Another....

Another friend has passed away.  We were best friends around the age of 14 or so. Just attended the burial service.

Sigh.

Dancing in Limbo

 

I am really, really looking forward to this book.  The cancer journey is interesting.  When I was diagnosed, I was given a book and told to research it and then choose which treatment I wanted.

That's a big responsibility.

What if I choose "poorly", LOL.

Anyways, you have your treatment and then it's over.  To everyone.  You are supposed to think that way too.

The reality is I am not considered "cancer free" until around 5 years after my surgery, then it is really in "remission". My grade of cancer was quite high, which means it has a high rate of recurrence. I get checked every few months.

But no matter...I was wondering about my frame of mind...then someone on one of the cancer support groups recommended this book. I've bought it and hoping it will be helpful...although I am told by many it was so helpful to them on their cancer journey.

If you are on this journey, here's the link to the book.

40 years

 

Another mystery solved!

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.

40 years

 Time marches on.  

Going through old files when I was actively looking for our family. I would write anyone who has ties to our village in hopes of finding a link for my grandmother. This family has the same last name as my grandmother, although spelt slightly different...started writing back and forth in 1980.

Finally, after receiving Church records we can confirm that Val Deaser's grandfather and my grandmother's grandfather were brothers!

Val passed away in 2003 at the age of 90.

All these people I wrote to through the years are all gone now. Sometimes this is a lonely hobby.

My grandfather's sister, Anna Gerk

 

Sigh.

Another sad story. I set out to determine what happened to everyone in our family. My grandparents escaped from Russia in the 1920's. Thinking they would be able to keep in touch with their parents and siblings.

They were wrong.

After 1933 there was silence.

My grandfather's oldest sister, born in 1896, would marry Michael Kisser on October 23, 1912.

This picture of them both, with 2 of their children (Beata and Isabella), was taken in 1917.

Anna will die in the USSR in 1983.

I always wondered what happened to Michael. Now word from family in Germany confirms what we did not know.

A relative writes:

"Anna's first man (Michael Kisser) was arrested during the Soviet famine of the 1930s. In order to feed his family, he fetched grains of wheat from the field. The wheat grains were fried and eaten to survive. Once the police caught him. He was sentenced to 10 years for stealing Soviet property. Michael had a very soft heart. Prison, imprisonment and being separated from his family have taken a toll on him. Anna Gerk regularly visited him in prison. But the prison officials told her that Michael will not survive his imprisonment. Prison has broken him and his psyche badly. One day he died. He spent in prison no more than 1 or 1.5 years."

That was around 1933-1934.

Some more photographs from family:

Anna will marry again, Konrad Arnold, a widower. They will have 2 children, Josef and Anna. Konrad will suffer the same fate and will be arrested in 1938.

The great-grandson of Anna writes:

"In fact, we don't know much about Konrad Arnold. My grandmother was 1 year old when her father (Konrad Arnold) disappeared. One day people from the state security came and took him from his family and home away. Apparently, he was sent to Siberia. After that, his wife, Anna (Gerk) Arnold received only one letter from him. Nothing was ever heard from him again. Anna (Gerk) Arnold said to my grandmother (Anna Arnold) that Konrad was a shoemaker by trade. While working, he sang Christian songs that were normally sung in church. And apparently this was not allowed. The Communist Party and Stalin in particular had opposed religion."

 I want to say that my grandparents would have been heartbroken to know what was happening to their family. But I know their hearts were already broken from not knowing.

I write these stories, as sad as they are, so our family never forgets...and to honour those who have gone before us.

Shortcuts

Walked through my old neighborhood today....and from there to my old elementary school.  Wow.  Walking there and back was about 30 minutes.  As a kid it seemed like an eternity!

I was amazed at my "shortcuts". Different ways through, in those days, "spooky" back alleys...all to save just a few feet. I had a paper route there as well.

Again, it seemed like a never-ending route!

It's funny, perspective I mean.  I can look at this area and so well remember where I walked.  It's such a little space, in actuality.  Yet as a kid growing up...the distance seemed huge.

The hard part was, naturally, seeing our old house.  With all my heart I wish I could just go open the door and say Hi to Mom & Dad.

Now other families live there.  Making their own memories that they can access years in the future.

