July 1, 1915 - The Expulsion of Germans from Volhynia
July 1, 1915 - The Expulsion of Germans from Volhynia¶
The vastness of Russia attracted Germans again and again in the 18th and 19th centuries. Farmers set out in horse carts from southern Germany and settled in the Russian Empire. Around 1860 a group of Germans chose a region in western Ukraine as their second home: Volhynia.
The settlers made the land arable and initially lived peacefully with the Russian population. In 1915, one year after the beginning of the First World War, Tsar Nicholas II ordered the expulsion of Germans in Volhynia. They were expelled to Siberia in July.
That was the beginning of a series of expulsions of Russian Germans in the 20th century. At the end of this, many of them returned to Germany, the homeland of their ancestors. [7]