My works

My Partners:
archivists, genealogists, historians

Ukraine: Alex Köhler

Dear all!

Institute for Ethnic Studies invites you to read the plan of its activities for 2017 in areas as follows:
- history of Germans, Roma and other peoples in the Black Sea region;
- history of repression by the totalitarian regimes in archival documents.
Perhaps you might be interested in some of our projects, and would like to join us as partners.

1. Will be continued identification of records in the State archives of Odessa region (hereinafter - GAOO) concerning history of the Germans in general, and concerning documentary history of individual communities and territories.
2. It is of our interest to investigate collections that contain records concerning the south of Ukraine.
In particular, the collections of the Evangelical Lutheran parishes in Odessa, Bessarabia, Kherson and Ekaterinoslav provinces contain 1899-1916 parish registers from many of the German settlements in the Black sea northern regions and in the Azov Sea region.
Description of these collections can be consulted in the book "The parish records directory..." (the GAOO: http://derjarhiv.odessa.gov.ua/Main.aspx?sect=Page&IDPage=40185&id=130

3. We plan to investigate the collections in the County offices of civil registration from 1920-1940.
These collections contain a significant amount of information. Due numerous administrative and territorial changes is often difficult to find corresponding records. It is therefore assumed a step-by-step digitalization and creation of cross-cutting information and reference search engine to display information.
Priority will be given to areas in which there was a significant number of German settlements. These are former Gross Libenthal, Seltz counties, colonies Kassel, Hofnungsthal, and Neu Freudenthal with neighboring settlements.

4. Will be continued processing of records concerning persons who had been repressed by the Soviet authorities
Lists with names of these persons can be found here: http://www.1archive-online.com/archive/keler/list.html

5. According to the Law of Ukraine "On access to the archives of repressive bodies of the communist totalitarian regime 1917-1991", we’ll work with records that have not been transferred to the GAOO from the special depositories of the Security Service of Ukraine, Odessa branch.
Among the cases of special interest are undercover, supervisory and control cases, and other materials concerning all repressed persons: operative processing, personal documents. All these have previously never been available to researchers.
The list of repressed Germans, whose records are in different archives in Odessa (and partially in Kiev) can be found at "Mariology of Odessa Germans" page: http://forum.wolgadeutsche.net/viewtopic.php?f=268&t=2494

6. Will be continued digitalization and improvement of the register "special settlers" (deported) from archival materials of the Odessa regional office of the National Police of Ukraine.
This category counts with over 26200 records (cases), and over 23000 are about Germans, who were in the special settlements in Siberia, Kazakhstan, Central Asia and other regions of the former USSR.
The list of special settlers, the Germans, can be accessed on the same page "Martyrology of Odessa Germans" in the relevant section.

8. As far as possible we’ll continue to work with documents on the re-repatriates who returned to the Soviet Union after the Second World war. The GAOO has over 27500 cases and over 90000 cards, among which over 40% concern the Black Sea Germans, subsequently sent to special settlements.

9. A relatively new area of our activity are Transnistria collections - from time of the Romanian occupation in 1941-1944. These collections we investigate on the GAOO, the State Archives of Mykolaiv region, Izmail archives and other. Our first interest is information about Roma and Jews who were deported in 1942 from Romania to Transnistria and were in many ghettos and camps.
Names of Jews and Roma from already processed documents can be accessed here:
http://www.1archive-online.com/archive/transnistria/tlist.html
http://derjarhiv.odessa.gov.ua/Main.aspx?sect=Page&IDPage=40185&id=130

Director Alex Köhler