Re: Familie Fridrich Neumann

David Neumann , Freitag, 04.07.2008, 07:41 (vor 6505 Tagen) @ Wolfgang Wittlief

I can understand German to some extent, but am better expressing myself in English. In May 2008 I made a trip (Don Miller Tour) to Volhynia as part of a group of 12. I went to the home village, Ostrowka, of my Great Grandfather, Christian Neumann. There is only one house left (the former Stahl family house), because three villages were destroyed to make way for a collective farm in the early 1930s. We went to this house and were welcomed by the current owner. We then went in search of other villages (around the outside of this former collective farm) to find more information on Neumann and Kallasch (Eleanore Kallasch was the wife of Christian Neumann).

In your message you mentioned Maidan and Antonowka. As we were travelling through Antonowka in search of Gnadental, two elderly local village residents told us we should backtrack to Maidan. They said that a woman named Frieda Neumann lives there and she still speaks some German. We went to Maidan (it has only 2 or 3 houses) and were told at the first house that Frieda Neumann had moved to Kherson, but that her sister Meta Neumann still lives there. We found Meta Neumann, and spent an hour listening to her story, which I can give you. We have pictures of her and her house. While she could certainly speak some German, she felt more at ease in Ukrainian, and as we had an interpreter with us, that's the language she used. I could not readily find a connection between her and my Neumanns, but I have not ruled it out either. She had a picture of her parents on the wall of her house.

I would be pleased to provide more information on this experience by e-mail. My father, Emil Neumann, son of Johann (Christian) Neumann emigrated to Canada in 1929.