The Holdorf saga more than two centuries

Encouraged by the migration policy created by Empress Catherine the Great, Heinrich Friedrich Holdorff moved to Bessarabia, in the russian empire, in the early 19th century. He left Uckermark, Mecklenburg, in Prussia, present-day northern Germany, towards Tarutyno, in the Odessa region, today Ukrainian territory. He was probably already married to Charlotte Lindebaum-Lindemann, whom he joined together when she was only 12 years old. Heinrich was 19 years old.

The following year, in 1805, Juliana was born. It would take another 18 years for another member to arrive in the family. Karl Friedrich was born in 1823. The reasons are unknown, but some died very early, perhaps from illness, accidents, wars, religious persecution, childbirth or other reasons. Heinrich married a second time after Charlotte’s death in 1831, at the age of 39. There is no precise information about his marriage to Karolina Krueger. Their daughter Juliana died at the age of 44, leaving her husband Wilhelm Hintz and 13 children, eight boys and five girls.

Heinrich died in 1855 at the age of 70, but his children died before him. Karl married Anna Christina Draht, with whom he had two children, Karolina, born in 1842, and Johann Friedrich, born in 1844. When Anna Christina was six months pregnant with Justina, who would be their third child, Karl died at the age of just 22. Widowed, Anna had to support a third child. On May 2, 1846, she married Karl Hannemann, with whom she had five more boys and six girls.

One of the girls, Dorothea, would marry Daniel Bogner, with whom she had three children, Gottfried, Rosine and Christine. Dorothea (70) and Gottfried (44) died in the Holodomor, the Great Famine caused by Stalin in Ukraine, which killed around fourteen million people. Six years later, Daniel (74) would be killed during a new purge caused by Stalin in Ukraine.

Reasons to migrate

Johann Friedrich married Johanna Fandrich in 1866, when he was 22 and she was 20. The fact is that Johanna died and left no descendants. Six years later, Johann married one of Johanna’s five sisters, who was one year older than her. He married Susanna in 1872, when he was 28 and she was 27. The saga of two marriages revealed the difficulties of adapting to migration and the torments caused by hard work and adverse climatic, economic, political and religious conditions in the Danube River delta region, which flows into the Black Sea, a border between Romanians and russians at the time.

From 1855 onwards, russian emperor Alexander II began the economic and political modernization of the country, including ordering the abolition of slavery in 1861. That’s right, slavery of white, blond, light-eyed people, mainly Ukrainians. Until the first third of the 18th century, there were more white slaves in the world than Africans. One of the preferences of human traders was precisely the territory of present-day Ukraine. They were kidnapped and taken to Russia, Poland and Germany. However, the most common route was to the caliphates, emirates and sultanates in the south, in the Ottoman Empire.

In a fifth attempt to kill the emperor, the assassins succeeded in 1881. His son Alexander III assumed the throne and sought revenge against those who had probably orchestrated his father’s death. Supported by the Orthodox Church, he thus began the process of cultural and religious russification of the population, with anti-Jewish and anti-Protestant laws. The intention was to force everyone to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church and to change non-Slavic surnames.

Destination: USA

In this political, social and economic scenario, Johann and Susanna decided to migrate to the United States, following her siblings, Ferdinand, Justine and Andreas. Their goal was to reunite in America. Leaving the country became a dramatic task, as they did not have enough resources to buy tickets and documents. In addition to the couple, four more children joined the project: Samuel, Daniel, Josef and Maria. As the decade passed, the trip was postponed with each new birth in the house. Five more children joined the group: Ottilia, Sarah, the twins Michael and Johanna, and the youngest Susanna.

Lutherans, they were not prepared to accept any imposition of russian slavic orthodoxy. It took them ten years to gather their savings, sell their material possessions, prepare their documents and leave the country for good. In mid-1890, Johann, Susanna and nine children arrived at the river port of Reni, on the border with Romania, and remained there for a few weeks awaiting the arrival of a steamship that would sail up the Danube to southern Germany. It is not known how they arrived in Northern Germany. There was a need to reach the ship anchored in Hamburg bound for the United States.

