Soup Crafter: "I grew up once on a farm in Ukraine"

Julius Kamenz, 95, died an old-timer. His funeral was surprisingly well attended considering his age. Most people have few friends left when they're 95, and are mourned only by immediate family. Julius' funeral was standing room only, and all the more remarkable in that, since thirty six years after his arrival to the United States he refused to speak the language of his adopted land.

Lothar, Julius's son-in-law, lead a large choir in German hymns. Passages of scripture were read first in English and then once more in German. This bilingual order of service carried through to the eulogy. The funeral ran somewhat long. In fact, it seemed as two separate funerals were being conducted simultaneously; one directed toward and immigrant church, and the other aimed at the American born children of these immigrants.

While almost every one possessed a fluent command of English, there were many who found comfort in their native German. And considering that Julius never spoke English himself, it wouldn't have been appropriate to conduct his funeral exclusively in English. He was an ethnic German/Russian refugee who somehow washed up on the North American shore to live out the balance of his life.

Somewhere into the second sermon, the German sermon, a general restlessness settled among the crowd. A reference first to Hitler and then Stalin sounded, and like a shot brought everyone to attention. Unexpected, the reference seemed grossly misplaced in the context of a eulogy. Only Julius' obituary, printed with the order of service and read after the invocation and opening prayer, gave a clue as to why this infamous pair should be mentioned at an old man's funeral. The two brutal tyrants defined the shade and hue of his life, and much more than any man should have to endure.

"Born on February 26, 1893, in Tacherjackow [sic], Russia," it spoke of a peasant born into the rich farm land of the Ukraine.

Julius Kamenz' ambition was to farm. Prior to World War I, Russian agriculture hadn't drastically changed since the middle ages. Julius expected no more from life than a piece of land, a good team of horses, and modest but comfortable shelter for his family.

"In 1915," it continued, "during World War I, he and his parents were sent from their home in the Ukraine to Siberia." Empires gave way to modern nation states.

The birth pains of an industrial age started taking a toll. Two-million Russians died in World War I. Revolution, civil war and famine claimed nine-million more. Refugees became a distinguishing feature of the 20^th century.

"They returned home four years later and farmed for their livelihood," it went on.

Stalin had his own vision for the modern world. In 1927, it didn't include opposition. By 1930, it excluded most of the Ukraine. Again, famine claimed seven-million. Another seven million were arrested. One-million were executed outright, and the rest sent to labor camps where most died. (The scope of this grim death toll was outlined by historian Robert Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow, who used Soviet census data to reach his conclusion. Those numbers were later confirmed by official Soviet press reports.)

The short obituary continued, "During World War II, the family fled from the Ukraine to Germany."

Two-million ethnic Germans, whose settlement in the Ukraine dated from the time of Catherine the Great, were either deported or fled from their homes. The Nazi occupation army wasn't an army of liberation from Stalin's tyranny. In just two days, Nazi death squad, Einsatzgruppe C killed over 33,000 Jews in the ravine of Babi Yar, a few miles outside Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. The horror of Stalin yielded only to the horror of Hitler.

Julius Kamenz knew both. Pastor Babbel's mention of these two contrasted their ambition, power and final infamy, with the humble peasant who finally entered into the full glory of God.

And finally, "as many other refugees, they sought a new life in the United States. In 1952, the family came to Milwaukee..." where Julius was employed as the grounds keeper/gardener at a convent.

At a brief burial service the following morning, the family had the coffin reopened for those few who hadn't attended the funeral the night before. This service included only family and a few friends. It was conducted entirely in English.

Afterwards, the funeral director offered a rose to the widow. He went on to invite everyone to come and also claim a rose. A solemn procession filed by a closed coffin.

After this final rite Julius' daughter Olga, and her husband Gus, invited every one to their home for lunch.

Gus, by his marriage to Olga, became the conduit through which the Julius Kamenz found refuge in the US. Their marriage had been arranged just after the end of the Second World War. After a correspondence courtship and by way of informal engagement, Gus sent Olga the money required for passage. After she arrived, had he decided to back down, he would have been forced into sending her back. He figured it would have cost him about $1000, a lot of money at the time.

Olga's Ukrainian roots surface whenever she entertains. She is incapable of offering her guests a simple light lunch. The bounty of her table is almost beyond comprehension. It typically offers two selections of meat, three of vegetables, potatoes, bread and assortment of garnishes. This fare is capped with no fewer than three offerings for desert. The hardship of the Ukraine is compensated by North American bounty. The display of this bounty at once recalls a hard past, and gives thanks for deliverance.

The light lunch following her father's burial spread over an extended kitchen table, and occupied every available space on her kitchen counters. Her menu expands proportionately to the number of expected guests.

Those gathered to this feast divided into two groups along generational lines. Gus and Olga's adult children found themselves in the family room along with their cousins. The older generation settled into the living room.

In the family room among the magazines on the coffee table were two books: one was a Russian grammar, the other, a Russian grade school reader.

Gus explained to the curious I'm thinking of going to Russia next summer. I thought I'd like to brush up on Russian. I've sent for information. There's a tour. It leaves from Helsinki, and goes on to Leningrad then to Moscow, Kiev and Zaporozhe. Olga still has cousins around Saporos.