Granny Gerk Remembers

 

My grandmother, Elisabeth (Dieser) Gerk was an amazing lady. Extremely kind, she was the pillar of our family for so many years.

In 1979, at the age of 18, I took some time to interview her about her life in Russia.

I kept those recordings and digitized them years ago. In hopes that they will always be available, I've placed them here as well.

Funny,  there are scores of additional questions I wish I had asked her....but in those days we never dreamed the USSR would collapse, and archives thrown open.

I'm just so happy we can still hear her voice after so many years.

 

The start of looking back

 

It was a year ago when I got the call. 

The call I thought I was prepared for....the call I was in denial about.

Let's face it. No one can ever really be prepared for THAT phone call you get from a Doctor.

I was out walking when it came.  I can even show you on the mountain where I was standing when it came.

A year.

Quite frankly, as I write these words, I never thought I would still be here. 

Now a year has gone by.  I survived my surgery. My first test has come back showing no recurrence. No spread. It will be a process I go through every 6 months for the next 5 years.

So what did I learn?  What was it all for?

I wrestle with that. I'm not "out of the woods", I realize that.

I am trying to number my days. Does my life count? Did it count? How can I change what I need to change for the future....a future that I can't assume is there?

These are my thoughts in the night.

Josefstal History Book available online

 

In 2009, my cousin Alex and I had a book published in the German language.

This was a labour of love....our grandmother's were sisters...and we both had listened to all their stories as we grew up.

On my many trips to Russia, I was able to compile a large archive of historical documents from former Soviet archives....all dealing with the history of our little village.

Now out of print, the book has been made available online thanks to special permission from Lora Dreiser, Alex's widow.

I post this for posterity here.

1946 Family Portraits

 Years ago my grandmother gave me this envelope with some family pictures from 1946. I later asked my Aunt Mary why they had never made them into prints, and I was told it was because everyone in the family hated them. I'll never forget the look of polite horror when I presented my Aunt with an enlarged copy of one of the pictures. She was very polite.

1946. My Dad was almost 13 years old. My grandmother does not look well, but that is not surprising given how many times both she and my grandfather ended up in hospital with serious health issues. All relating to their life in Russia and what they went through...revolution, civil war, uprisings and famine and disease.

Great-Grandfather's signature

 

I've been continuing my work on a project, documenting all the birth, marriage and deaths for our family village. A new item became available in one of the Russian archives, well, "new" meaning 100 years old. It was the "Book of Deaths" for our village of Josefstal, 1919 to 1922. This book is extremely important for my quest to document the starvation deaths in our village from 1921. 

Anyways, there next to the title "Vorsitzender des Standesamtes", or "Chairman of the Registry Office" is the signature, in Russian, of J. Dieser.

J. Dieser is Johannes Dieser. 

This means that this is the signature of my great-grandfather.

My grandmother's Dad.

Sadly, he himself will pass away from complications after surgery in 1933....during the next great famine in Russia.

Vorsitzender des Standesamtes or "Chairman of the registry office" "J. Дизер" - J. Dieser

Starting my search...

 

As I started my hunt for family history, I examined a variety of possible sources and ways to glean information.  There was no access to computers when I started, so it meant looking through old and current phone books, as well as looking for places to make appeals for more info.

One such appeal was printed in Everton's genealogical helper - v. 33, no. 3 May/Jun 1979. A copy of that ad is here. When it appeared I was still 18 years old, having just started my quest.

On the hunt for an old Church

It was August of 1992. Our group had been in the Volga city of Saratov for just a couple days.  It was early in the morning, before breakfast....so I set out.

I was hunting for a Church.

Not just any Church. This was Saint Clements Catholic cathedral. I had heard that it was still standing.  I was curious...but there were other reasons.

Saint Clements was the Church that my grandmother and her Dad (my great-grandfather) had attended in the summer of 1925. They were both in Saratov to pick up my grandmother's passport...the document that would allow her to leave Russia and join my grandfather in Canada.

While in Saratov, they had both attended Mass in the cathedral.

We were staying at an old hotel, the Hotel Volga, located on Kirov Avenue. The street had become a pedestrian walkway, and there was talk about changing it's name back to the original, "German Street".

I set out on my quest...it really didn't take long...it was just a few short blocks from where we were staying.

But there it was.

