Hi Charles, I think you are somewhat mistaken. There are close to 2-million GR immigrants (late-settlers) In Germany, are called Russlandsdeutsche or Volksdeutsche, and are not exactly German' population's favourite new immigrants, due to a disproportionately high crime rate among the disaffected and poorly integrated GR new comers into Germany. You can read all this in the German newspapers (many have English language editions on the internet), on German websites, and in the archives of both this List and the GR-Heritage Listserv Group. One can only hope that with time and education, assimilation will follow, better job opportunity in Germany which has a very high rate of unemployment. It is of course likely that the average German population does not know much about "colonies". All they know is that the GR new-settlers-immigrants tend to come from Siberia and Kazakhstan, many speak no or broken German, are intermarried with Russians, women wear headscarves like old Russian village women, long skirts and speak Russian as a communal language at home, and eat Russian food : Borscht, piroshki, etc... It hard - on all. Of course, as everywhere in the world, there is a fine thin layer of the elite immigrants, high educated and ambitious with a string a degrees behind their name and are snapped up by multinational companies - esp. in the field of engineering, IT, mining..and such. Bye Vera Was wondering whether or not the history of , and plight of the Germans living in Russia from the 1700's to the 1940's is taught today in the schools in Germany ?I have spoken to 3 or 4 people from Germany fairly recently, & believe it or not, they never heard of the German colonies in Russia !! Could they be an exception to the majority ?I should have asked them this question, but didn't think of it at the time. Charles Parcels ( Weibert aus Messer ) --------------------------------- Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to GER-VOLGA-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message