Olga wasn't enthusiastic about the trip. Her husband had thought of making it some years before, but a herniated disk put a temporary end to those plans. Olga believes his back problems were God's divine intervention. And if God didn't want them to traveling to Russia then, he probably isn't too keen on the idea now. Meanwhile, Gus reads Russian.

Gus often broadcasts his travel plans through the books on his coffee table. Shortly after the Russian trip had been postponed, he enrolled in a Spanish course at the local technical college. He explained, it was something to keep busy with in retirement and kept at it for two years until he could read a Spanish translation of the Bible. The thought being, if you can read the bible then you know the language. With this accomplished, he announced to Olga that they would be traveling to Spain. We'll vacation with European relatives, he told her. Mostly he wanted to speak Spanish.

It took a couple of months to make and coordinate travel arrangements. Lloret de Mar, on the north Spanish-Mediterranean coast, seemed an ideal destination. Unfortunately, in Lorete de Mar, the people do not speak Spanish. They speak a dialect which was not even remotely similar to the Spanish Gus had recently mastered. Though enjoyable, the trip was a linguistic disappointment.

Upon returning home Gus announced to Olga, they would put off buying a new car. As soon as they saved the money, they would travel to South America. After all, there were relatives in Chili, Argentina and Peru. In South America the people spoke Spanish.

This trip, while not as exotic included free lodging, pleased him more. Except for two nights on a bus, they were able to stay with relatives and weren't bothered with hotels. Mostly the trip pleased him because in South America he speaks the language.

"Traveling is much better when you can talk with the people."

The man is busy with his Russian and again is looking forward to travel. He was born in 1909, on a farm outside of Sorochen, Ukraine. This trip isn't motivated by nostalgic longing, but by curiosity. He knows the language and there might be relatives to visit.

Their naturalization papers list them as Russian, but the Bureau of Naturalization only considers place of birth in determining national origin. Both Gus and Olga consider themselves German.

Both were born into German settlements in the Ukraine. A section of the Ukraine, bounded by Korosten and Bilokorovychi on the north, Zhytomyr on the south, was predominantly German. The area encompassed about eight hundred square miles. Gus' hometown, Sorochen, is in the center of this area and lies about 80 miles west of Kiev.

According to Gus's condensed history, "there were a lot of Germans in the Ukraine. One of the tsars had married a German girl. She was the one who invited the Germans to settle there. It was because the Russians were lousy farmers."

This German girl Gus refers to is Catherine the Great. How she came to be proclaimed Empress and Autocrat of all Russia involves a long history of western European influence on Russia.

According to W. Bruce Lincoln’s account of the Romanovs, Western technology impressed the Russian autocracy for centuries. As early as the Sixteenth Century, Ivan the Terrible sought European craftsmen and military experts. He attempted to isolate these technicians from Russian society. Moscow, with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks, was considered by Russia to be a 'New Jerusalem.' Rome had been corrupted by western secular influence. Ivan thought it important to protect Russia from similar corruption. A foreign quarter emerged on the outskirts of Moscow, which housed these European specialists and effectively isolated them.

An attitude of social and moral superiority over Western societies persisted until almost the eighteenth century. In his youth, after witnessing a violent coup, Peter the Great held Moscow tradition in contempt. Moscow's foreign quarter offered the only escape from this hated tradition. As tsar his first priority was an eighteen month tour of Europe.

The pretense for this trip was to form an alliance of European Christian states for mutual protection against the Turks. In reality he was on a military shopping trip and welcomed the opportunity to view first hand the West he so greatly admired.

He was so moved by this experience that upon his return he ordered his Court clean shaven, and to dress according to the latest Polish fashion. Outrage and confusion reigned. Rumors flew that an impostor had returned in Peter's stead. Others speculated that Peter was the Anti-Christ come to preside over the end of the world. Nonetheless, Peter's Westernizing efforts continued. Between 1699 and 1709 he built a new capitol, St Petersburg, and abandoned Moscow.

Following Peters lead, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Romanovs looked to Europe for not only military advisors, but also for wives.

From a small German royalty, Peter III married Sophie Augste Friedrike in 1745. By 1761, he sought an end to his unhappy marriage, and Sophie plotted to force his abdication. In June, 1762, she staged a popular and successful coup d’état and was Proclaimed Empress and Autocrat Catherine the Second. Within a week Peter III suffered a violent death. Catherine announced he died according to the will of God from an acute attack of colic, complicated by severe hemorrhoids.

Gus and Olga's Ukrainian heritage dates to manifestos issued by the Catherine, in 1762 and 1763, inviting German and other European people to settle in lands vacated by the Turks.

During her thirty-four year reign, she increased Russian territory by about a quarter of a million square miles, and doubled Russia's population.

The scope and impact of this largely German emigration can be gauged by Mennonite history. Frank H Epp in Mennonite Exodus recounts that by 1780 almost one hundred German colonies were established in Russia. While only four of these were Mennonite colonies, by World War I thy community numbered about 120,000 and accounted for 6% of Russia's industrial production. This is particularly impressive considering that manufacturing only supplemented their agricultural economy.

German immigration to Russia continued until the end of the nineteenth century. Gus's grandfather, at the tail end of this migration, staked a homestead and quickly established a comfortable life. He settled into a larger community of German farmers. When his sons came of age the farm was divided between Gus' father and his uncle Dave.

