Remembering Volhynia

By Irene Nickelburg

A compelling story of tragedy and triumph, a passionate true account of two families' struggles to survive the conflagration that was WWII.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Irene Nickelburg
• Release date: Nov 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9780989857895

Irene Nickelburg

Irene Nickelburg was born in Allied occupied Germany after WWII and immigrated to America aboard the General Langfitt as a young child, living first in Iowa City, Iowa and then in Cleveland, Ohio. She assimilated easily into the American way of life, graduated from college, and became a teacher.Irene was forty-five years old when she stumbled upon the word “refugee” in an old newspaper article describing her family’s relocation to the U.S. That was the catalyst that sparked her interest in her family history and sent her on this epic journey to discover her roots.

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FOREWORD

I acquired the pieces of the enigmatic puzzle that made up my parents’ life story over a period of 50 years. As a young child growing up in post WWII Germany, I often overheard my parents’ private whispered conversations. Their tone was somber. Words were interspersed with tears as painful memories from some other life surfaced. I lacked the capacity to understand the scope of their suffering.

I had what seemed to me to be an uneventful, normal childhood. I always felt loved and cared for within the folds of my small family. I always had plenty to eat, nice clothes to wear, and even owned expensive toys. I came to America with my family aboard the General Langfitt in 1956 and settled quickly into the American way of life. It was easy to pick up the new language and the new customs. In no time at all I was just like every other kid on the block. I grew up, graduated from college, got married, had children and worked—first as a history teacher and then as a special education teacher. We enjoyed a comfortable middle class life.

Then, one Saturday morning in 1990, as I made the usual phone call to my aging parents in Ohio, my father informed me with great excitement that I had a brother. I had a brother named Paul who had been repatriated from Kazakhstan and was now living in Giessen, Germany with his wife and two children.

My father went on to explain that Paul had made an extensive search through the International Red Cross in order to find him. His own searches with the Red Cross had always been a failure, a dead end. My father was overjoyed to have lived long enough to meet his son and learn about the rest of his family! Paul was able to fill-in-the-blanks for all those lost years sharing the details of the lives of his first wife, his parents, and his four sisters, all presumed to have perished after WWII. They had all been sent into exile to Kazakhstan. My eighty year old father was overcome with emotion as he began to explain this miraculous news. For nearly fifty years he had longed for answers to questions about his family.

Arrangements were made for Paul and his wife, Lilli, to come to Ohio to meet the rest of our family. The day of their arrival at the airport came and we gathered at the gate to greet them. As we stood waiting, I looked over at my father, whom I loved so dearly, and thought about how blessed I had been to be his child and know a father’s unwavering love. What trepidations must Paul be feeling at this moment. He need not have worried. He already had a place in our hearts.

And then, there they were—Paul and Lilli dressed in their Sunday best. There was an uncanny family resemblance and I recognized him immediately. We embraced and kissed. It was so natural. We walked arm-in-arm to our car and drove home to the feast that our mother was preparing for us. After the lavish meal, Paul lugged his heavy suitcase into the living room and began to distribute the presents he had brought all the way from the Soviet Union; a hand carved chess set, a fish-shaped decanter set, and two exquisite silver samovars. What extravagant gifts!

The following year my two children and I visited Paul in Germany and met the rest of his extended family. In 1993, my father’s youngest sister, Nina, came to Ohio for a month-long visit from Lithuania with her husband Jonah. She only spoke Russian which made communicating with her more difficult, but I liked her nevertheless and was happy that my father had reconnected with his family. Three other sisters were still living in Kazakhstan and he was now able to send them care packages and money to help out.

Several years later, Paul and Lilli took me to Lithuania, in the former Soviet Union, to meet the Nickelburg cousins, Aunt Nina’s children. They were industrious people working hard to get established in a new country after being repatriated from Kazakhstan. When I walked into the living room of their beautiful stone house, I was flabbergasted to see a large picture of Half Dome in Yosemite on the wall. We also have a large print of Half Dome by Ansel Adams on our living room wall. It was a serendipitous moment.

The irony of our family history was startling to me. These people had lived their entire lives in abject poverty, but had been surrounded by a large, loving extended family, while we had lived in affluent America, yet without a single close relative. Which is the greater poverty?

My father passed away in 1995 and my dear mother came to live with us in New York, bringing with her the entire documentation of their struggle to flee the Stalinist reign of terror. But with family and job commitments, I didn’t have time to look through all the paperwork that was saved in her drawer.

Knowing how lonely she was after spending so many years together with my father, I made a point of having a little Kaffee Klatsch with her nearly every day. During those private times together, she began to confide her most painful memories to me and I recorded many of those conversations. I learned a lot from her during those private talks. I learned that time does not heal all wounds. Some wounds are so deep, that just like a piece of shrapnel, they can cause excruciating pain when re-examined.

