[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German settlement in Orel province, Russia

[E. Adam]

All I can say is wow! This group is chockful of knowledge, and I thank you for expanding my understanding of this history.

In exchange, here's what I know from my family's history. I believe my great-grandfather David Adam is listed in the Volhynian land expropriation records from 1915. Anecdotally, I was told he and another man led a group of Germans from Volhynia to land between Bryjansk and Orel near the town of Schisdra and started a new "colony" there. So my guess is this happened around 1915 since two of his sons were drafted into the Russian army in World War I and they never lived in Russia, but rather Volhynia. One of them visited from Germany after the war and described them as living in Kaluga province.

In late 1941, the German army came to the village, where the story is they were surprised to find so many Germans. (That bit seems a little suspicious now.) The Germans in the village went first to Orel, where they boarded trains and were sent to Shitomir, ironically a short distance from where David Adam had lived 25 years earlier. (The Russian relatives evacuated to Belarus.) It was here in Ukraine that my family was separated from the rest of the village people, who I now know were sent to the Warthegau because they appear in the war records.

My family was evacuated by the Wehrmacht again through Augsburg in Germany to Slovenia, where they were attacked by Yugoslav partisans as the war ended. They lived in displaced camps in Austria and came to the US in 1952. My dad tells me that they looked for DPs from their area of Russia but found only those from Ukraine.

My Russian great-grandmother wrote after the war that many Germans returned to "Salonowka". She also writes that Schisdra was completely destroyed and the Russian village Poludowa (sort of a twin to the German) was rebuilt and completely changed.

Thank you once again. With your help, I've started my "Orel" file and look forward to adding to it.

Edie Adam

--- On Thu, 1/8/09, Howard Krushel <krushelh at telus.net> wrote:

> From: Howard Krushel <krushelh at telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German settlement in Orel province, Russia
> To: "'SGGEE'" <ger-poland-volhynia at eclipse.sggee.org>
> Date: Thursday, January 8, 2009, 6:43 PM
> Some very good points, Dick; the economic factors that were
> in play as well
> as the political; their land contracts perhaps were
> expiring and would not
> be renewed; Eigentum or the prohibition to land ownership,
> too caused stress
> for our relatives.......all political in nature. And then
> in further
> checking I found where Pastor Ernst Althausen, Pastor of
> the Tutschin and
> Rowno parish in Volhynia from 1888 to 1908, was a brother
> to Alexander
> Althausen who was the resident Pastor of the Orel Parish
> from 1883 until
> 1931; and one can't help but think that this could have
> factored in as
> another reason for settlers moving into Orel after 1888.
> Howard Krushel
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Richard Benert [mailto:benovich at imt.net] 
> Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2009 12:07 PM
> To: Howard Krushel; ejadam at yahoo.com; 'SGGEE'
> Subject: Re: [Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German settlement in
> Orel province,
> Russia
> 
> Howard's response to Edie is excellent.  I would only
> add a tidbit I found 
> in reading (in response to Edie's question) a few pages
> in Mikhail Kostiuk's
> 
> book, Die Deutschen Kolonien in Wolhynien.  In addition to
> factors mentioned
> 
> by Howard, Kostiuk lays stress on the purely economic
> motive for moving east
> 
> from Volhynia.  He thinks that many who carved small farms
> out of the swamps
> 
> and woods of Volhynnia did it chiefly to earn enough money
> by selling the 
> place to buy larger plots wherever they could find them. 
> Sometimes the 
> government offered tax breaks for doing this (southern
> Ukraine), or land 
> might be cheaper than in Volhynia (1890 is Chernigov and
> Poltava).  In 
> Siberia, 50 dessiatine plots were available, etc.  For
> those that have the 
> book, this is on pp. 40-41.
> 
> Dick Benert
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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