Gus' uncle Reinhold immigrated to Canada in 1911, where he took a homestead in Saskatchewan. Reinhold followed the pattern set by his father is seeking free land in a distant country. For Germans who had settled in the Ukraine, it had become to crowded to support their growing population. From the Ukraine, many moved on to the New World, both to Canada and South America, seeking the opportunities enjoyed by their fathers. The Ukrainian farm which would not support three families could support two and was divided after Reinhold sought his fortune elsewhere.

Gus' grandfather, after dividing the land, assumed the respected position of village constable. The position agreed with the man.

On this modest farm, Gus' father practiced subsistence agriculture turning only a small surplus. They grew winter wheat, rye, flax and potatoes. They kept livestock and maintained both a wood lot and pasture.

These small German farms in comparison to the prevailing Ukrainian standards were a model of success. Gus's father worked the land with an iron plow and a team, at a time when fewer than half of the Russian farms had iron plows, and in a land where horses averaged one per farm.

For these immigrants, the Ukraine was not an isolated backwater of Europe. It was an Eastern frontier, neither as distant, nor foreign as its North American counterpart. However, their life was surprising similar.

They lived in a log house. House and barn were under the same thatched roof. The house had two rooms, one for living and the other for sleeping. A Russian stove was used for cooking and heat. Its flue ran a labyrinth course in the wall separating the two rooms and provided central heat. In the loft, this flue widened out into a smokehouse. As much as anything, the Russian stove had almost elegance in its economy. It extracted full value from every log.

Gus and Olga are generous almost to a fault. Yet, they are as frugal as a Russian stove. These traits were among their baggage when they immigrated to North America, and these remain.

The loft was used to store crops, grain over the house and hay above the barn. The house and barn were separated by a breezeway like summer kitchen.

"Potatoes," Gus said, "were stored outside buried in a straw lined ditch. I've never seen it done that way here, but it keeps them fresh."

If the family was not entirely self sufficient, the larger village was. Though not a village in any formal sense, it was a closely knit ethnic community anchored by a sense of church, family and a crossroad commercial district. Commerce in Sorochyne consisted of a steam driven mill and two general stores, operated by competing Jewish merchants. The residents might to go to Zhytomyr two or three times a year for goods that were locally unavailable.

Gus's memory of the Ukraine is dominated by an encompassing sense of community, and of the harvest in particular.

"The people really worked together. When it was time for grain, we would all harvest down one farm and then move onto the next. The same thing with potatoes. With everyone in the field together, we had we maybe had fifteen or so, digging potatoes and joking around.

“We had a lot of fun." Years later he recreated a similar working environment for himself in California.

The First World War changed everything. With an advancing German army, the sympathies of the German settlers became suspect. Entire communities were resettled east beyond the Volga River, and north to the fringe of Siberia. Expecting a typically short and limited European war, these people saw relocation as a temporary inconvenience. It was an unplanned and undetermined sabbatical, to make the most of.

The family received notice to move while Gus's father, who had been drafted into the tsar's army, was home on leave. Family took precedence over military obligation. He never reported back.

"I don't remember much about my father. He had a big mustache and gave me a good licking once. He was a good trumpet player.

"When we left the Ukraine, our whole family traveled together in one freight car. My aunt and uncle, my grandparents, and my uncle Dave were with us. The car had a stove in it. Whenever the train stopped, dad would go out and steel wood.

"Neighbors were on the car in front of ours. Good friends, we would get together and sing. It must not have been too bad either, because the guard would come back to listen. When the train stopped in Samara, we were met by my great-uncle. They knew people were being moved out of the Ukraine, so some one always waited at the station to see who might be on the trains.

"My great-uncle was there. He got us off of the train as fast as he could. They didn't notice us missing until much later. The guard came back to listen to our singing, but found our cars empty."

His father went to the city at once to find a job. He found work at a sawmill, rented an apartment and sent for his family. Things started getting bad.

Gus' baby brother died. He simply became ill and without medical care he died. About a month later, his father caught pneumonia. His job involved mucking around in the Volga River, wrestling lines around logs so they could be pulled out of the river. In September, he died.

His mother took them to join her parents, who had been resettled in small town in Siberia. The three street town with four dead ends had become home to fifteen resettled German families. For awhile they managed on a government pension for his father's service in the tsar's army. The pension ended with the revolution.

His mother remarried in 1918. Within months, her new husband was conscripted in to the White Army. They heard from him once. He'd been wounded and was in a hospital. The family got by as well as they could. With the end of World War I, most of the German families returned to their homes. Traveling was dangerous, but as Gus recalls, "There was really no one to stop you. There wasn't much of a government."

His mother stayed behind waiting for her husband's return. She enrolled her boys in the local Russian school. In a village on the fringe of Siberia not far from Chelyabinsk, Gus received his measure of formal education. He would have gotten a full two years if his felt boots could have lasted through the second winter. But they didn't. Still, with the other German families gone, the boys adopted Russian as their native language. They spoke German only to their mother.

So more than sixty years later, Gus sat with his grammar and reader, he said he’d forgotten a lot of the words, but it's coming back quickly.

