Our German-Russian families found new homes in America and began to learn and accept new ways of doing things. But they were still considered different…and as the U.S. engaged in two world wars against Germany, their German language and customs made them a target of FBI surveillance, especially during the 1930s.
This information gathering, often on the basis of anonymous tips, led to immediate registration, harassment, arrests, internment, and relocation when the U.S. entered WWII. As a result, thousands of innocent men, women and children were subjected to suffering, while being denied their constitutional right to due process of law.
In a presentation titled “Anti German-American Agitation during World Wars I and II: Justice Denied and Internment 1941-48,” Bob Schneider will present this story of prejudice against German-Americans and their mistreatment as a result of government policies. In VANISHED: German-American Internment, 1941-48, Michael Luick-Thrams wrote: “Their suffering cannot be justified, as no German-American internee was ever convicted of a war-related crime.”
You may not know his name, but you’ve probably benefited from his work. Kahlile Mehr is the Manager of the Slavic Collection Management & Cataloging for the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and was instrumental in acquiring the St. Petersburg Lutheran records.
Kahlile has been involved in East European genealogy since 1992 when he first visited archives in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, and Minsk – and has made multiple visits to these archives as well as to Saratov, Odessa, Kherson, Nikolayev, Dnepropetrovsk, and Kishinev.
On his first visit to the St. Petersburg archives, he discovered the St. Petersburg Lutheran Consistory and requested it be filmed. Those records have long been a critical source of information for Lutheran German-Russian researchers! The images are now online at the FHL website, and Kahlile has been instrumental in getting GRHS permission to post our indexes for these records online. (See St Pete indexes on Clearing House page, Bessarabia St. Pete index on Odessa)
Kahlile has long worked with German-Russian researchers (such as Gwen Pritzkau) and has been a wonderful support to GRHS in learning more about the records being made available and making our GRHS rack cards available to researchers at the main FHL.
The depth of his knowledge is hard to beat – he’s written 2 books and 41 articles on topics related to genealogy. His B.A. was in Russian; he has an M.L.S. in Library Science and an M.A. in Family and Local History. Kahlile has worked at the Family History Library since 1980 and has presented papers and been a speaker at numerous genealogy conferences.
We are truly fortunate to have him speak at the GRHS convention in Rapid City! Look for his workshops on Saturday, September 12 at 8:30 and 2:30.
Larisa Levchenko, head of the State Archives of the Mykolaiv region in Ukraine, will be one of our featured speakers in Rapid City. Larisa will be doing a workshop based on research trips she’s taken to former German villages in the area, taking photos, visiting cemeteries, and talking to current residents about the remnants of German life in these villages, often still in use today.
Even more impressive is Larisa’s dedication to this workshop by diligently studying English to get ready for her presentation!
The connection between Larisa and GRHS goes back to 2003, when a team visiting ancestral villages in Ukraine made a visit to the archive. Valya (Fromm) Kramer brought out archive documents related our German villages, making it apparent this archive had some records that would benefit our GRHS members.
At that time, the archive had no equipment to make copies of records, so GRHS started our partnership with Larisa and the Mykolaiv archive by purchasing digital photography equipment in exchange for copies of German records. This agreement has led to many valuable records for GRHS researchers….and became a model for a similar agreement recently signed with the Simferopol, Crimea archive. Larisa has been instrumental in GRHS contacts with other archives in Ukraine.
As her work with GRHS increased and Larisa became more interested in the life of Germans in Ukraine, her enthusiasm spilled over to her daughter, Maria, who entered the Youth Essay Contest a couple of years ago, using information from the archive for her essay. Maria has recently been accepted as an exchange student in the U.S. for the next year.
Larisa is looking forward to her first trip to the U.S., and will be spending time in Washington D.C. prior to coming to the convention.
Larisa is a graduate of the Moscow State Historical Archivist University, has a PhD in history for her dissertation “The Mykolaiv and Sevastopol Military Governship (1805-1900)” and has written more than 30 articles and books on the history of Ukraine.
Our German-Russian families found new homes in America and began to learn and accept new ways of doing things. But they were still considered different…and as the U.S. engaged in two world wars against Germany, their German language and customs made them a target of FBI surveillance, especially during the 1930s.
