Dear Members, (Steve Schreiber, NB: this is a 'fuller more correct version") Info submitted and translated by Vera Beljakova: << Elizaveta Erina, director of the Engels Archives, which is the largest repository of German-Russian documents, has been awarded by the German government the prestigeous Verdienstkreuz 1. Klasse: "Order of the Cross for Service of Distinction, 1st class", for serves rendered to Culture. It is a huge international honour which was bestowed onto Mrs Erina by the German Government with a ceremony held in Russia in April 2007. The order is a reward for Mrs Erina's endless uphill striving to preserve the history of the Volga Germans and the successful establishment of a new high-tech wing for the archive's repository adjacent to the old archive building, a former granary in Engels (formerly Pokrovsk) which was not conducive to preserving valuable and delicate documents, beginning with the Manifestoes of Catherine the Great. We congratulate Mrs Erina Vera Beljakova-Miller >.