Kutschurgan Documentary

One-hour DVD documentary produced by the Germans from Russia Cultural Preservation Foundation, Fargo, North Dakota, copyright 2009 (Foundation website: www.grculture.org)

Available December 2009

This DVD documentary will highlight cultural heritage on German villages in the Kutschurgan District of old South Russia, now present-day southern Ukraine located near Odessa. The Catholic Germans from Russia who settled in the central Dakotas and Saskatchewan will be featured in this documentary.

Video footage will intermingle valuable comparisons with the six former Kutschurgan villages today near Odessa, Ukraine: Baden, Elsass, Kandel, Mannheim, Selz and Strassburg, including the people, churches, schools, and houses. Further filming at locations in North Dakota, South Dakota and Saskatchewan shares the story of where the Kutschurganers settled on the northern plains and prairies of North America.

This cultural heritage program is important to show: 1) the resilience of a people in overcoming adversity; 2) determination of a people to succeed; 3) ingenuity of a people to adapt and incorporate traditions and techniques of another culture to their own; and 4) faith of a people, which sustained them through wars, droughts, famines, prejudice, and even a police state.

The Kutschurgan documentary will portray both distinctive and common aspects of history and culture experienced by the Germans from Russia, so future generations can know what colonist and pioneer life was like in "the old days."

Iron crosses near Allan, Saskatchewan.	Farmers working in the fields near the village of Elsass.
Church of the Assumption in the former Black Sea German village of Selz, Kutschurgan District, South Russia (today Limanskoye, near Odessa, Ukraine). Click here for more information.	Tour members inside the former Catholic church in Mannheim, Kutschurgan District (today Kamenka, Ukraine).