His mother survived on income from odd jobs and by selling their possessions. They boys earned a little by tending cattle. The family finally received notice that Gus's stepfather was missing in action and presumed dead. By this time, their resources were exhausted. The post war and revolution economy had deteriorated into conditions of famine.

Their only option was a desperate trip home. They joined a million other souls bound for the Ukraine. The trip impressed upon Gus the ultimate value of a potato. Even in comfortable American suburbia, Gus held potatoes in high regard. Gus and Olga grow potatoes. At ten cents a pound, he admitted that it hardly pays to grow them, but warmly said, they're best eaten while still fresh from the ground. For him they counted with life's treasure.

Potatoes dominated his considerable garden. Green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers only garnished the rows of potatoes.

Gus and his wife, Olga, kept an organic garden. This wasn’t to be trendy, nor about concerns with the poison residue deposited by commercial fertilizer and insecticides. It was about Ukrainian born thrift. A good measure of which Gus brought to the United States and hugely reinforced by World War Two arrival of Olga. Vegetable trimmings, egg shells, coffee grounds and the like are all turned into the dirt. They even save rainwater for their garden, no need to pay for city water if you don't need it. While not 'Better Homes' perfect, they keep a beautiful garden.

Where there is good dirt, Gus envisions a garden. Too much good land is wasted on lawn, and too much is left completely idle.

His brother-in-law, Lothar, owned a five acre residential lot about thirty miles outside of Milwaukee’s city limits. He had no immediate intention to build. The land was good. Gus couldn't bear to see it wasted, idle. As the old-timers see it, waste is the greatest sin. And so he said it should be planted.

Lothar had the land plowed. He and Gus would plant a large garden, Gus tending one half and he the other. The size of this garden was determined by how much could be worked in a day. To this end, Gus loaded his rototiller, drove out and set to work.

Hard work, but Gus finds a full day behind a rototiller satisfying.

"And it wouldn't have been to bad" Gus said, "if one of the wheels hadn't fallen off the rototiller about half way through. Boy, that made it real hard. It kept wanting to dig in. I could hardly hold the thing level. I should have fixed it, but I didn't want to come out the next day again."

With the old timers where waste is the great sin, hard work is a great saving virtue. The old man, after working the dirt with a one wheeled tiller, planted potatoes on his half of the garden. It turned out to be a dry year. The land yielded on small pathetic roots, hardly worth digging. For Gus this project was hard work and disappointment. The disappointment lay not in the dry weather or failed potatoes. Crop failure was beside the point. Neither gardeners nor farmers have a guarantee. The disappointment rested with Lothar, who after Gus tilled the land never planted. Instead, he let his half sit idle and wasted. It returned to weeds.

Since then Gus has limited his efforts to his own back yard where, with proper care and water, potatoes flourish. He remembers the best potatoes he's ever eaten. It was in 1921.

These alone, without meat or gravy stand head and shoulder above all the potatoes before and since. He did not grow these, but stole them.

In 1921, with his mother and brother, he was homeward bound out of Siberia for the Ukraine. His stepfather was missing in action and presumed dead. In Russia famine had followed civil war. The family's position was desperate.

Hard times according to Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow, between 1918 and 1920 claimed over nine million lives. Of these, six million can be attributed to local famine and peasant war.

Prior to the Revolution, the Party was almost nonexistent in the countryside. Lenin instituted a policy, 'War Communism' justified by the extenuating circumstances of civil war, to gain control of the agricultural economy and socialize the countryside.

Through this policy, the Government laid claim to surplus grain. Originally surplus included only the excess beyond twice the peasant's requirements. Hostages were taken and held ransom for the requisition and loading of this farm surplus. By 1919, surplus was no longer defined according to the peasant's needs, but instead according to Government need. In 1920 this surplus included 30% of the harvest and products from cottage industry.

War Communism looked beyond tapping the agricultural economic resources. It was an attempt to create the same sort of class struggle as existed in the cities. Lenin hoped to set the poorest peasants against the wealthy farmers. The Kulak became the socialist enemy. He was by definition a farmer with means and reason to hire help. In practice he was simply a successful peasant. Because he hired help he was viewed as an exploiter of labor. His success was rewarded with resettlement to the Siberian wasteland.

The policy was an unreserved failure. It removed the most productive peasants from the land. It took away the incentives for the rest to produce any surplus. In all, it fostered hard feelings and widespread insurrection. Conquest quotes one Soviet historian describing the situation thusly, "the center of the RSFSR is almost totally encircled by peasant insurrection, from Makhno on the Dnieper to Antonov on the Volga."

Makhno, an anarchist thug whose allegiance shifted weekly, took delight in terrorizing Mennonites from one end of the Ukraine to the other.

Lenin recognized that the government was barely hanging on. On March 15, 1921, he abandoned 'War Communism' for a 'New Economic Policy,' in an attempt to restore order in the countryside.

Gus remembered the history, "I don't know that you could travel before 1921. It wasn't safe. By then things had settled down. They were still fighting, but it wasn't so bad."

Gus had joined the company of almost two million refugees, fleeing famine and civil war. The family set off on a two thousand mile trip back to Ukraine.

“We spent a lot of the time waiting around train stations. They were full of people. Most were going to the Ukraine, because there was always food there."

