РОДИНА (Family)

On Sunday, my parents and I had a rare experience of discovering relatives still living around the tiny village of Kudynivsky, outside L'viv in Ukraine. This is precisely what we came here for, and yet better than what we could've hoped for. When my great-grandfather Damian Kruck lived here, it was about 1890 - 1915, and he left for the U.S. knowing that war was approaching and conditions were probably terrible.  (my dad is pictured above-right)

When we drove down the dirt road off a highway, immediately an old little babushka came out to the street and tried greeting us, since there are rarely cars passing through.  My mom showed her a photocopy of our relative from a Massachusetts newspaper, with Russian description of his name and background, and she immediately ran inside to change her clothes so shold old walk us a few houses down, to the one "Kruk" in town.

There is one remaining Kruk in Kudynivsky, Eurgen (with the white hair, below), who embraced us lovingly, explained a few things through our friend and driver/translator Max, and showed us both where his parents and grandparents are buried in the town, showed us the church (which was just finishing services) and then he called up all of his children and nephews and nieces (in nearby Trenobil, maybe a half-hour away) to come over and have lunch with us.  They were incredibly friendly but even with a translator, we could barely exchange a few sentences.  Nonetheless, we exchanged addresses so we can send each other news and pictures.  The town itself was as rural as I imagined, but incredibly cute and begins at the end of a long several-miles long field of yellow mustard  flowers. This day was unbelievable.

the woman who helped us, below 

a typical house in the village

Eurgen's chickens with an old wooden horse and cart wagon (we asked how old it was, and he was like "only 15 years")

Mom trying to figure out our relations with Eurgen's daughters

Eurgen with two of his daughters and us, in front of the barn which is the oldest building on his property - they think this barn was there when my Grandfather and his Grandfather (either brothers or uncle and nephew) lived there, too
 

The village's beautiful little orthodox church

One of many decorative gravestones in the town cemetery (not one of our family's) - the curly spiral  seems to be distinctive in this area, we saw many fences with it as well.