In the first part of this
volume, the author describes life in a
Banat-Swabian village during and after the
Second World War. As a
boy he witnessed the mobilization his father
into the German army. After the war, the
Romania-Germans were disenfranchised,
dispossessed and deported. His mother died
during forced labour in the USSR, while his
father ended up in Canada. With a grandmother as
the
only
support, he studied electrical engineering at
the Technical University "Politehnica Timisoara"
in Romania, where he obtained his engineering
degree.
The second part
of the book deals with the migration of the
author to join his father in Canada, and his
integration into the new environment. Among
the many initial difficulties he had to
overcome were a different social order, a
different language and different customs. He
joined the then largest Canadian
telecommunications company in Montreal,
which later transferred
him to its newly established
Research and Development subsidiary
in Ottawa.
There he finally found the ideal job
and started a family. He worked with
newly-developed semiconductor
devices and the application of
software to telecommunication
systems. Later he contributed to the
development of Canadian, American
and international standards in his
field. He authored and co-authored
more than twenty technical papers,
and presented most of them at
international conferences.
Since his retirement in 2000, the author's focus is on family research
and the cultural tradition of his Danube-Swabian ancestors. He strives to make the history
and culture of their ancestors accessible to English-speaking descendants of the Danube
Swabians. Several of his translations and writings are published at
www.dvhh.org and
www.dvhh.org/alexanderhausen.
(Review is a translation of the back of the book)
Review by Hans Gehl
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Review by Jody
McKim Pharr
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Deutsche
Version
Von Banat Nach
Kanada
Book Review
by Hans Gehl
Published
in the
Banater Post Nr. 13-14 ◊ 10 July 2011
Between Maple and Poppy
Banat to Canada and back. An impressive life story
On the front cover two red poppies that develop at
the bottom to three red maple leaves. And on the
back cover of the book, a passport photograph of the
author with his own presentation of the book, which
- without comment - speaks for itself:
In the first part of this volume, the author
describes life in a Banat-Swabian village during and
after the Second World War.
As a boy he witnessed the
mobilization his father into the German army. After
the war, the Romania-Germans were disenfranchised,
dispossessed and deported. His mother died during
forced labour in the USSR, while his father ended up
in Canada. With a grandmother as the only support,
he studied electrical engineering at the Technical
University "Politehnica Timisoara"in Romania, where
he obtained his engineering degree and started
working at the city enterprises of Arad.
The second part of the book deals with the
emigration of the author in 1961 to join his father
in Canada, and his integration into the new
environment. Among the many initial difficulties he
had to overcome were a different social order, a
different language and different customs. He joined
the then largest Canadian telecommunications company
at one of its Montreal location, and was later
transferred to its newly established Research and
Development subsidiary in Ottawa.
There he finally found his
dream job and started a family. He worked with
newly-developed semiconductor devices and the
application of software to telecommunication
systems. Later he contributed to the development of
Canadian, American and international standards in
his field. He authored and co-authored more than
twenty technical papers, and presented most of them
at international conferences, thus obtaining the
opportunity to visit many cities and countries of
the world.
Since his retirement in 2000, the author's focus has
been on family research and the cultural tradition
of his Danube-Swabian ancestors. He strives to make
the history and culture of their ancestors
accessible to English-speaking descendants of the
Danube Swabians. Several of his translations and
writings are published at
www.dvhh.org
and
www.dvhh.org/alexanderhausen.
Just as clearly and factually presented are all
parts of the well-structured and executed volume.
The first part: Adieu Banat begins with the
observation:
Our
ancestors have been described as people with
portable roots (...) Around the year 1940 they still
lived in the Banat, a piece of land located between
the rivers Danube, Theiss and Marosch. Today they
are scattered over all continents of the earth. How
this change happened, what people experienced, is
complex and no single book can do it justice.
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Publisher: Author House
(18 Aug 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1463418353;
ISBN-13: 978-1463418359;
Hardcover: 204 pages;
available in paperback and
kindle.
Ordering information:
-
Click on
www.authorhouse.com
-
On
the top line, where it
says “Title, Author,
ISBN” enter “Tullius”
-
Click “Search”;
-
Click on the desired
book: Softcover ($9.80)
or Hardcover (14.80);
-
On
new page, click on ADD
TO CART
-
On
new page, click on
Checkout
-
Proceed
to payment by credit
card (via secure
connection)
The book
can also be ordered from
from sources such as
www.amazon.com
and
www.barnesandnoble.com/s/nick-tullius?store=book
or through any bookstore or
library.
