Memrik - by Mary Wiebe

A family group of five Wiebes from the Port Rowan area of southern Ontario plus John Thiessen of Denver, Colorado have made the only excursion to date to the Memrik Colony as part of the Mennonite Heritage Cruise. This occurred on Sept 26, 1996. Here is Mary Wiebe’s journal of the time along with photographs taken by Thiessen and Wiebe family members. You might also want to view a map of the colony. Bahndorf is Orlov at the top of the map.
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Mary Wiebe’s Journal
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Off to Memrik, Orlowka. Our guide was Tanya on a cool late September morning in Ukraine - 10 degrees celsius. We had breakfast at 7.30 on the ship and on to the street at 8.30.

It was quite a rough ride. We were on a small bus with 6 of us plus guide and driver. We were intended to have a van but there weren’t enough vans.

We arrived around noon. The first place we stopped was Kotlyarevka. We met a Mennonite lady called Neta Isaac. She lives there with her husband Armin. I wonder if it once was Herman. They live just the way people used to live in this village with picket fences in front of a small plot for fruit trees.

It has rained a lot and everything is really quite muddy but the roads are all asphalt. Even though it was noon the Isaacs were on their way to milk with plastic pails and maltj benjtchis (milk stools). At first they were unwilling to talk but when I started to speak to them in Low German Neta told us her story.
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left to right: Armin Isaac, two Babushkas, Neta Isaac, Michael Wiebe, John Wiebe Sr. John Wiebe Jr. Mary Wiebe
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Her maiden name was Nut Schmidt and they were sent to Siberia when the German invasion started in WW II. They were there for thirteen years and then were told they were free to go wherever they wanted. They decided to go back home to the Memrik Colony. Once back they were refused membership in the collective farm and were itinerant workers for three years.
Armin’s sister apparently had some influence and they were eventually admitted. They have lived there ever since.

The Isaac’s have three cows to sell cheese, cream and butter to augment their small pension. They seem to get by. They have relatives in Alma Ata but do not get to see them anymore because they can no longer afford train fare. They used to travel under the old system.

Looking around the village we saw a broken down building which was once a Mennonite house-barn, with the date 1906 still visible. It had been converted into a store at one time and was now boarded up. There was also an original mill with brick work in good condition. It appeared to be functional.

Our next stop was Bahndorf or Orlowka, founded in 1886. This is the village of my parents. Our guide was most helpful. She was constantly asking for Njemtsi (Germans or German speakers). At each stopping of the bus we quickly had a gathering of Babushkas. It seemed right out of Fiddler on the Roof. They were all pleased to be photographed.

At once a better dressed woman appeared, speaking in staccato Russian. Clearly she was the village spokesperson. She could not remember any Mennonite names except Stobbe who had visited in 1955. This was my cousin Jakob Stobbe who had been born in Bahndorf in 1926. He would have been 16 when he left the village in 1941. How I wished Jakob could have been with
us this day to give us detail. He would have remembered so much. Jakob came out in 1993 to Germany and is still alive. I knew Jakob had visited his old town from a letter written by my aunt. She also wrote that the house in which my grandparents lived in was still standing, but now there was no memory of names such as Tjart (my family name), Janzen, Sawatsky, Klassen, Wall & Spenst, the names of the Bahndorfers. At one point I noticed a house with red brick all the way up to the gable. Might this be my grandparents house? I wonder.
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Michael and I are wondering if this is the Tjart house
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Our spokesperson showed us the place where the Stobbe’s had lived and even got the owner to open the gate and see the original well. There were two other houses pointed out. One was the property of David Koop the mill owner. The roof had been changed but the old red brick was still to be seen. I asked the current owner if there had once been a peetschky (straw fired brick and iron oven). He said yes, but the house had been altered considerably to serve two families. This house earlier had belonged to Schellenbergs and Hamms.Then there was the Neufeld house which John photographed but I didn’t see. The old school had been demolished and another one built on the site. There was also a mill in the village but no spur. The cemetery likely had graves from the Mennonite times but no readable markers.
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My husband and I at the Koop house, Bahndorf
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People in the villages are very friendly. This Russian speaking spokesperson met us riding a bicycle. She simply handed it to the next person and hopped on the bus to show us around. We tried to give her some Hryvnia (Ukrainian currency) but she would have none of it. She did accept a ballpoint pen and a Canada pin. Everyone has ducks & geese wandering about and goats &
cows tied up, even horses. The animals are grazing all over, some tethered near the road side and even if front of the school. The gardens were all cleaned up for the fall except for some carrot and other root crops.
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.The newer train station at  Zhelanaya
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We then visited Zhelanaya train station. It is quite large, with an older building in ruins on the south side of the tracks and a newer building in gray brick - 2 stories high and built in the older style. There was a large concrete works resembling a pool which our men thought might have been a water reservoir at one time. There is a more recent water tower bricked in.

Our last stop was Kalinovo or Marienort. We found two old Mennonite houses but no one who could still speak German. By this time it was 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The cows were being brought back from the pasture. They all knew where they belonged and turned into the right yards. A lot of people as well as children gathered round the bus for a bit. Then we were off with people minding the returning cows and waving to us from the gates.

I would have loved to have stopped at Memrik village. There was once a large Russian park there but already falling into ruin by the time the Mennonites arrived. The land had been owned by a certain Kotlyarevka, a Russian nobleman. He was buried in a grotto but grave robbers have desecrated the site.

So, around 6.45 our guide asked “Where next?” I said, “Nach Hause (home)”. She replied in German, “Ja, wenn ihr schon eine Woche auf dem Schiff seit, dann ist das schon zu hause” (yes, if you’ve already been on the ship for a week you can call it home).

On the way back we saw women in a slag pile looking for bits of coal, knee deep in guck.

Perhaps we should have tried to make a 2 day trip of it. But that has its challenges too. Back “home” we had a late dinner of carrot & cabbage salad, stuffed tomatoes, meat, potatoes, watermelon and meringues. It had been a full day.

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