I once took my mother on a Sunday afternoon outing to the Schuyler Mansion on the banks of the Hudson River near Schuylerville, New York. We were taking a guided tour of this early 19th century residence when my mother began to cry.

Mom, I said, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?

She answered that the kitchen reminded her of their farm in Ukraine before the communists took it away. The butter churn, the implements, and most of all, the spinning wheel looked just like the ones they had owned so long ago. Her family had lived on that farm in the 1920s, not the 1820s. What primitive conditions those must have been!

In 2003, my mother was able to escape the harsh winters of upstate New York and go live with my sister in sunny Arizona. I was left to clean out her drawers and sort through the belongings she left behind. That’s when I rediscovered the documents she had been saving for nearly sixty years. These documents, my conversations with my parents, my brother Paul, my Aunt Nina, my cousin Ingrid, my cousin Erika, my sister Gretel, numerous other relatives and my own childhood memories are the sources for this story.

Wie der Wind die Blatter auf und nieder weht,

Und im nahen Wirbel auseinanderdreht,

So weht das Schicksal die Menschen fort,

Fuhrt sie hier zusammen und zerstreut sie dort.

—Author Unknown

As leaves drifting in the wind,

And tempest tossed, fling wide and far,

So fate sends mankind away,

Driving together here,

And scattering apart another day.

Translated by Irene Nickelburg

Brief History

of German Settlements in Russia

The Volga Germans

People of Germanic origin lived along the Baltic Sea for centuries. Their settlements ebbed and flowed like the tides with the different political winds that blew across the region. Ruled in turn by Sweden, Lithuania, Prussia, Russia, and Poland, they adapted to the prevailing civil authority and even flourished. The Golden Age for these northern European Germans, however, began when a minor princess from Stettin in Pomerania, ascended to the imperial throne of Russia as Catherine the Great.

Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of Russia, following an established precedent, issued an edict on July 22, 1763 inviting foreigners to settle in her realm. Russia had vast unpopulated border regions, acquired through wars with its neighbors, occupied primarily by nomadic tribes. It would serve her new country well to fill these fertile lands with hardworking, industrious peasants from Western Europe, especially from Germany, her own native land. The manifesto spelled out the rights and privileges of prospective settlers. These rights and privileges were especially designed to appeal to those ambitious individuals who felt thwarted by the restrictions imposed in their own country.

Some of the major points contained in this Manifesto were the right to establish their own self-governed autonomous communities; to pursue their chosen professions; freedom of religion; the right to establish their own schools, speak their own language and practice their own customs; and most importantly, exemption from military service and from paying taxes for thirty years.[fn 1. Walters, George J., Wir Wollem Deutsche Bleiben, 1993, Halcyon House Pub.]

So why not populate these regions with Russia’s indigenous people? The reasons were quite simple. At the time of her accession to the throne in 1762, Russia was a backward, primitive land that lagged behind Western Europe economically, scientifically, and culturally. It had a population of about twenty million people of which ninety percent were serfs. These serfs worked the lands of the nobility, the church, and the crown without any legal rights. They were a half-savage lot, ignorant, superstitious, and lazy. Their status, similar to that of a slave, bound them to the land on which they worked. They were bought and sold from one landed estate to another and worked the soil with primitive techniques. They lived in squalid hovels with their animals on a meager subsistence level. Denied an education or the opportunity for improvement, they were indolent and pessimistic. [fn 2: Ibid.] Catherine II reasoned that bringing settlers in from Western Europe would upgrade the general population.

The first major migration took place between 1764 and 1767, during which time more than seven thousand families, an estimated 27,000 people settled along the banks of the Volga in the region known as Saratov. Altogether, 104 villages—103 German and one French—were founded during this period. Additional settlements on the Volga were also founded at this time by the Moravian Brethren and Mennonite sects, pious Protestant groups who welcomed the religious freedoms Catherine promised.[fn 3: Ibid]

After initial years of hardship, most of the colonists adjusted to a life of farming and began to prosper. The result was a population explosion due to the need for additional manpower to perform the hard physical labor required to cultivate this virgin land. The population of this region grew from 23,000 people in 1769 to 238,000 by 1865. Altogether, the Volga colonists founded 68 additional colonies on crown lands in the years from 1848 to 1863 to accommodate this growth. [fn 4: Ibid.]

By the mid-1870s, the attitude of acceptance toward the German settlers began to change. The Russian upper classes became resentful of the influence of the Baltic Germans in public affairs. The Russian peasants resented the special privileges that had been promised to the Germans in perpetuity. They further resented their extensive landholdings and their overall wealth. Then, additionally, the unification of Germany in 1871 was perceived as a threat to the Slavic people of Europe. Publicists began accusing the Germans of disloyalty and treachery. They stood accused of building a German state within the Russian state.