Publisher: Monsenstein und
Vannerdat (April 2011)
212 Pages; Language: Deutsch
ISBN-10: 3869912642;
ISBN-13: 978-3869912646
Ordering information: ISBN
978-3-86991-246-6, 19.50 Euros, from
any bookstore or direct from the
publisher at www.mv-buchhandel.de
or from
www.amazon.de
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And in the "Conclusion" of the second part: A Life
in Canada stands the beautiful picture:
There is very little sand left in the upper half of
the hourglass of our life. Our time in this world is
running out. Our role on the world stage is nearly
played out and we are slowly leaving the stage. We
were called the experience generation, because we
experienced the disastrous war and had to bear its
consequences. Too many of us had to endure the loss
of our parents, siblings or other loved ones. In the
end we even lost our ancestral homeland, the Banat.
On the surface, these wounds appear healed, but deep
down the pain persists until the day we die.
This last image is also presented to us in detail:
In the end there will be no brass band to play
the March of the Dead, that haunting melody of
unspeakable sadness that once echoed across the
village from the cemetery of Alexanderhausen.
West of the city of
Ottawa, almost in the small community of Carp, our
last home awaits my family in a small cemetery.
Only a modest grave stone of granite will bear
witness that a journey that began in the Banat mere
decades ago, has come here to its end.
Every Banater would describe it similarly. But in
between stand the exemplary experiences of a long,
fulfilling life, which every reader can understand
very well, because they resemble his or her own
experiences. The past century was just an
extraordinary one. The grandmother (Katharina Beitz
from Neusiedel) and the grandfather from
Alexanderhausen (Johann Lukas) immigrated in 1912 to
America. There the mother was born in 1915, but in
1920 she returned with her parents to the Banat
which was no longer in Hungary, but in Romania. And
although she was an American citizen, the mother was
deported in 1945 to forced labour in the Soviet
Union, where she died among the first deportees. Her
little son could not believe it, but it was true.
Henceforth, the grandmother had to care for the
grandchild by herself. After saying goodbye to her
unfortunate daughter at the concentration centre in
Perjamosch, she made her way back to Alexanderhausen
on foot during a blizzard. She slipped and broke her
right foot and lay there helplessly until a farmer
pulled her from the wind-blown snowdrift onto his
horse-drawn carriage and brought her home. As there
was no doctor in the village at that time, her foot
did not heal properly. Nevertheless, the
indefatigable woman kept her sewing machine going
with her left foot, to provide food for what
remained of her family. What memorable and iconic
images, and everything has happened exactly as it
can be read in this book.
Nick lived through the unsuccessful attempt to
escape to the West, and the passage of the battle
front. Later on he completed high school in Temeswar/Timisoara
by daily commute from Alexanderhausen. As a student
of electrical engineering at the Technical
University Politehnica, he experienced the student
revolt of 1956. He had to subordinate friendships
with girls to his goal of some day emigrating to his
father. After the death of his grandmother, he
intensified his efforts to join his father, who
could finally welcome him at the airport of Montreal
in 1961. But life with the new stepmother and her
dependants was less harmonious, so that he often
felt alone, until he found a foothold in the
unfamiliar new world. The radical change and
integration were hard, but life empowers and creates
the necessary strength to persevere and move
forward. The research engineer achieved recognition,
worked his way up the social ladder, enjoyed a happy
family, saw much of the world and was satisfied. As
a pensioner, he took part in the 50-year anniversary
of his graduation, during the summer of 2008. He
experienced the changes in the capital city of the
Banat and in the countryside, in Hatzfeld, Lenauheim,
Billed and his native Alexanderhausen with the
"Pension Schwabenhaus".
Mulberry trees on the roadside, geese in the village
pond and flowering poppies in the fields: All had
long become history, only the memories remain
indelible.
The mature author is now deliberating about the
Danube Swabians in Canada and the United States, he
is wondering about some developments in his
ancestral regions of
Germany
and Romania, and also about the many useless and
senseless Anglicisms in today's German usage. The
book is the outcome of a rich life, more a report
than a novel, and yet a typical and vivid
description. As an English-speaking Canadian,
Nicholas Tullius has maintained, through his
cultural interest, correspondence and the Internet,
an exemplary use of German. Genealogy and personal
relationships connect him to his background and to
the Germans of Canada, and he endeavours to pass
that interest on to his sons. His mother returned
with her parents from America to the Banat. He went
the opposite way and has now permanently settled in
Canada; poppy flowers and maple leaf continue to
live in a permanent symbiosis.
