Kamianka (Mannheim)
Mannheim (now Kamianka) was a German colony founded in 1809 by Catholic settlers from Baden, Alsace, the Palatinate, and Prussian Poland. It initially formed part of the Kuchurhan Colonists’ District of Odesa Uyezd in the Kherson Governorate. Today, the territory of the former colony lies within Izmail District, Odesa Region.
The colonists told the Polish writer Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, who stopped in Mannheim in 1818 on his way to Odesa, that they had left their native lands because of constant persecution and poverty.
The economy was based primarily on agriculture and cattle breeding. In animal husbandry, the main focus was the breeding of cattle and horses. Among local industries, butter production and flour milling were the most developed. The needs of the population were met by local artisans.
The first stone church building, with a reed roof, was erected in 1820. In 1896, a new monumental church was constructed in the Neo-Romanesque style with elements of Classicism. Its organ was considered the largest and most beautiful organ in the southern part of the country.
Frequent changes of power in 1918–1919 were accompanied by bandit raids and the looting of food supplies, horses, hay, and carts. In the spring of 1919, the Bolsheviks seized power. In response to forced mobilization and food requisitioning, the population took part in the anti-Bolshevik Grossliebental Uprising.
The transformations introduced by the Soviet authorities, who ultimately consolidated power in February 1920, were received negatively by the colonists. Grain requisitioning during the crop failures of 1921–1922 led to mass famine. Bolshevik attempts to win the sympathies of German peasants through propaganda proved unsuccessful. In January 1930, a campaign of forced collectivization began, as a result of which 24 families (117 people) were dekulakized. Between 1930 and 1938, 123 people in Mannheim suffered repression; in 1937–1938, 66 were executed.
During the war with Nazi Germany, the colony was located in the Romanian administrative zone of Transnistria, though under the authority of the SS Special Detachment R (German: Sonderkommando R). In March 1944, in connection with the advance of the Red Army, the colony’s residents were evacuated by order to the Reichsgau Wartheland (Poland).
Ukrainian peasants deported from the part of eastern Poland annexed by the USSR settled in the abandoned houses.
As a German settlement, Mannheim ceased to exist. Today, its former inhabitants are remembered through the majestic ruins of the church, surrounded by deserted grounds overgrown with dry weeds and devoid of life.
