My Grandmother’s Story – My Heritage

About two years ago, on a cold winter evening, I was sitting at the window watching the way millions of different fragile white snowflakes were falling on the ground and turning into one big snow cover. It reminded me plenty of human fates and fortunes, which are quite different: happy and unhappy, complicated and careless. Suddenly, I smelled the scent of the most delicious sweet pastries from the kitchen being cooked by my grandmother Ludmila. I’m fond of spending time with her because my grandmother is a very attentive, careful, kind and wise person.

 “Jenia, let’s have tea” – invited my granny. Her invitation reminded me about earlier times when I was a little girl and my grandmother told me tall tales. I would ask her to tell me more and more, and she could continue to concoct something non-stop.

During our tea, I said, “Granny, please tell me a story how it was in my childhood! Do you remember?” She became lost in thought, looked at me attentively and then said, okay Jenia, it is the right time, not for a tale, but for the real story in which the main characters will be your ancestors. I became excited at the expectation of hearing something very interesting and exceptional.

Grandmother Ludmila Lutz Kramarenko began her story. “My dear, your grandmother is 60 years old of age, but a hard and bitter period of my life has passed. Only God knows how much time I have till the end of my life on the earth. That’s why I want to tell you about my parents’ lives, and the lives of some of your other ancestors. The story of their lives has lived in my heart all my life like an unsaid painful question, “What for? Why?”

Grandmother Ludmila hesitated for a moment, and then continued her story.  “There was a great resettlement of German people from Baden and Würtemberg in Germany to South Russia from 1804 till 1824, by the invitation of Russian Czar Alexander I. As told by my father, Lutz Peter Petrovich, confirmed with information from German church records, (In 2002, Ludmila found this information in a special book in a German Church.) his ancestor Lutz Johannes was resettled from the town or village Marios Schlüchtern, maybe to Bessarabia, and then to Ukraine in Odessa region. My grandfather Lutz Peter was born in 1880, in the village Bischofsfeld, and died in June 28, 1924. My father also used to talk about village Yanovka, but unfortunately I don’t remember, exactly. I was a little girl then. Nevertheless, I’m going to tell you the life story of my father Lutz Peter Petrovich, as told to me.

 My father’s mother, Risling Elizabeth (1882 – 1967), had six brothers and sisters, Evgenia, Regina, Lidia, Georgij, Rohus and Pius. Elizabeth was the eldest in the family, and she married Lutz Peter. They had three children, Peter, who became my father, Ida, and Klema. My father was born in 1909 (he didn’t know his birth date exactly) in the village Eremeevka of Razdelyansky district in Odessa region. My grandfather was a very rich landlord who owned a large estate. Later, his property was taken by the government during the collectivization. After his father’s death my father Peter became the head of the family. He took everything that was produced on their farm to Odessa for selling in order to feed and to dress his sisters and brothers. Times were very hard and anxious. Often, bandits would fall upon him and take away everything on the way to Odessa. When my father became an adult, he bought a gun to protect himself, and bandits soon learned that he had one. One time when Peter was going to market, he had to leave his cart and goods to escape on horseback while the gangsters pursued him until reaching his village.

Peter stayed with his mother and family until 1929 when he married Rosa, a countrywoman. They acquired their own house, and lived in the village Eremeevka until 1942. They had five children, four daughters and one son, but the eldest daughter died when she was 12 years old.

When World War II began, the German Army occupied the Odessa region. Then the Soviet government decided to move the German people away because Soviet rulers thought the German people would help the fascists. While Rosa and the children lived under German rule, Peter was sent to the Perm region (Ural, taiga) where he had to work at cutting down trees for shipbuilding – so-called “ship timber”, and burn charcoal for producing tar which was used in building. He was forced to work under inhuman conditions, cold weather with 50 degrees of frost, shabby clothes, and hunger. Workers had special deep resin galoshes (rubbers) and puttees. Their clothes were covered with ice, and they worked about 12 hours per day. My father slept under a shelter of branches and he buried in the snow for warmkeeping.

In time, Peter and other workers made dugouts in the ground for shelter, and then built fires to heat it. One day my father was so hungry, that in order not to die, he found potato peelings on the dump, which he boiled and ate. Later he became ill and nearly died from it. Old Believers, who lived in the taiga and communicated with nobody, saved my father. It was not easy for Peter to communicate with them since my father knew very little Russian as his family had always spoken German. .

Peter sent a lot of letters to his wife and children in Odessa during his years working in the Ural taiga, but he received no answers. He didn’t know that the fascists had taken them as prisoners. Then he applied to the authorities to search for information about his family and was told his family was missing. Later, he applied again, and the answer was that his family had perished. So, he looked for them for about 10 years, but during this time his family was working for a German landlord in Germany.

When World War II ended, the Soviet Union took their German people back, not to their previous homes as they were promised, but to Siberia and Kazakhstan, considering them traitors. My father’s family was taken to an uninhabited steppe in Kazakhstan, where they had to dig dugouts for shelter so they wouldn’t die from the cold; and lack of food and starvation were constant problems.”

“Now”, Grandmother Ludmila said it was time to tell about her mother’s lifestory. Ludmila’s mother’s name was Ogryzko Anna Adolphovna, and her parents, Adolph and Mikhajlina Ogryzko, were Poles. They lived in Gadivlya village of Lepelsky district, Vitebsk region, Belorussia. “So, my mother’s motherland is Belorussia. They had five children, three daughters, Yanina (1913), Maria, my mother Anna (1915), and two sons, Stephen and one more son, born in 1911, but unfortunately, I don’t remember his name.

In 1914 their father, Adolph, came back from World War I with one leg missing, along with other severe wounds. He died in 1916 when my mother, Anna, was only 6 months old. Her childhood was very hard. The eldest brother became the head of their family and helped his mother bring up children. He was an excellent hunter, and they were able to survive, thanks to his hunting in the forest. Later, my mother’s family built a big house. Her brother bought a good gun which he used for hunting. As time passed, the family was able to acquire their own household effects, including several cows, horses, sheep, pigs, geese, and chickens. It was difficult to maintain such a big house. Besides, they had to mow hay, and sow grain. To harvest, the children reaped, threshed, cropped, bound sheaves, and threshed by chains doing everything with their hands.  They had to feed not only themselves but also the livestock.

There were no schools at that time. Later the government organized the special program called “Campaign against Illiteracy”. My mother had a chance to attend these classes for only two months in summer, because the weather was warm and she could go barefooted.  In autumn, when the weather became cold and rainy, she had to stay home because she didn’t have boots to wear. The custom was that little girls had to keep house, and as my mother was the youngest in the family, she had less opportunity to study than other children in the family. As a result, she could only read a little, and write her surname”.

Grandmother Ludmila said that mother Anna’s life was very hard, as it was for all of her brothers and sisters. “Her brother couldn’t get married for a long time because the custom in Polish society was that a man could not marry until he had his own house in which to live with his wife. So, almost all Poles married at 35-40 years of age. In his lifetime, my mother’s brother only had time to build a big house for their whole family, rather than to build one of his own.

Socialism was the main principle of the Soviet regime. Private property was taken away from the people, and collective farms were established. My mother’s family was considered very rich, so in 1931 they were forced to give up their property and become members of a collective farm. Of course, they resisted giving up their property because everything they owned had been made by their backbreaking work, and it was a price for their life. As a result of their resistance, my mother’s family was forcibly dispossessed, and deported to Perm region, taiga. My mother, Anna, was only 16, Stephan was 20, Yanina was 17, but the eldest brother and his wife Maria were sent to Murmansk. Unfortunately, Maria died in childbirth on the way to this city. My mother never got to know anything about the rest of her eldest brother’s life.

It was a cold, frosty winter day when the people were deported and taken to the taiga on carts. They arrived there without any conditions for living. I remember my mother told me they dug an earth-house and covered it with trees. In order to heat their new place for living they burnt wood-knots inside the dugout. My father’s work in the forest was hard, wearisome and exhausting. Many people died. They had nothing to eat at all. Stephen starved to death. My mother and her sister Yanina swelled out, their heads doubled, their legs were like poles. It seemed they were going to burst.

One day when they were working in taiga they found an old tumbledown flour mill, in other words, only its frames. The dirty floury dust had crusted in some places on the decayed boards. So my mother scraped it up and boiled it. After she and her sister had eaten plenty of it, they were taken ill with dysentery; and, it took three months to recover. She said she and her sister had turned into skin and bone. It was terrible to look at them! But, nevertheless, they had survived!

In 1936, my mother got married to her countryman Dmitry, and in 1937, their daughter Valentina was born. Dmitry was subjected to repression, arrested, falsely accused, convicted, and executed when his child was six months. In 1956 he was rehabilitated (exonerated). The government apologized to his daughter, saying it was an act of sabotage and a mistake by the authorities. During this time, my mother lived with her mother-in-law, worked as a slave, and waited nine years for her husband.  It’s impossible to describe this period of her life in forced labor without tears! They carried lumber over the river waist-deep in the icy water. They were always hungry, had only shabby clothes, were covered with lice, and were eaten by forest insects. They had no soap. A piece of soap was worth its weight in gold at that time.

In 1945 my mother, Anna, met my father, Peter Lutz. Anna looked very much like his first wife. My father started to pay his addresses to her. My mother and my father were so poor that they shared every tithe. They fell in love with each other and decided to get married. But it was not easy during those times. German people were under the control of the Soviet government. They didn’t trust Germans. That’s why my mother at once was called to commandant’s office and was given warning. She was told, “If you marry him, you’ll be killed! He is a German after all!” And my mother answered: “I don’t care. You can kill me if you want. Peter is the same man as others, or even better!” I remember how my mother was telling me this and my father was crying. My mother was afraid of course that my father’s first family would be found. But he pledged his word to her, that if they had children, he would never leave her. He was on his knees to her and was swearing.  

So it happened in this way. In 1957, my father was called to commandant’s office and was told his family had been found. Of course, by this time, my father had another wife and three children. This news was a hard blow to him and my mother. He felt keenly. My father was also forced at the commandant’s office to go back to his previous family, or to write a disavowal. Because he had to refuse his first family, it affected him psychologically all his life. My father’s first family couldn’t understand this disavowal, and they were very offended by him.  Unfortunately, they didn’t know the truth, which was that he was forced to do it.

My father went to see them in 1957 after 15 years of separation. Of course, they had become estranged from each other. His children had become adults, with the youngest being 18 years old.  His wife, Rosa, begged my father to stay with them. She said: “You lived with them, please, now stay with us and live with us!” But my father answered:  “Your children are adults already, you brought them up, but my other children are little. I have to bring up them.” I was 11 years old; the youngest was three at that moment. So my father returned to us. I was so glad! I loved him so much and I was waiting for him! Every day I prayed to God for his home-coming. It seemed to me he would stay with his first wife.  But his children began to come to our place after his visit to Kazakhstan. He went there again in 1959 and came back again. He spent the rest of his life in such a way with us. We saw how difficult it was for him. He felt sorry for that family and for us. But there was a great distance between us at that time. They were living in Uzbekistan in Yangul, a town near Tashkent (the capital), and we were living in Perm region.

After 1955, the Soviet government began to remove the commandant’s inspectorate powers over all repressed German people, and gave them more of a free hand. They were able to leave and return to their families. Unfortunately, almost all of these people had married a second time. Only a few returned to their previous wives. However, this situation created a great tragedy! Grandmother Ludmila explained that when she was a little girl, many men came back to their second families after returning from visiting their first wives. It was terrible, with a lot of tears, heartaches, and gladness, all at the same time!  I remember when our neighbor’s father returned to his second family where he had a wife and five little children.  I remember embracing my father when he returned, and told him how glad I was to see him. He treated me with chocolate candies. It was such a rarity for us at that time. We were so poor; we ate everything we could find in the forest, such as berries, mushrooms, cedar cones, and we even chewed tree resin.

