Bridges of Friendship

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.