On this five month trip, food took precedence over travel connections and lodging. Foraging assumed a meaning beyond dictionary definition. For Gus, on this trip potatoes assumed their profound significance. Upon leaving, his mother packed toasted sour dough rye which was the family's only provision.

Where they found bread lines, the refugees were fed last if there was anything left. At the end of one such line, Gus had his hat filled with oatmeal and returned to share this meal with his mother and brother.

"Most of the time we lived from begging. We were experts, specialists. Around the train stations there were so many beggars, you couldn't get anything. We had to go out, as far as five or even ten kilometers from the station, to get enough to eat.”

The distance of the man's childhood is kilometers. Otherwise, everything else is in miles.

"Still in the Ural Mountains, we knew there were goats. Sam and I went out one day prepared. We were actually looking for one. We caught this one with a big bag on her. Sam held her by the horns while I milked her. My mom made soup from that milk. She mixed in something like wild spinach and maybe some wild mushrooms. There were a lot of wild mushrooms in that area"

Layovers were long, a week even longer. They waited around rail stations for freight trains heading south by west. The trains were as crowded as the stations. When the trains arrived they carried passengers in crowded cars, and passengers on car tops.

"At one station we waited almost two week for a train. We had an awful time getting enough to eat. One morning, my brother and I went out real early. Didn't get a thing. But coming back we came across a potato field. The man guarding it, must have been the farmer, wouldn't give us any. I guess he was having a lot of trouble with people stealing his potatoes. Sam went in first and while the farmer took off after Sam, I went in and filled my pockets." Out of this field Gus found God's perfect potato.

“The best potatoes I ever ate,” he said

Considering the general condition of famine, it seems God also did good work with apples. Down the line and approaching yet another station, the train passed an orchard, and soon stopped to take on fuel and water. Gus walked back to the orchard to see if he could at least gather those that had fallen to the ground.

"It was about a half a kilometer back from the station. The farmer said I could take all that I wanted. In fact, he gave me a bag to put them in. I had that bag full and was walking back, when all at once I saw the train starting to pull out."

He started to run. Not hard at first, he was confident that he could catch it. When he saw he wasn't gaining ground, he dropped the apples and ran as hard as his twelve year old legs would carry him. He got close enough for a desperate leap to grab hold, but didn't make it.

At once the boy was separated from his family, in what were at least very tenuous times. He was now at the mercy of an indifferent and unsettled social climate. He returned to the station for help. Officially, he was on his own. Another train would come though in a week or so.

He returned to the farmer who had given him the apples, and was allowed to stay. After five days, on a Wednesday evening, a passenger train pulled into town. It carried German ex-prisoners of war, who in 1921, we finally returning home.

At once, the solders were naturally sympathetic to this German speaking boy, who like them was trying to make his way home. They took him in, and helped him stow away. After thousands of miles, Gus finally rode in a passenger train. This meeting with a prisoner of war was his first experience with an uncanny sort of luck. There would be others. And as he says, traveling’s much better when you can speak the language.

The now eighty year old man looks back and says, I never worried about things too much. You know I've always been kind of lucky.

But still, he grows potatoes.

In 1921, the White Army had long been defeated, still the revolution played out. The Ukrainian farm to which they returned was at times a battle field. Peasant armies fought the Red army and Soviet program.

Gus was politically indifferent. When they heard guns, the family took to the cellar until the shooting stopped. In the aftermath they didn't find carnage, only battle debris. Sometimes they would find an exhausted horse had been exchanged for their farm animal. Mostly they found cartridge belts.

"Sam and I would build a fire and throw the live cartridges in and watch them explode, kind of like fire works."

In 1921, Kiev had been taken by the Red Army for the third and final time, though smaller battles persisted for years in the countryside. By and large, a period of reconstruction ensued.

The government was disorganized and benign. Gus' grandfather returned to his position as village constable. Gus and Sam worked their father's farm.

He stayed on the farm until 1925. His mother remarried for a third time. He moved on to learn a trade. He settled in briefly with one uncle who was a tailor, but moved on to become an apprentice for his uncle, Emil Schuster, the wagon maker. He was fairly certain the there would always be a need for wagons. Over all, his outlook was fairly optimistic.

Early on a wagon maker learns the art of a spoke wheel. Steam bent wood, carved spokes and precise construction demand considerable skill. But even the wagon maker followed nature’s schedule.

In spring and fall even the wagon makers were employed on the farm, to help with both the planting and harvest. They made wagons during the winter, and were general contractors throughout the summer.

In the summer of 1926, Emil Schuster contracted to build a frame house. The economy of frame construction somewhat proceeded the widespread availability of milled lumber. A frame building required a crew of four and a stack of logs. Two men cut lumber as required, while the other two nailed the building together.

Among other things, the job required a pair of seven foot tall saw-horses. Gus didn't recall how the logs were hoisted onto the sawbucks, but once up there they were roughly squared with an axe. They popped a chalk line on both sides of the timber, marking the desired width and went at it with a great two man saw.

"The bottom man had it better. The saw dust was always in your face, but it was easier on the back."

Without milled lumber, pneumatic nail guns and circle saws, the project kept them busy for most of the summer. However, the season allowed another and less demanding job. Emil Schuster contracted to move a log house. It didn't pay to take it apart and reassemble it, Gus explained. It was too large to move whole. The job called for a two man saw.

