From: MSN NicknameEagle_wng (Original Message) Sent: 2/23/2007 9:08 PM
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Ethnic Germans Cut Adrift in Abkhazia
By Kevin O'Flynn
Staff Writer
SUKHUMI, Georgia -- Lavrenty Gart, 71, remembers vividly when the secret police came for his mother after war broke out with Nazi Germany in 1941. He himself wouldn't have survived were it not for his neighbors.
His neighbors -- Poles, Armenians and Georgians -- hid him and family members even though they were Germans.
"It saved us," said Gart, now head of the Society of Germans in Abkhazia. "Nobody asked what nationality you were. There was that kind of friendship among different peoples."
Abkhazia has long been known as a land where an array of peoples, cultures and ethnicities overlap. As early as the sixth century B.C., historian Edward Gibbons noted, 132 tongues could be heard in the marketplace here.
"We have always been multinational," said Maxim Gunjia, Abkhazia's deputy foreign minister. Unfortunately, he added, many groups have fled the region since the 1992-93 war with Georgia.
The exodus of ethnic Germans has been expedited by a government program in Berlin enabling the people -- who have to trace their "German-ness" through one parent's side of the family -- to return.
A handful of German speakers remain, with Abkhaz, Armenians and Georgians making up the bulk of the population. "We used to have 71 members," Gart lamented. Now there are 31.
The Society of Germans in Abkhazia works mainly as a support group. Most of the Germans here are pensioners struggling to make ends meet.
The society meets in the Lutheran Church, which Germans built in Sukhumi in 1913 and was only returned to the community in 1999: For nearly 80 years, the Communists banned religious services there.
Every few months, a German priest comes to preach at the church. They also hold German history lessons there, and they collect information on well known German speakers who once lived in Abkhazia. A large map of the fatherland adorns one wall.
Most important, the society lends a hand to members when they fall ill, with one member being assigned to help whoever needs it.
"For us, it means a lot," member Nelli Nais said of the society.
Johannes Launhardd, the Bishop of the Caucasus for the Evangelical Lutheran Church, noted that the church worked closely with the broader German-speaking community.