Volk family reflections from Odessa, Ukraine
24 May 2009
Chorne More (Black Sea) Hotel
Odessa, Ukraine
Journey to the Homeland Tour: Odessa, Ukraine & Stuttgart, Germany
Sponsored by the Germans from Russia Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, Fargo
Our family travelled with Michael Miller and Elvira (translator/tour guide) to the villages of Mannheim, Selz and Kandel about one our north of Odessa.
We passed beautiful fields of wheat and barley and experienced rural life in this land of our ancestors. We arrived in the villages and were moved as we walked across the same soil that earlier Volks walked, visited churches where they were baptized and married–churches now mere ghosts of their earlier grandieur–mostly in ruin. We were saddened by the level of poverty that we saw and the poor prospects for further development in these rural communities. People still gather their water from wells, still have outhouses for bathrooms, and transportation is mostly by foot or horse. The people are subsistence farmers today with just enough land to grow crops to feed their families and a few goats and cows to provide milk and cheese. We wondered how different the villages might be today had the Germans not left the area when they did. We were moved by the friendliness of the people and inspired by the spirit of Frau Reisling with whom we had lunch and heard stories of her return to her ancestral village where she has restored the home her grandfather built. Her path to return included time in Siberia, Latvia and Austria. Frau Reisling knew personally Msgr. Singer–a relative of Wanda and Kay–and told stories of his visit to the village. We also sensed a sense of envy of the achievements of the Germans who left the Ukriane and came to America. We were reminded of the debt we owe to the courage of our ancestors who had the courage to pack up their families and venture into the unknown of the promise of the new land in America.
Mary Anne Ingenthron
Davis, California