May 10, 2017

Journey to the Homeland Tour set for this month

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Michael M. Miller, Germans from Russia Heritage Collection director, and Jeremy Kopp, special collections associate, will lead the 21st Journey to the Homeland Tour to Germany and Odessa, Ukraine, later this month.

Tour members with Germans from Russia heritage from Canada and the United States will visit their ancestral Bessarabian and Black Sea German villages near Odessa. While in Stuttgart, Germany, they will visit the Bessarabian German Museum, and travel to Alsace, France, where many of the families lived before immigrating to villages near Odessa beginning in 1804.

Tour participant Cindy (Deck) Pulskamp of Hillsboro, North Dakota, said her father talked about how great it would be to take this trip. She will travel with her sister, Rose Deck.

“Part of this trip is a tribute to my father, as he is no longer with us. During my career in agriculture, I often wondered what it took for my ancestors to make farming a way of life,” Pulskamp said. “I reflect on what it will feel like to stand on the same ground where my great-great-great grandparents risked their lives, and their family’s future, to make a better life for themselves in America.”

“The Homeland Tours have been one of the highlights of my career as I begin my 50th year in June at NDSU,” Miller said. “This has been a rewarding experience for me personally to walk the landscape in the homeland of my ancestors and to share these experiences with our tour members as an unforgettable lifetime experience.”

The 22nd Homeland Tour is scheduled in May 2018.

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