Definitions:
Podvod – a colony of drivers
Podvoda (Russian) - a horse-driven cart
Pidvoda (Ukrainian) - to lead, to bring
Verst - .66 miles or 1 km
Bolsheviks – Red Army
Grandpa Klassen (Franz Klassen 1867-1934) migrated to Vineland, Ontario with his family in 1925 from his home village of Fuerstenau, Molotschna where his ancestors had lived in the original home since the creation of the village in 1806. For more details regarding Fuerstenau, see earlier entries in the Blog or ask Edith for her detailed summary of Fuerstenau.
Soon after arriving in Canada, Grandpa wrote some memoirs in 1929, detailing just ten years after the event, his six day ordeal as a Podvod driver for the Bolsheviks.
Grandpa’s handwriting was in the gotische Schrift (Spitzschrift) and was translated by me into English, preserving for those interested a few of the German words. At the same time much of the sentence structure was left in the original style not paying a lot of attention to putting things into complete sentences or proper paragraphs. For brevity some redundant sentences or phrases were eliminated attempting to preserve the document for easy reading and understanding. No claim for completely accurate translation is made.
On our recent visit to Ukraine our group of North American
Fransens/Klassens spent perhaps two and one half hours in Fuerstenau in as unhurried a fashion as one could wish, exploring Mennonite remnants such as the village school, the luxurious “Neufeld Home” which after the Bolshevik revolution served for a time as the local “Soviet”, the location of the former Mennonite cemetery and a visit with a Mr. Wollman who spoke good German and had been born in the village 83 years ago.
While visiting in the village we spent most of our time on the former Klassen yard which happened to be located just adjacent to the school; several of us brought back some bricks which could be from our ancestral home. Directly behind the Klassen yard was the former village cemetery.
While on the yard we recalled Grandpa Klassen’s memoirs that some of us had read, specifically the following episode. For those who want to read this report I suggest that you follow Grandpa's experience with the assistance of a Molotschna map from early in the 20th century. http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/images/ME3_733.jpg
The episode that will follow in another instalment of the Blog is rather lengthy but hopefully is of interest to the occasional reader of the Blog.
Written by Herb Fransen
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment