[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] volhynians in the EWZ

[Dave Obee]

Re:

 EWZ50 covers Soviet territory prior to WW II comprised mainly of Russian
Volhynia, Bessarabia, the Crimea and other places in southern Ukraine. (Note
EWZ50 does not extend past the Volga River because the German armies never
got that far.) EWZ50 has about 110,000 applications. I have had less
experience with EWZ50 since I don't have any relatives here but at a minimum
I would say 30% of these are from Volhynia. I also noticed in doing research
for others that very many applications seem to be missing from EWZ50 as
these applications were completed later in the war when more pressure was on
the Germans and it appears many of these records got lost. From requests I
received from other researchers, I seem to find at least 70% or more of the
people from Polish Volhynia, whereas, I find less than 30% (probably more
like 10-15%) of those requests from Russian Volhynia.
>>>>>

It might depend on their location in Russian Volhynia. I have looked for all
of the families from a cluster of five or six villages. All were in the area
just north and east of Pulin, northwest of Zhitomir, and most left on or
about Nov. 11, 1943. I would put my succcess rate with the EWZ somewhere
above 90 per cent, which is as close to a sure thing we should ever expect.
So Karl's requests must be dealing with other parts of the region.

Bear in mind of course that if they had been living west of Pulin, it's
highly likely that they had been resettled eastward in the 1930s, to get
them away from the Polish border. These resettlements were sometimes only 10
or 15 kilometres but other times took the people to Russian territory as
opposed to Ukrainian.

Dave Obee