MyHeritage Suspends Service in Russia

MyHeritage users from Russia will no longer be able to use the service as of 1 February 2025 when the company suspends service to the entire country. 

Per Russian law, MyHeritage must delete accounts and data, including DNA tests. This means if you have any DNA matches with those Russian MyHeritage users, you will no longer be able to see or research your matches. 

Ground News, an aggregator of news stories from multiple sources, has a number of articles about it, including some from Russian media outlets. Researcher Vera Miller outlines in her blog, Find Lost Russian & Ukrainian Family, steps to take between now and then. 

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Map Update — De-Russification of Ukrainian Place Names

A cup of tea, three mandarins, a few leftover Christmas cookies, and whole bunch of map updates this afternoon. All of relate to the former German colonies in Ukraine today. Here’s the rundown:

1. De-Russified place name changes
2. Fürstenland Colony update
3. A few new places
4. Odessa to Odesa update for current place names
5. Russo-Ukrainian War frontline
6. Father William C. Sherman Photograph Collection (NDSU GRHC) 

In total, 933 places were updated. If you want to see the full list, search the map for 20250110 (this is the last update date) to see the full list. The Sources page has also been updated. 

Place Name Changes
The primary reason for the update was the toponym or place name changes that went into effect in Ukraine on 19 September 2024. Numerous place and district name changes were proposed to de-colonize or de-Russsify names that were still in place from the Soviet Russian era that no longer reflected Ukraine’s present or future, or did not comply with Ukrainian language standards. Among these changes were some of the former German colonies. Some of the original names of the German colonies were replaced, while other German names returned with their Ukrainian spellings. The old names have been moved to the “Other Names and Spellings” field for each colony.

If interested, you can view the list in English or Ukrainian on Wikipedia. The English version does not have links to village pages. The Ukrainian version does, including coordinates, which I used to verify I had the right places. 

Within the modern oblasts or regions listed below are listed the German ancestral place name (colony name with the enclave or former province) followed by the current place name and oblast. In some instances, the old name is still on Google Maps along with the new one. 

Dnipropetrovsk Oblast  

1. Nowo-Moskowa (Ekaterinoslav), now Samar, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukraine 

Donetsk Oblast

1. Elisabethdorf (Mariupol enclave), now Nova Karakuba.
   
2. Grüntal (Mariupol enclave), now Hrintal. Ukrainian spelling of the German colony name was restored. 

Kharkiv Oblast

1. Kostyantynohrad (Poltava), now Berestyn.

Kherson Oblast

1. Dornburg (Taurida), now Dornburg. Original German name restored.
2. Eigental & Schöntal (Kronau enclave), now Olzhyne. 
3. Judendorf (Jewish Agricultural enclave), now Stiike.
   
4. Neu-Landau (Kronau enclave), now Nezlamne.

Odesa Oblast 

1. Alt-Posttal (Bessarabia), now Yaroslavove.
2. Bairamtscha (Bessarabia), now Bairamcha. Original name restored.
3. Beresina (Bessarabia), now Soborne.
4. Borodino (Bessarabia), now Budzhak. 
5. Milliardowka (Kutschurgan enclave), now Miliardivka
6. Neu-Paris (Bessarabia), now Novyi Paryzh. Original name restored. 
7. Neu-Tarutino (Bessarabia), now Novodolynske. 
8. Stern (Kutschurgan), now Svitanok
9. Tarutino (Bessarabia), now Bessarabske.
10. Wittenberg (Bessarabia), now Prykordonne. 
11. In March 2024, Hoffnungsfeld (Bessarabia) in Odesa was to be renamed Champagne. However, the French Embassy objected to this—France is very protective of this particular name—and the decision was reversed. It still stands as Nadezhdivka.  

Rivne Oblast

1. Moskowschtschizna (Volhynia), now Shchaslyve.

Volyn Oblast

1. Podgorodno (Volhynia), now Pidhorodnie. 

Zaporizhia Oblast

1. Rosenfeld (Ekaterinoslav), now Adrianivka.   
2. Petershagen (Molotschna), now Petershahen. German name restored. 
3. Kleinwerder (Mariupol), now Malyi Verder. Ukrainian spelling of the original German name.  

Zhytomyr Oblast

1. Krassnaja Rechka Kolonie (Volhynia), now Hranitne.

Few New Places

As I find or am told about new places, I try to update the maps manually. But sometimes they pile up. This was a small pile from some indexing I have been doing of deportation locations. The indexing will no doubt bring more places to light, and I will write about it more as things progress. I also just got a list of khutors to look for that came from church records in the Beresan enclave around Christina. Those should be ready for next month’s update. 