They dethatched the roof and sliced the building along the ridge line, into movable halves. They hauled each of the halves on dollies to the new site, rejoined them on a new foundation and re-thatched the roof. They dispatched with the job in a matter of weeks.

Gus's wagon making career proved short lived. Though the Ukraine had returned to relative prosperity, a general feeling of uneasiness prevailed. People wondered what would happen next.

The government enjoyed little confidence.

"See, Lenin died in '25, then Stalin took over. There was already a lot of talk that things would get bad. I was quite young at the time and didn't pay much attention. A lot of people were scared and started to leave."

Again using Epp's Mennonite records as a gauge, it appears there was an almost wholesale emigration of ethnic Germans from Russia in the 1920's. Some 30,000 Mennonites either had left or attempted to leave by 1930. This includes 13,000 in 1929 alone, of which less than 6000 were successful. Russia closed her borders in 1930. Those remaining were soon to suffer the horrors of collectivization and another famine.

Gus went home to celebrate Christmas in 1926 to find his aunt and uncle and his grandfather packing for Canada. Gus' uncle Reinhold had taken a Canadian homestead in 1911. He was the primary connection.

A strange history opened the door to Canada for the German peoples of Russia.

From Frank H. Epp's account it seems economics played a pivotal role. Canada's population in 1921 was about 10-million. In 1880 had awarded the Canadian Pacific railway a contract to lay 2,000 miles of track tying the nation together. For this work they received a $25,000,000 subsidy and 25,000,000 acres of land.

As late as 1921, in Canada's western provinces there were at least 25,000,000 acres of undeveloped land within fifteen miles of a rail road line.

J.A. Calder, Canada's Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, was forcefully advocating a liberalization of Canada's immigration laws. His policies resulted in an average of 100,000 immigrants into Canada in the three years following 1918.

Meanwhile the North American Mennonites were painfully aware of the plight the co-religionist suffered in Russia. Colonel J.S. Dennis, learning of their plight, suggested to Sir Thomas Shaughnessy, CPR president, that contact be established with the Mennonite community to encourage emigration from Russia. Their initial arrangements were shelved with the 1917 revolution. Colonel Dennis wouldn't let go of the idea.

He continued to work out a plan whereby the CPR would be responsible for the logistics of moving Russian refugees into Canada and the North American Mennonites would guarantee that the railroad would recover its costs. In June, 1922, the CPR was ready to grant transportation credits to 3,000 immigrants, and had made arrangements for two steamers to pick these people up in Odessa.

These plans were again put on hold. This time a Cholera epidemic broke out in the Ukraine. Canada stipulated that perspective immigrants pass health screening by Canadian doctors.

The first group of immigrants did not arrive in Canada until 1923. From 1924 until 1926 this immigration program proceeded smoothly.

However the Soviet government made it increasingly difficult for its citizens to emigrate. It seems this Canadian effort was bad PR for the Marxist utopia. Russian emigration laws were modeled after the labyrinth flue of a Russian stove. The emigrant needed certificates that his taxes were paid, that he was of solid character and that the Soviet military had no prior claim. With these clearances the emigrant went to the Foreign Administration Department who either issued or denied a passport.

Commonly the emigrant had to travel a great distance, and not once but several times to obtain a passport.

This Byzantine process obviously was not enough discouragement. Beginning in 1926, the medical inspectors were limited to working in Moscow. Previously they had been allowed to travel into the provinces to certify prospective immigrants. In the Russian press, a propaganda campaign claimed that the North American bourgeois was only interested in obtaining slave labor.

Through 1926, some 17,000 Russian immigrants arrived in Canada. Though the 1927 contract called for 20,000 more, only 847 emigrated followed by another 511 in 1928. After trade relations with Canada collapsed in 1928, the Canadian medical inspectors were deported.

Gus had been among the last to pass through this opening. His experience roughly follows the norm. From Canada, they had reports of a good life. Recent history had shown the Ukraine to be something less than the promised land. Gus found that many of his friends had already made the trip. Others were planning on it. With his mother remarried, and with so many of his friends and relatives leaving, Gus decided he might as well go too.

He borrowed $300 dollars from his uncle to make the trip. His uncle Dave had sold his farm. The only way to get the money out of Russia was to lend it to others who wanted to leave, and hope for repayment after they had become reestablished. Technically it wasn't legal to sell land. The people sold their houses and it was generally understood the right to the land went with the house.

Of the $300 Gus borrowed; about $150 was for boat passage, $75 went to obtaining a passport, $25 was for general travel expenses and $50 for bribes.

"They tried to get all the money out of you that they could. I even had to pay a bribe to get my passport released. I was to pick it up in Zhytomyr, almost a twenty kilometer walk from home. Every time I went, they told me, it’s not in yet. Come back in two weeks.

"I went there three times. Every time, it was the same thing, until someone told me that I had to bribe them. The next time I went, I gave them twenty dollars. Then they said, come back tomorrow, your passport should be in.

"And the same thing in Moscow. I had to get a physical in Moscow. I was there for two weeks. The doctor said that something was wrong with my eyes. So I gave him twenty rubbles. He put some drops in my eyes. He saw me the next day and said, I was cured and it was okay to travel."

