To the Kingdom of Death

Veteran writer and university professor Ronald Vossler last year was named to the International Committee of the Ukrainian World Congress, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor. That was the 1932-33 Soviet-engineered genocide which destroyed millions of Ukrainians and several hundred thousand of the German minority in Ukraine – direct relatives of German-Russians who originally settled on the U.S. and Canadian prairies.

Vossler, recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, will be the presenter for To the Kingdom of Death: A Research Trip to Former German Villages in the Ukraine workshop during the International Convention of Germans from Russia, meeting July 28-August 3 in Casper, Wyoming. Vossler’s presentation will be at 3:45 p.m. on Thursday, July 31st in the Tiffany Room and will be repeated at 2:00 p.m., Friday, August 1st in Ballroom B.

Ron Vossler was raised in Wishek, North Dakota and now lives in East Grand Forks, Minnesota. He holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Arizona State and an M.A. in English from the University of North Dakota, where he served as a Senior Lecturer from 1992-2008. He has been a free-lance writer and Humanities scholar since 1975.

His most recent essay, “The Cleansing and Destruction of the Kulaks of Neudorf, Ukraine” is being translated for publication in Germany. North Dakota State University Library’s Germans from Russia Heritage Collection is publishing his most recent book, Wedding in the Darkness: Three Accounts from Collectivation and the Great Terror.