In 1959, while my father was paying a visit to his first family, my eldest sister who was a daughter of my mother’s first marriage, died in childbirth, leaving a child. When father returned he saw there was a child’s bed with a baby, and there was no daughter, it was a sad blow to him because he loved her like she was his own daughter. Nevertheless, my parents brought up this baby too. The baby’s own father didn’t want to leave the baby, but he fell ill because of nervous shock. So, my parents became guardians to this child.

On October 1, 1959, our family moved from the Ural area, to Ukraine. Surely, my father couldn’t deceive his heart. It was like a call for his soul to come back to his Motherland. As my father was German, there were some restrictions for repressed Germans when returning to settle in Ukraine. My father could not register in Ochakov and was refused permission to live there. Then, he went to the public prosecutor’s recipient in Nikolaev who advised my father to go to Kirovograd to the uranium mines. He added: “You’ll be surely registered with your family there”.

Soviet laws placed restrictions on Germans returning to their former villages, so my father did not have complete freedom of actions. He also had some problems with the administrative authorities concerning his passport. At first, they wanted to give only a short term passport in order to restrict my father; but later he found a job other than in the uranium mines. He was not able to work in the mines because of an asthma condition. He had become ill with asthma in Ural due to the severe winter cold.  Now, my parents worked in a plant treating maize seeds. While working there, they turned the plant into an example of cleanliness and order for the whole territory. My father had always put everything in model order as a real German. They also planted a flower garden where the dump was located. There were so many beautiful flowers that the garden was a wonder to everybody”. Grandmother Ludmila said her parents’ work at the plant was very hard. She explained that it was difficult for her to tell about their work, but they were always among the best workers at the plant. “My parents had only gratitude for their work at the plant, although it didn’t give them many material benefits. We lived poorly and jejune despite it. My parents worked at this plant until 1977 when they retired. In 1990 my parents moved to our house in Ochakov. I looked after them until my father died in 1990, and my mother died in 1995. My parents are buried in Ochakov.

My father, Peter Lutz’s first family moved to Germany to live, and in 2002 I paid them a visit.  It had been 35 years of separation since we last saw each other in 1967.  I spent about a month visiting them in Germany. I like the motherland of my forefathers so very much!

I remember when I was 16, the age for me to get a pass (passport), my father said to me, “Ludmila, don’t write your nationality as German because you’ll be persecuted as I am now”. So, I wrote “Pole” as my nationality. Later, I regretted it very much. Then, in 2002 I took it to court and changed my nationality from Pole to German. I’m proud of my father being a German. All my life I considered myself to be a real German. I kept all German traditions in my soul. I’m 60 years old now, and I have adopted Lutheranism, and attend a German church. I think I found my place at last. It’s difficult for me to put all my feelings into words, but when I come to Evangelical-Lutheran church I feel myself at peace.  I don’t want to leave this place. I say my prayers in the German and Russian languages every night when I go to bed. I remember my father said his prayers in German, and my mother said her prayers in Polish. Unfortunately, I don’t know a Polish prayer, but I know it in the memory of my mother.

My life also has not been easy. Now, I have one son and four grandchildren. But the only thing I want for all of you is to have a life that will not go through such terrible times as my parents did. I want you not to be afraid of anything or anyone in your life. You’ll never whisper as I did when I talked about my background.  Let the music and flowers in blossom always stay in your hearts. This world will be as nice as blue serene for all of you. Be happy. Let God bless you!” – Grandmother fell silent. It was the end of her story.

I looked at her eyes full of tears and I understood how much I didn’t know before this evening. I realized I was a completely happy common girl. I live in an independent country in peaceful times. My family and I do not have to live in the cold dugout and to feel hungry all the time. One only knows everything in comparison. You can understand what happiness means if you realize what grief is.

All of us must know enough about the lives of our forefathers to tell our descendants. One deserves his future only if he knows and remembers his background.  I kneel before my forebears for everything they have done for us.  I wish for future generations to learn about their family history, so they will know and understand their heritage.

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