At this same time, after decades of discussion and debate, the Russian military was about to undergo a major reorganization. In January, 1874, patterned after the Prussian system, a universal compulsory military draft was instituted for all male subjects of the empire. This included all ethnic minorities living within its borders. Naturally, the ethnic Germans felt betrayed by the empty promises made to them years earlier. Vigorous protests and complaints went unheeded and finally a new emigration fever began to spread, particularly among the Volga colonies.

Coincidentally, previously unsettled lands in the United States became available as the Indians of the Great Plains were subdued and put on reservations, and as the railroad punched its way through the wilderness to the Pacific coast. Land for settlement was also being offered in Canada and in South America, specifically in Brazil and Argentina. Special inducements, similar to those offered by Catherine II, were made to attract industrious foreigners and another mass migration was begun. Hundreds of German Russian families packed their belongings once again and set out for greener pastures in the Americas.

The Baltic Germans

The Baltic regions of Ingria, Esthonia, and Livonia had been ruled by German noblemen since the twelfth century. These noblemen first came to this region as merchants and missionaries, converting the still pagan natives to Christianity. Although they remained a minority of the population, they made the Baltic coast predominantly Germanic in law and custom, even during those periods when they fell under Swedish or Polish rule. It was Peter the Great (1689-1725) who defeated Sweden for control of this region in order to gain access to the sea. There, at the mouth of the Neva River, he built his capital, St. Petersburg.

The German land barons, the land owners of the region, continued to maintain their positions of power in government, trade and industry. The Baltic Germans were a group very different from the German peasants who settled in other parts of Russia at the request of Catherine II. They preceded the Russians as inhabitants and were the landowners and ruling class. As subjects of the crown, they served faithfully in the army, the government, and the diplomatic corps, wielding influence much in excess of their small numbers.

Around the time of Germany’s unification in 1871 and its emergence as a great power in Western Europe, the attitude of Russia’s elite began to change toward the Baltic Germans, becoming more hostile and contemptuous. In the 1880s anti-German propaganda began to spread and now received official support. Baltic Germans were removed from important positions in the army and in government. A process of Russification was begun to replace the age-old institutions of the Baltic nobility. Russian procedures became the official practices in education, government, and jurisprudence. It was the end of Germanic law and language in these provinces.

In 1905-06, these provinces were the scene of fierce fighting in a struggle for peasant land rights resulting in a civil war between the landless peasants and the wealthy landowners. The Russian nobility, fearing a similar conflict by its own peasants, sided with the German landowners and brutally put down this rebellion. Baltic Germans had some of their previous rights restored and were once again permitted to serve in the government, which they did faithfully until 1917 and the abdication of the Czar.

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania enjoyed a brief period of autonomy from 1918 to 1940. This period of self-rule ended when Hitler and Stalin reached an accord in 1939 and divided Poland and these Baltic States up between them. With the Soviet Union now in control of these countries, its German population began an immediate resettlement to Nazi occupied Poland, an area known as Warthegau. Their resettlement here proved to be only temporary as the Red Tide that washed over Eastern Europe compelled them to flee ever westward to escape the brutal communist regime.

The Black Sea Germans

During her thirty-four year reign (1762-1796), Catherine the Great made it a priority to expand Russia’s borders westward and southward. First, she conspired with Austria and Prussia to divide the unwieldy kingdom of Poland, along her western border. Next, she went to war with the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) in the south for access to the Black Sea, an important ice free port whose access would benefit both trade and commerce. Subsequent wars with Turkey increased her land holdings in the region and resulted in the construction of the modern port city of Odessa.

To stabilize these regions, once again Western Europeans were lured with enticing promises to settle here, the majority coming from Germany during the years 1801-1825. Not coincidentally, these were the years of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, a time of great suffering in central Europe as Napoleon’s armies cut a swath of destruction along a massive path ruining both commerce and industry.

By 1810, there were no less than eighty new colonies in the region, settled by farmers who had come to escape the ravages of war. In 1813, another large- scale effort was made to recruit settlers to the newly acquired region of Bessarabia. By the end of 1816, 1,500 families had founded twelve additional German colonies in this region of the Black Sea. By 1848, there were more than two hundred colonies with nearly 10,000 families and 50,000 to 60,000 people, though many of these were daughter settlements from the original colonies.[fn 5: Ibid]

The Volhynian Germans

The kingdom of Poland struggled to survive, sandwiched between three powerful monarchies who coveted her lands—Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Over the years, Poland would be partitioned three times among these three greedy powers and the part ceded to Ukraine, known