Some time ago I joined a Russian-German discussion group for a very short time, knowing that this group had been infiltrated and had been warned against me as "Nazi." I posted a few (in my opinion rather harmless) posts, but the hostility was such that it would have taken a lot of time and energy to overcome it - and while I had the energy, I didn't have the time.
So I left but swore I would return, because these people, by refusing to look at what happened to their German relatives in Russia, many of whom perished in large-scale ethnic cleansings, are sinning against them and their memory in a way that can only be called a disgrace.
About a year or so later an acquaintance of mine had much the same experience in that group. The moment my name as an ethnic writer was mentioned, the shrieking began and did not stop until she was rather rudely disinvited. I have seen some of the posts, and the same names keep coming up. I know who at least one of the infiltrators is - and let's just say that I am tracking him.
I have already run another one down who did similar disinformation work among several of the Mennonite newsgroups - and guess where it led to? The Jew Andrew Mathis, well-known to many of us, and notorious on the Net for his obscene posts and filthy language. This is the guy who will brag that he will call your employer and smear you - unless you tow the line!
Ignorance does have a price - these folks who are afraid of looking at their people's history for greater understanding are schlepping for the very enemy who has destroyed their kin.
I do not often cry, but the story below brought tears to my eyes. What happened to the Russian-German settlement called "Lichtental" (meaning Valley of Light) happened to hundreds and hundreds of places.
Here is one couple who tried to find their own roots:
While on an Elderhostel tour of Ukraine and Russia, my wife and I hired a driver and interpreter in Odessa and drove to Lichtental, the village of my Wolf ancestors. We had an incredible experience in visiting the village.
I had Dr. Roth's village map showing who lived in what house in 1942 and also when the village was established. When we came over the hill and looked into the valley where Lichtental resides, I knew it was it before the driver said we were there. The town looked just like the map and pictures.
All of the houses that were there in 1942 are still there, except a few have been upgraded with poured cement walls. My great grandfather's house unfortunately had just been torn down and a new concrete house built in its place. The rocks from the old house were still in the street in front of the house.
The Church is still there in all its glory, despite the fire that destroyed the roof and inside walls. The Church yard is still there, in the middle of the village. It is overgrown with weeds and orchard trees. It appears that people do not even walk across the Church yard, but walk around it.
We asked many people if there was anyone living there who was there in 1942. The answer was always no. The people seemed anxious when they found we were descendants of the German Russians who had lived there before. Our interpreter indicated that they were concerned about possible claims of German Russians on their homes and farm land. Finally, we found a man who said he thought there was a family in town who remembered 1942. Sure enough, an old couple lived in one of the houses. He was ill and could not get out of bed, but she was up and around. She had just baked bread in the summer kitchen. Anita bought a loaf from her.
This old couple explained their relationship with Lichtental. In 1942 they lived outside of Lichtental. He walked into town every day to work as a day laborer in the German Russian fields.
One day he walked into Lichtental to report for work when he found an eerie silence. There were no children running around, there were no horses being harnessed to go out into the fields. There were no people in evidence. There were dogs and cats roaming around, The cows were mooing because they had not been milked the night before nor that morning. He called out to his friends and neighbors, but there was no response. It was like a ghost town. He finally went into the home of one of the families that hired him and found equally strange things. The dishes were in the cupboards, the clothes were in the closets, the pots and pans were in the summer kitchen. Everything was normal, except there were no people. He went from house to house and found not one single living soul. And so he went home and he and his wife tried to figure out what is going on.
The next day he went back to Lichtental and found the same situation. But now the cows were desperate with pain for not having been milked. The dogs and cats were looking for food. The chickens were out in the fields looking for food having not been fed in a couple of days. The horses were roaming free out in the fields. The town was scary.
He took one of the horses and rode into the nearest city. He went to the Russian officials office to inquire about Lichtental. He was told that the residents of Lichtental were never coming back; they were gone forever. He was told to go to Lichtental and pick out a home for himself and to spread the word among the Ukrainians living in the prairie to come and claim a house. In a few days Lichtental was completely populated with people; all Ukrainians. They quickly learned how to use the equipment left there, how to use the summer kitchens and how to use the plows, etc. But, the Russians immediately came and confiscated all the land and all the people worked the land as a cooperative or a kibbutz. And that is what is still going on in 1998 when we were there.
The old couple also exhibited some fear of our repossessing the house, She explained that when they moved in the place was a complete disaster and they had to completely rebuild it. She was trying to justify ownership of the place. She contradicted her husband's earlier story about finding the places just like the German's had left it. And he had first pick of all the houses. It was obvious from examining the house that it was exactly as they had found it 56 years before. The rooms still had the same old paint, the outside was the same except for some tin patches on the roof. The summer kitchen and the indoor bakery oven were the same. All the walls were a foot or more thick and solid rock. Nothing had changed, not even the simple furniture.
What was most eerie about Lichtental was that all the houses were still there after 56 years, except the few that had been rebuilt. And not one new house has been added in 56 years. The house numbering, the street ends, the bridge over the river, the cemetery, it was all the way Roth described it and wrote about it and drew pictures of same. Even the picture of the Church was the same as now, albeit the wooden steeple and roof were gone.
Before we left we stopped by the cemetery where so many of my relatives were buried. We could not find any Lutheran grave markers. Only Russian Orthodox crosses adorned the graves and the dates were all post 1942. Where the German Russians were buried before 1942 was now a Russian Orthodox graveyard. We asked what happened to the pre-1942 graves. One of the Ukrainians at the cemetery explained that the old graves were at the back of the cemetery. We looked and found none. The Roth map showed the German Russian graves exactly where the newer Ukrainian graves were now. We could not find out what happened to the graves or the gravestones.
And so today we still do not know what happened to the roughly 1500 people who lived in Lichtental in 1942. There were about 50 Wolfs, all relatives of mine, who lived there in 1942. None have ever been heard from.
Besides the old Ukrainian couple in Lichtental, I have talked to two other people who once lived in Lichtental. Neither of them could shed any light on what happened to my relatives. Dr. Roth, who was a school teacher in Lichtental, got out before whatever happened on that infamous day in 1942. He wrote a very good book on Lichtental, but knew nothing about 1942. He lived in Kirchberg, Germany, where many of the Lichtental people came from before they moved to Lichtental. I also talked to the late Fritz Wolf who also lived in Germany a few years ago. He and his wife were professors at the University of Odessa in 1942. He was born in Lichtental and was a great uncle of mine. He also had no knowledge of what happened to the people in Lichtental in 1942. Dr. Roth and Dr. Fritz Wolf and the old Ukrainian couple would not speculate on where the people went. None of them have shown up in Kirchberg, the origin of the Wolfs and others who lived in Lichtental in 1942.
I am planning to be in Stuttgart in June of 2000 when the annual German Russian gathering will take place. It is possible that someone will show up that can provide some visibility. Because the meeting is very near Kirchberg, my hope is that some survivors from the Russian communities in Kasackstan or Siberia will be there. But because none showed up at the Frankfort gathering that I attended and because none of the people who lived there and had relatives there can shed any light on the disappearance, my fear is that they either perished on the way to Siberia or there simply was not room in the public transport used to move the people to Siberia and they simply wound up in a mass grave somewhere in the vicinity of Lichtental.
I certainly would appreciate any information about Lichtental and any survivors of the 1942 cataclysm.
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Thought for the Day:
"The millions of Jews who live in America, England and France, North and South Africa, and, not to forget those in Palestine, are determined to bring the war of annihilation against Germany to its final end."
(The Jewish newspaper, Central Blad Voor Israeliten in Nederland, September 13, 1939)