My husband Gary Bergthold has just published a book on his family history, a book he started over twenty years ago. It is a unique combination of travel memoir and genealogy discovery. Here is an excerpt about why he decided to search for the origins of his family.
I became interested in our family history a number of years ago while attending a family reunion. It was the food that got me started. It’s always about food in our family! Armies travel on their stomachs and so do families. Arabus, borscht and varenike were my favorite foods as a child. They were my family’s soul food. The stories told by my many uncles and aunts were well-worn tales of growing up in a large and very poor family that laughed in the face of every hardship. Many of the family jokes included these words for food, and the very mention of them brought peals of laughter from the older generation. I assumed that these words were derived from our German-speaking past, but in visits to Germany, I could never find varenike or borscht on the menu.
What started my investigation of our family roots occurred in Ukraine. I had just arrived in Lviv, Ukraine in 1995 to train Ukrainian doctors in improved clinical teaching techniques. Seated in a dark basement lunchroom in a dilapidated maternity hospital in Lviv, my doctor-participants were speaking in Russian and Ukrainian, languages I did not understand. I was tired from the long trip from California and a morning speaking in short sentences so my words could be translated. Being in a group that is speaking a language you do not understand gives you total privacy and freedom to think your own thoughts. I sometimes laughed with the group at what I supposed was a joke. It was a way to seem less lost than I really was.
I was hungry and the smell of the food cooking over a wood fire in the kitchen seemed strangely familiar and comforting. The waiting lunch crowd grew suddenly quiet when the elderly cooks emerged from the dark kitchen with steaming pots. I heard my participants ask questions of the cook, and although I did not understand what they were saying, I recognized two words – varenike and borscht. Excited thoughts began to race in my mind. These were the foods of my childhood. Not the red beet borscht of Russian restaurants, but the dill and green cabbage soup my mother and grandmother had served. The meal was followed by a tray piled high with watermelon. I pointed at the tray and asked “Arabus?” “Da,” they replied. “That’s what it is called in the Russian language.” I realized right then that my family may not have originated in Germany, but possibly in Ukraine or Russia. I could not wait to find out more.
The very next day I began my search for the ancestral home of the Bergtholds. The process of learning about our family history has been amazing. Most of the history was forgotten as the family became more American, secular, and affluent. My parents’ generation knew very little about this history, as their parents didn’t pass it on. Perhaps it was an effort to avoid the stigma of being German during the war, as well as the process of becoming American that is experienced by many recent immigrants. Much of what I learned over the next few years I obtained on the Internet through contacts I made. I’ve often wondered what old Daniel would have thought about that! It took him months to receive a letter telling of opportunities in Galicia.[i]
Discovering the history of Daniel and the other ancestors, and visiting their land, brings them back to life in our memory. I hope this story helps my children, grandchildren, and their cousins to understand and appreciate their very special past.
You can check out the book at FriesenPress. It’s available in eBook, paperback and hardback.
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000361044340