Disgusting individuals passed through this German port, as well as others in Europe, whose objective was to deceive potential emigrants, leading them in certain directions with promises of a magical future beyond European borders. The figure of “coyotes” in the 19th century hunting for victims led many Europeans to Brazil. They worked for the Brazilian government or for unscrupulous farmers who felt wronged by the legal end of slavery. It was necessary to renew the workforce on the farms.

Heading to the ports of Bremen and Hamburg, with the aim of traveling to the United States, the emigrants received information about available ships. Little did the emigrants know that they would be heading to Brazil to be used as slave labor, replacing the blacks freed in 1889 by Princess Isabel. In reality, these “coyotes” worked for Brazilian landowners, eager for easy profits, devoid of morals and humanity.

Due to the delay in the journey, the Holdorf family missed their trip on the emigrant ship. While seeking information about a new transport to the other side of the Atlantic, Johann learned that the steamship Weser would leave from the river port of Bremen bound for the United States, as the Brazilian coyotes had told him. Manipulated by the lie, he embarked with his family for South America, instead of heading to North America. Ignorant of the recent geopolitical changes, added to the difficulty of communication, the couple was unaware of the recently proclaimed Republic of the United States of Brazil.

Deceived by European labor smugglers to Brazil, they began their uncertain journey on December 14^th, 1890. Three days later, they docked in La Coruña, Spain, where other emigrants boarded, totaling 833 third-class passengers and 21 second- and first-class passengers. Only the couple and their two oldest children paid full fares. The others received a discount and there was no charge for the youngest, Susanna, who was 2 years old. According to the interpreter Júlio Paravicini who received the immigrants in Rio de Janeiro, “the health of the travelers was ‘good’ and there were no complaints from the passengers.” However, the conditions in third class did not corroborate the report of the Weser’s medical commander, as fifteen children died of measles, including two children from the Holdorf family, Sarah and Johanna. The youngest, Susanna, died a few months after arriving in Brazil.

The steamship docked in Rio on January 7^th, 1891, a year considered the starting point of Ukrainian-Brazilian immigration, given that citizens from Galicia and the Carpathians also chose to leave the shadow of russians and Poles for the second plateau of Paraná State, where the municipality of Prudentópolis would be formed.

Keeping contacts

Despite being descended from my great-grandfather Daniel and my great-great-grandparents Johann Friedrich and Susanna, who came from Tarutyno in 1890, in the provincial region of Odessa, other relations were established over the decades with Ukraine. In 1981, when I was studying Theology, which I did not complete, I sent a letter to Pastor João Wolff, president of the South American headquarters of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, offering to go to the Soviet Union as a missionary. He responded cordially, explaining that “in due time this would happen”, but that “adequate academic preparation was imperative”. Years later, I completely forgot about the letters I exchanged with the former president.

In 1987, I was working as a locksmith and decided to enroll in an instrumental language course at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). I chose to study Ukrainian, where my professor Olga Nadiya Klemtchuk Kalko shared with me the first notions of this Slavic language. Little did I know that this would come in handy 34 years later.

In addition to the lecture I gave on October 18^th, 2017, to Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Sciences Journalism students and professors, I helped raise funds so that Kyrgyz radio host Mr. Milan could have a kidney transplant on December 7^th, 2018, using an organ donated by his mother. My list of personal goals did not include going on a tourism trip or settling down in Ukraine, not even in the then-obscure Bucha. After getting to know the place, I added the country and the city to my notebook. We lived in Bucha from June 3^rd, 2021, to February 17^th, 2022.

My mother’s brother, Uncle Rubinho, married Marisa, the daughter of Ukrainian Maria Yurkov, whose family had fled to Brazil shortly after the annexation of Ukrainian territories by the communists. The five enclaves that proclaimed independence following the fall of the russian empire enjoyed autonomy for two years, until the new regime in Russia organized itself and managed to take these territories to the soviet empire, dividing them up with the Poles. Another Ukrainian who was very close to me often saw my wife, Lia, in his dental practice. Piotr Bondarczuk, a survivor of the Holodomor, arrived in Brazil with his family, shortly before the Second World War.

Ruben Dargã Holdorf

A descendant of Daniel, he visited Ukraine by invitation in 2017,

and resided in the country from June 2021 to February 2022.