Gus left Zhytomyr with sixteen other young men, all bound for Canada. The travel party grew in route. In Kiev they met a young family who, among other things, had packed a round of cheese. On the train from Kiev to Moscow, Gus for the first time ate cheese. In Moscow, four Russian girls, traveling to meet their father in Chicago, joined the group.

This merry party traveled by train to Riga, Latvia, where they booked third class fair to Quebec. They had fun. The first and second class passengers were mostly British tourists, whom they could not understand and who were subsequently excluded from the merriment. Third class was Continental emigrant, for whom this voyage was a celebration.

The door to Canadian emigration might have been cleanly closed had it not been for 70 families in Moscow, who through the dogged determination were finally allowed to leave in 1930. After news of their departure some 13 to 15,000 people arrived in Moscow's suburbs with similar plans. For these there was no place to go. With the 1929 crash and worsening economic conditions in Europe and North America boarders closed to immigration. 5,000 of those who arrived in Moscow found refuge in Germany, where they were moved into camps until they could be placed in other countries.

The other some 8,000 suffered a harder fate. Mennonite Heinrich Martins, who escaped to a German camp, described the conditions in Moscow in a letter to Friend Klassen:

"Very often the women and children were bound like cattle, thrown onto trucks, loaded into stock cars, and then sent back. Those from the Crimea travelled nine days, those from Siberia for three weeks in severely cold weather. As a result of this use of brute force many children suffered broken arms and legs. Pregnant women gave birth on pavements or on trucks and both mother and child died within hours. Many became mentally and emotionally ill. Those sent back in spite of promises, had nothing to eat, no roof, ect., so that they fall faced hunger and possible death. There was horror and terror which only he from Russia understands. Many families were torn asunder... About 8,000 are sent back."

Those who made their way to Canada thought explicitly of German settlements and colonies. To a certain degree their expectation was fulfilled. They found German speaking people who welcomed and settled them. But unlike the colonies left behind, they were no longer isolated from the culture at large.

For Gus, learning English was not a priority upon arriving to Saskatchewan. Lockwood had been settled primarily by a mix of Germans and Ukrainians. The first order of business was to write home, announcing his safe arrival to his mother. She had given him a hand lettered alphabet for a guide. While he could write in Russian, written German was foreign to him. It was slow going. The letter took almost a month to complete. And according to Gus, it wasn't much of a letter either, but more of a note.

In Canada he learned to write German, and in so doing formally claimed a heritage. It was a starting point, a gateway into a new world and a new culture.

At Julius Kamenz' burial, Gus instructed Pastor Babbel to conduct this final rite in English.

"Everyone here speaks English, even Omma," he said, "and many here don't know German."

What was for Gus a starting point, for Julius had been the fabric which held a people together for over 200 years. His cultural identity was the only solid feature of a chaotic world. His friends and family left with a rose from his funeral bouquet.

The procession closed one story and it opened a new chapter in the next. Like Meryl Streep’s opening line in the highly acclaimed 1985 movie Out of Africa, “I had farm once in Africa,” many of those filing past Julius’s casket, upon taking a rose, could say “I grew up on a farm once in Ukraine.”

"Born on February 26, 1893, in Tacherjackow [sic], Russia," it spoke of a peasant born into the rich farm land of the Ukraine.

"In 1915," it continued, "during World War I, he and his parents were sent from their home in the Ukraine to Siberia." Empires gave way to modern nation states.

"They returned home four years later and farmed for their livelihood," it went on.

Stalin had his own vision for the modern world. In 1927, it didn't include opposition. By 1930, it excluded most of the Ukraine. Again, famine claimed seven-million. Another seven million were arrested. One-million were executed outright, and the rest sent to labor camps where most died. (The scope of this grim death toll was outlined by historian Robert in Harvest of Sorrow, who used Soviet census data to reach his conclusion. Those numbers were later confirmed by official Soviet press reports.)

The short obituary continued, "During World War II, the family fled from the Ukraine to Germany."

Julius Kamenz knew both. Pastor Babbel's mention of these two contrasted their ambition, power and final infamy, with the humble peasant who finally entered into the full glory of God.

And finally, "as many other refugees, they sought a new life in the United States. In 1952, the family came to Milwaukee..." where Julius was employed as the grounds keeper/gardener at a convent.

At a brief burial service the following morning, the family had the coffin reopened for those few who hadn't attended the funeral the night before. This service included only family and

a few friends. It was conducted entirely in English.

Afterwards, the funeral director offered a rose to the widow. He went on to invite everyone to come and also claim a rose. A solemn procession filed by a closed coffin.

After this final rite Julius' daughter Olga, and her husband Gus, invited every one to their home for lunch.

In the family room among the magazines on the coffee table were two books: one was a Russian grammar, the other, a Russian grade school reader.

Gus explained to the curious I'm thinking of going to Russia next summer. I thought I'd like to brush up on Russian. I've sent for information. There's a tour. It leaves from Helsinki, and

goes on to Leningrad then to Moscow, Kiev and Zaporozhe. Olga still has cousins around Zaporozhe.

Olga is not as enthusiastic about the trip. Her husband had thought of making it some years before, but a herniated disk put a temporary end to those plans. Olga believes his back problems were God's divine intervention. And if God didn't want them to traveling to Russia then, he probably isn't too keen on the idea now. Meanwhile, Gus reads Russian.