The facade had been changed...the twin bell towers had been taken down, but the front had remained.

Examining the side of the building, you could make out the actual original architecture of the Church.

 You can even make out where the original stain-glass windows once were, now bricked up.

It was moving to go inside the former Church.  The lobby filled with theater vending machines.  Knowing that my grandmother and great-grandfather once stood where I stood.

"Stalins Vandalism" they call it. Efforts to declare the building a historical site and examine the possibility of restoring the Church have been ongoing.  It is felt that the building cannot be restored to its former glory. But it stands as a testimony to the past...and man's attempt to erase that past.

I am so glad I took the time to complete my quest.

80 Years: Deportation 28 August 1941

 Artist Viktor Hurr gets it right.  80 years ago today, the entire Volga German population was deported to Siberia.

That's right.  Close to 400,000 people sent to Siberia and slave labour thanks to the Communists of the USSR.

Indeed, anyone of German descent throughout Russia was sent to Siberia. 

That dear friends is how my wife came to be born in Siberia. Her parents and family sent away, just like that.

My great-grandmother was among the deported. Two of my great uncles will perish in the GULAG as well.

We remember.

Uncle Vanya: Recollections 1941 onwards...

 

Then in 1941 the war began and by decree of August 28, 1941 from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, thousands and hundreds of thousands were accused of sabotage and all Germans from all over the country were arrested and exiled to Siberia and Kazakhstan. They lost all their property and livestock. Only two or three remained at the collective farms, just a few. Everyone was evacuated to areas away from the front. This was at the end of August, beginning of September. Harvest of grain was going on in the fields, stacks of grain lay at the collection points. Almost all the implements, combines and tractors were taken for the war. Everything else was thrown to fate. People were taken on tractor carts pulled by horses to the railroad stations. My brother tried to take clothing and bedding and other property without the bed. Even the chairs were left. At the railroad station we were loaded into box cars which had carried grain and livestock. Fifty people in one car, without any conveniences. They took us to Omsk. Ten days we were on the road. From Omsk they took us to collective farms where they gave us a place to stay in dug-outs without windows and doors. We had to work at the collective farms until January 1942.

In January 1942 we men were mobilized by the Military Committee into the “Trudarmiya.” Only families with children and the elderly remained. In such conditions many died from the cold and starvation, but in the summer they gathered the women and children older than 3 years. There was a woman who had to leave 5 – 6 children to the winds of fate. We men were taken to Omsk in horse drawn carts to the closest radio station. We were sent to a club where we waited for 13 days in railroad cars. Then we were transferred to wooden cars and transported to the northern Ural mountains in the Trudarmiya to build the atomic factory.

On the way, which was 12 – 13 days, they kept us in barbed wire prison camps under military guard towers. They put us in two storey barracks, where we worked day and night almost naked and shoeless on the trees. In the camp were 13 barracks, but there was one bathhouse. People from only one barracks could go to the bath at a time and for sanitizing clothing. One evening we had to go to work. The bath house didn’t operate during the day. All 13 barracks had to go and eat for 13 days without disinfection.

We were first fed 600 grams of bread, then the rations were reduced to 500 grams. We had to go to work at 6:00 am. There was also only one small kitchen in the camp. In the morning, we had to wait 3 hours to get soup from this kitchen. To get soup fed to all the Trudarmiya people, the first barracks had to get up at 3:00 am to go to the kitchen. 

At 6:00 am we went through the gates under a strict count of everyone in the brigade. The counts had to be given to the office. We went to work under guard. It was 5 km to the site of construction. The rest of the people worked on dirt excavation, digging trenches 3 – 4 meters deep. It was winter work, and the temperature went to 40 below. The ground was frozen and the tools, like shovels, picks, mattocks, were iron and they broke.

The brigades were told how many cubic meters they had to excavate per day. If the brigade didn’t excavate as much as they were told, the “desyatnik” [brigade leader] would not give them the note, and without the note from the desyatinik, the brigade would not be allowed back in the camp in the evening. Literally after a month people began dying along the road on the way home in the evening. We had to leave them lying along the road in the snow until a cart pulled by a horse could collect them.

The brigade wouldn’t be allowed back in the camp until the watchman knew how many people were left. He would ask where the man was, and we would wait until they brought him. That is how people began to die.

