Stulnevo Train Station

In the previous article Herb gives an account of the six-day outdoor experience of many of the villagers of Molotschna in early October 1941 at the Stulnevo train station. The building in this photo is what remains of the train station. I wanted to photograph it as some of us had spent considerable time last year trying to figure out from which train station the Fransens had left Molotschna when they emigrated to Canada in 1926. This is also the station from which great-Uncle John Wichert departed in 1925 when he went ahead to Canada to check out the viability of the Wicherts and Fransens settling in Canada.

When we returned from our travels to the Fransentreffen in Germany and our many experiences in Ukraine in July 2009, Herb unearthed this historical account, including an eyewitness report of Tina, one of the Fransen participants in this "Trek that wasn’t". The account gives added significance to this picture of the Stulnevo train station. Tina was 16 years old at the time.

On September 1, 1941, Tina’s father, her four brothers and her brother-in-law were removed from Mariawohl and the lives of their family, conscripted to compulsory labour and except for one brother, they were never heard from again. The account described by Herb began one month later (October 2, 1941). Camped outside at the Stulnevo train station for six nights with the elements of war raging around and above them, were 16 year old Tina, her 52 year old mother, her oldest sister (age 29) with daughters ages 3 & 1, and her 14 year old twin sisters. Also in the crowd of 6,000 were Tina’s 86 year old grandmother, and Tina’s 48 year old aunt with the 11 year old Jakob who we know. We met five of this group at the Fransentreffen. These six days and nights are etched in their memories. To them Stulnevo is an interruption before a much more difficult journey that was awaiting them; to us it is also now more than a departure point to freedom.