps be lost to me."

Guenther, a former professor at General Theological Seminary in New York, is an accomplished and educated woman. Yet she is humble and practical enough to do what she can to prepare for her own death—and for the possibility that even before her death, her mind might fade into dementia. In a culture consumed with denying mortality, here is a woman who plans for it, in a way that affects the minutiae of her life now.

Remembering our own mortality helps reorder our priorities; a race toward a finish line has a different sense of urgency than a jog around the block.

Many early Christian communities encouraged believers to engage in the spiritual discipline of considering their own deaths—not in order to create morbid fear, but to put this life in the proper perspective. Memento mori, medieval monks would say to each other in the hallways. "Remember your mortality," or, more literally, "Remember you will die."

Death unaddressed is the bogeyman in the basement; it keeps us looking over our shoulders and holds us back from entering joyously into the days we are given. But death dragged out from the shadows and held up to the light of the gospel not only loses its sting, it becomes an essential reminder to wisely use the life we have.

When we remember the mortality of those around us, they become more valuable to us. Madeleine L'Engle once noted that when people die, it is the sins of omission, rather than the sins of commission, that haunt us. "If only I had called more," we lament. Remembering a loved one's death before it happens can spur us into the sort of action we won't regret later.

And remembering our own mortality helps reorder our priorities; a race toward a finish line has a different sense of purpose and urgency than a jog around the block. When a believer acknowledges that he is headed toward death (tomorrow or in 50 years), he can stop expending the tremendous energy it takes to deny his mortality and start living into his eternal destiny, here and now. And he can be intentional about investing himself in the things he wants to be with him at the end, much the way Guenther seeks to make the Jesus Prayer a permanent part of her psyche.

I don't want to romanticize death. My friend Bernie calls it "the Great Gash," and I must confess that on the six-month anniversary of my father's passing, the hole left by him is still gaping. 

But though death hurts, it is not the end. Though we mourn, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. And so I offer my dread of death to the Author of Life, asking him to help me to number my days rightly. I don't know how many I've got, but I want to use every one of them to get the truth about who Jesus is—and who I am in him—more deeply ingrained.

That's why I'm teaching my kids "With Christ in the Vessel." We sing it at the top of our lungs