In a country where for years people were actively discouraged from stepping out and demonstrating leadership, it is refreshing and still somewhat rare, to discover Ukrainians who want to take initiative and do things for their community.   Nickolai, the school principal in Udarnik, and Anatoli, the history teacher, are such refreshing finds.

When we visited the school in this former Mennonite village of Neukirch, they kept talking about building a monument to remember the people of the seven Mennonite villages of South-Eastern Molochna, who suffered under Soviet repression, particularly the times of famine--the holodomor.

Nickolai and Anatoli are fascinated that people who had businesses, schools, and prosperous farms once lived here.  Now, some of these desperately poor, dried out villages have had no running water for 25 years. They are astounded when they review the pictures of their villages found in books like Rudy Friesen’s Building on the Past.  The windmill at Alexanderkrone, and the silos at Lichtfelde, stand like sentinels guarding the past.  Their school has converted a room into a museum displaying Mennonite artifacts such as a cradle, spinning wheel, table, waffle maker and butter churn.

However, they were not only fascinated with what Mennonites accomplished but what they
went through.  After hearing stories of the suffering and separation of Mennonites from their land, Nickolai and Anatoli came to us with a proposal that a monument be erected at the school to remember these people who had suffered under Soviet repression.  They feel that this time of suffering, particularly during the 1932/33 famine under Stalin, brings together Mennonite and Ukrainian people.  With our input and very limited financial support, under $500, they designed and installed the monument.

The monument lies on the ground almost like a tombstone.  The tombstone is surrounded by seven old Mennonite grinding stones, representing each village.  The image on the monument consists of a hand taking away a loaf of bread and beneath that, a broken stalk of wheat.  Inscribed on the granite stone in Ukrainian, English and Russian are the words:

“To the inhabitants of the villages Alexanderkrone, Friedensruh, Kleefeld, Lichtfelde, Prangenau, Neukirch, Steinfeld who fell in the wars, holodomor, repression and deportation.”
 
Here are people who have not forgotten what our parents and grandparents went through.  If they remember us, should we not remember them?