Fürstenland Colony Update

The Mennonite Fürstenland Colony locations have been updated. Thanks to Brent Wiebe over at Trails of the Past for that update. 

Odessa to Odesa

The spelling of Odesa oblast has been updated for current place names. This was long overdue. 

Russo-Ukrainian War Frontline
Updates have been made to those former colonies that are in Russian-occupied territory at this point in the Russo-Ukrainian war. I’ve been updating the notes of each colony since early in the war. To the Black Sea Region and South Russia maps, I have added a frontline so that you can see where it is in the context of our past. I cannot update this daily as some sites do, but I will updated it monthly if anything changes. 

Father William C. Sherman Photograph Collection (NDSU GRHC) 

Digital Horizons has digitized color slides of a few Ukrainian villages from what appears to be late 1995. These are a part of the Father William C. Sherman Photograph Collection from North Dakota State University’s Germans from Russia Heritage Collection. You may be familiar with the 1970s Germans from Russia homesteads Father Sherman photographed in North Dakota. 

As more of the German villages in Ukraine get scanned and added to Digital Horizons, I will add links under each village in the Sources and Further Reading. These were taken right after Ukraine’s independence and certainly have historical value as perhaps the first snapshot in time after the fall of the U.S.S.R.

Search the map for “Father William C. Sherman” to get a list of places with these photos, or skip the map and view the collection on Digital Horizons. There are links for each place back to the map. 

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Social Media: A Prescribed Burn

In case you find yourself here wondering what happened to my page on Facebook, the answer is I removed all of this project’s social media content from Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) and X (Twitter). 

In the past several days, Meta made some (presumably) business decisions that prompted me to remove all my content from those websites. Their decision last week to let loose a bunch of AI chatbots to converse with humans on the platforms was enough to get me thinking about pulling back. The tipping point came with yesterday’s announcement by Meta included dissolution of their fact checking, content moderation, and changes to their “Hateful Conduct Policy” that gave specific examples of how to be hateful.

These are their websites. They can do as they please with them. This is my content. I can do what I please with it. 

While I carefully curated the Germans from Russia Settlement Locations page on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (dumped that account last year), weeds still popped up. Meta has now fertilized the weeds, and I anticipate that things will get worse sooner than later. Rather than continue to pull them as they appear, I decided to torch the lot. Sometimes a prescribed burn is necessary. 

This project and research continues, right here, like always. 

People often ask “what is the one question you would like to ask an ancestor?” Mine is not about a specific relation or brick wall or way of life. My question is this: “How did you know when it was time to leave?” I imagine the answer was, “When the time comes, you just know.”

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Happy New Year

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A Holiday Project: Essential Questions

The holidays are upon us, for those who will be spending time with family this season, consider asking them some not so run-of-the-mill questions. 

Professor of anthropology, Elizabeth Keating, wrote a book entitled Essential Questions: Interview Your Family to Uncover Stories and Bridge Generations. The Atlantic ran an article by her about it when the book was published. This is a gift link to read the article for free: “The Questions We Don’t Ask Our Families But Should.” 

In her book, Keating presents groups of questions that tap into memories and experiences that can reveal more than you ever thought to ask your family members...or yourself for that matter. These are not the birth-marriage-death, names-dates-places, work-life-faith kind of questions. As an anthropologist, Keating brings an interesting perspective to interviewing our elders about their lives. 

Each section starts with a broad question and has several follow up questions that explore the nooks and crannies of a life. The topics include questions about:

...background (is there a story about your name?)

...space (tell me about the house you grew up in)

...time (tell me about a typical summer day when you were a child)

...social interactions (tell me about a time that you were treated as insignificant)

...becoming (tell me about what the world looked like as you entered it as an adult)

...identity (what did people tease you about when you were a child or a teenager)

...body & adornment (tell me about the clothes you wore as a child)

...belief (how have your beliefs changed in your lifetime?)

...kinship & marriage (what do you wish you asked your parents or grandparents?)

...material culture (what objects from childhood do you still have and why?)

...fear (what has been your bravest act?)

...memory (what songs trigger memories for you?

...and my favorite, what do you wish people knew about you?

If you are not spending time with your elders this holiday, or you are the elder, or you just want to spend some time being introspective without the help of the ghosts of Christmas, Past, Present and Future, head to the library or purchase this book. Then grab a new notebook, a pencil, a cup of coffee and start answering these essential questions. 

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