Dr. Hans Gehl
Nikolaus Tullius:
Vom Banat nach Kanada. Aus dem Leben eines
Migranten. Münster: Edition Octopus 2011.
ISBN 978-3-86991-246-6, 212 pages, 19.50 €. May be
purchased through any bookstore, or directly from
the publisher at tel. 0251/620650810 or
www.mv-buchhandel.de
at the price of 19.50 €, or on line from
www.amazon.de.
[published at DVHH.org 23 Jul 2011] |
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My
Journey from the Banat to Canada
Book Review by Jody McKim Pharr – 22 Feb
2012
Dr. Hans Gehl is a hard act
to follow in his Book Review, published in the Banater Post Nr.
13-14 ◊ 10 July 2011.
In his insightful review, Dr. Gehl
eloquently touches upon Nick’s outstanding accomplishments and his
success in reaching his goals despite adverse conditions. As a
young child I enjoyed reading biographies of former American
presidents’ wives who lived in the 1800’s, mainly because their
daily lives were so well depicted that I could visualize the
setting. Reading Nick’s book gave me that same perspective. Dr.
Gehl wrote, “The book is the outcome of a rich life, more a report
than a novel, and yet a typical and vivid description.” While I
agree, I was more attuned to the day-to-day living experience and
his thoughts about the world around him.
There are countless books written today by
survivors of Tito’s starvation camps and the ethnic cleansing of the
German populations in Eastern Europe after WW2. Most of the authors
were school-age children at that time, and their memoirs resonate in
our souls, educating us about the horrid atrocities and crimes
committed on the Donauschwaben.
Although they were spared from the crimes
committed in the Yugoslavian Banat, Batschka and Syrmia, the people
of the Romanian Banat had their own fair share of suffering, as Nick
describes in his book about growing up during these years in his
home village, Alexanderhausen. Having known Nick for about 10
years, I assumed the book would be a predisposed repertoire of
academic rhetoric, because I’ve always thought of Nick as a
professor. But I was pleasantly surprised to find his book
absolutely endearing, allowing me to peek into another aspect of
Nick, the child, and the romantic, yet apprehensive young man who
learned how to attain tolerance in the face of calamity.
Nick begins the book by sharing background
information on his grandparents and his parents, leading up to his
birth (I noticed, he didn’t give the year ;-). He tells of his
kindergarten days, and it seems that even then Nick was destined to
be a special person, as he was the only child allowed to play in the
sand box while the other children had to take a nap. Those memories
quickly move to the burial of a classmate who had drowned in a town
flood. Sharing that experience brought tears to Nick’s eyes.
The story then turns to the time the Red
Army enters their village, his mother is deported to the USSR and
his father leaves for the army. Neither of his parents returned to
their home in Alexanderhausen. It is heart-breaking to read that
his mother died; his father, unable to return to the Banat after the
war; eventually immigrated to Canada. The task of raising Nick fell
on his Oma, Katharina Lukas, nee Beitz. There’s got to be a special
place in heaven for all the Omas of Donauschwaben children.
Nick excelled in academics all the way
through university. His high school and university education took
place in Timisoara, and the daily commute by train provides some
very interesting stories. Yes, it is the everyday life of a
Donauschwaben child that is a story unto itself. From his grueling
studies to the periodic separations from his Oma, Nick’s tenacity to
stick to his goals was extraordinary. I was very touched by his
account of his grandmother’s death; she had devoted her life to her
grandson and everything she had done was for him and his future.
Nick speaks of his Oma frequently throughout
the book and also reminisces about his mother. Not often does he
mention his father, who eventually immigrated to Canada; and not
till near the end of the book he reveals that his father was
remarried to a widow with a daughter.
It was no surprise that when Nick finally arrived in Canada as an
adult, the long-time father-son estrangement could have played a
role in Nick being the strong, determined and independent man he was
and which led to his ultimate life-long accomplishments – a
satisfying, secure career, his soul mate Donna and two wonderful
children. If he owes anyone a thank-you, it's Oma.
The book is filled with wonderful stories
and enchanting episodes of Nick’s life in the Banat and in Canada;
in some cases we are left wanting to know more of what happened
after that! But how much can be written in one book? It is
excellent and you won’t want to put it down because Nick is
absolutely a great storyteller.
There is one thing I would change about
it though, the title. It should read “From Banat to Canada – A
Childhood Interrupted”. Read the book and you’ll understand why.
Nick, my DVHH associate and my friend, thank
you for writing your story.
- Jody McKim Pharr, 02 Feb
2012
More about
Nick Tullius
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