Gus often broadcasts his travel plans through the books on his coffee table. Shortly after the Russian trip had been postponed, he enrolled in a Spanish course at the local technical

college. He explained, it was something to keep busy with in retirement and kept at it for two years until he could read a Spanish translation of the Bible. The thought being, if you can

read the bible then you know the language. With this accomplished, he announced to Olga that they would be traveling to Spain. We'll vacation with European relatives, he told her. Mostly he wanted to speak Spanish.

It took a couple of months to make and coordinate travel arrangements. Lloret de Mar, on the north Spanish-Mediterranean coast, seemed an ideal destination. Unfortunately, in Lorette de Mar, the people do not speak Spanish. They speak a dialect which was not even remotely similar to the Spanish Gus had recently mastered. Though enjoyable, the trip was a linguistic disappointment.

"Traveling is much better when you can talk with the people."

Their naturalization papers list them as Russian, but the Bureau of Naturalization only considers place of birth in determining national origin. Both Gus and Olga consider themselves German.

Both were born into German settlements in the Ukraine. A section of the Ukraine, bounded by Korosten and Bilokorovychi on the north, Zhtomyr on the south, was predominantly German. The area encompassed about eight hundred square miles. Gus' hometown, Sorochen, is in the center of this area and lies about 80 miles west of Kiev.

This German girl Gus refers to is Catherine the Great. How she came to be proclaimed Empress and Autocrat of all Russia involves a long history of western European influence on Russia.

The pretense for this trip was to form an alliance of European Christian states for mutual protection against the Turks. In reality he was on a military shopping trip and welcomed the

opportunity to view first hand the West he so greatly admired.

He was so moved by this experience that upon his return he ordered his Court clean shaven, and to dress according to the latest Polish fashion. Outrage and confusion reigned. Rumors

flew that an impostor had returned in Peter's stead. Others speculated that Peter was the Anti-Christ come to preside over the end of the world. Nonetheless, Peter's Westernizing efforts continued. Between 1699 and 1709 he built a new capitol, St Petersburg, and abandoned Moscow.

Following Peters lead, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Romanovs looked to Europe for not only military advisors, but also for wives.

Gus and Olga's Ukrainian heritage dates to manifestos issued by the Catherine, in 1762 and 1763, inviting German and other European people to settle in lands vacated by the Turks.

During her thirty-four year reign, she increased Russian territory by about a quarter of a million square miles, and doubled Russia's population.

The scope and impact of this largely German emigration can be gauged by Mennonite history. Frank H Epp in Mennonite Exodus recounts that by 1780 almost one hundred German colonies were established in Russia. While only four of these were Mennonite colonies, by World War I thy community numbered about 120,000 and accounted for 6% of Russia's industrial production. This is particularly impressive considering that manufacturing only supplemented their agricultural economy.

Ukrainian farm which would not support three families could support two and was divided after Reinhold sought his fortune elsewhere.

Gus' grandfather, after dividing the land, assumed the respected position of village constable. The position agreed with the man.

Gus and Olga are generous almost to a fault. Yet, they are as frugal as a Russian stove. These traits were among their baggage when they immigrated to North America, and these remain.

The loft was used to store crops, grain over the house and hay above the barn. The house and barn were separated by a breezeway like summer kitchen.

"Potatoes," Gus said, "were stored outside buried in a straw lined ditch. I've never seen it done that way here, but it keeps them fresh."

Gus's memory of the Ukraine is dominated by an encompassing sense of community, and of the harvest in particular.

“We had a lot of fun." Years later he recreated a similar working environment for himself in California.

The First World War changed everything. With an advancing German army, the sympathies of the German settlers became suspect. Entire communities were resettled east beyond the

Volga River, and north to the fringe of Siberia. Expecting a typically short and limited European war, these people saw relocation as a temporary inconvenience. It was an unplanned and undetermined sabbatical, to make the most of.

The family received notice to move while Gus's father, who had been drafted into the tsar's army, was home on leave. Family took precedence over military obligation. He never reported back.

"I don't remember much about my father. He had a big mustache and gave me a good licking once. He was a good trumpet player.

My great-uncle was there. He got us off of the train as fast as he could. They didn't notice us missing until much later. The guard came back to listen to our singing, but found our cars

empty."

His father went to the city at once to find a job. He found work at a sawmill, rented an apartment and sent for his family. Things started getting bad.

Gus' baby brother died. He simply became ill and without medical care he died. About a month later, his father caught pneumonia. His job involved mucking around in the Volga River,

wrestling lines around logs so they could be pulled out of the river. In September, he died.

So more than sixty years later, Gus sat with his grammar and reader, he said he’d forgotten a lot of the words, but it's coming back quickly.

Potatoes dominated his considerable garden. Green beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers only garnished the rows of potatoes.

Where there is good dirt, Gus envisions a garden. Too much good land is wasted on lawn, and too much is left completely idle.

Hard work, but Gus finds a full day behind a rototiller satisfying.

"And it wouldn't have been to bad" Gus said, "if one of the wheels hadn't fallen off the rototiller about half way through. Boy, that made it real hard. It kept wanting to dig in. I could

hardly hold the thing level. I should have fixed it, but I didn't want to come out the next day again."