At the end of 1945, at the end of the war, the Trudarmiya was finished. But then came the “spetskomandatura,” [Office of Special Populations] where we all had to be listed. They read to us and gave us a decree of permanent exile to sign where every month we had to report to the special office. We were forbidden to leave town without permission from the special office. Without permission, we could not even go to the railroad station, which was 3 kilometres from town, or to the next town, which was 15 km away. In 1965 the special office was eliminated, and we were given passports without the notation of “special population.” But we were forbidden to go to our homeland. Then it was determined that we had no claims on our home at our homeland.

In 1971 I went to my homeland, to my village of Josefstal. There wasn’t anything at all there. The village was completely liquidated. I found my father’s large wooden house in another village named Novo-Nikolaevka, which earlier was Marienfeld. It was turned into a club, and was locked. Many villages in our republic have been completely liquidated today.

Those villages which still exist are in sorry condition. We Germans were removed from the special population, but that special population gave us obstacles and under the special population department there were Germans who were not allowed to get any work. For example, we worked temporarily for one steam electric station, and attached to our factory was a permanent steam electrostation. Because this big electrostation worked all the time, they closed our temporary station and tore it down. All the bosses and technical workers were all transferred to the big station, except for us Germans. They didn’t give us any work. They wouldn’t let us work at the electrostation, but moved us from the factory. Only now are German workers given responsible positions at various factories. 

My memories about daily life.

I am Gerk, Ivan Georgievich, born February 22, 1911 in the village of Josefstal, ASSRNP, into a farming family. My parents were: father Gerk, Georg Georgievich, born 1868 in the village of Josefstal. He died on February 10, 1925 in Josefstal from intestinal cancer.  Mama was Gerk, Anna Margaretha Heinrichovna, born 1868 in the village of Josefstal. Her maiden name was Rowein. She died on September 16, 1957 in the city of Krasnoturinsk, Sverdlovsk oblast after a stroke. The parents had 11 children, 7 sons and 4 daughters. I was the youngest of those brothers, having been born in Josefstal, ASSRNP on February 22, 1911.

I spent my childhood in Josefstal, I studied in the village 4-year school, which was also in Josefstal. After school I worked on my parents’ farm. On October 24, 1929, I married Barbara Gerk, born 1909 in Josefstal. Her maiden name was Dieser. Until 1929 I farmed, then in 1930 I joined the collective farm, which sent me to courses at the tractor school. I completed courses at the tractor school in 1931-1932, and at the end of 1932 I went to the courses for the tractor brigade. At the end of 1933 I was drafted into the Red Army, where I was sent to school for junior commanders. I finished the courses with the rank of sergeant I served in the cavalry units until the beginning of 1938, when I was then chosen as the chairman of the collective farm where I worked until the end of 1939. Then I was chosen as the brigadier of a tractor brigade until the deportation in 1941. I was deported to the Omsk oblast in September 1941. At the beginning I worked as a combiner, then worked at a machine tractor station, as the brigadier in charge of tractor repair. On January 20, 1942, I was mobilized into the Trudarmiya, and went to work at the aluminum factory in the northern Urals. First I worked as a mechanic at the diesel electrostation, then I was transferred to the steam station as the master for repairs of the turbine department. From 1945 to 1953 I worked as the head of the turbine shop. In 1953 I was transferred to the aluminum factory where I worked as a master of repair work. I worked there until I retired in 1971.

In 1937 we had our daughter Valeria. She died at the age of 15 months in 1938. In 1939 son Volodya was born. Our second son, Eduard, was born in 1941, and he died in Siberia in 1942. When we were taken into the Trudarmiya, my family, mother, wife, and two aunts remained in the Omsk oblast at the collective farm. Later my brother Gottfried took my family to his place, because he lived in a different region 130 km. The move was made in February, on sleighs pulled by horses. On the way our second son Ewald contracted pneumonia and he died at the age of 16 months. In 1943 I was sent to the Omsk oblast section for the Trudarmiya, where I picked up my wife. My mother and son stayed with my brother. In 1946 I built a home in the city of Krasnoturinsk and brought my mother and son to the Urals. We lived there until August 1974, then we moved to Uzbekistan, to the city of Angren where we have lived until today. (Written Summer, 1989)

 (Thanks to Rick Rye for his translation)