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Darlene Dimitrie
Windsor, ON - CAN
DVHH Mail List Administrator
2016-2020
Guestbook Archivist
2013-Present
DVHH President
2019-2020
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"I found a shoebox ..."
I was born in
Windsor, Ontario, Canada to immigrant parents
who met and married in Canada. My father
is Romanian, born in Vladimirovac, when it was
still part of Torontal County in the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. My mother is
Donauschwaben from Hrastovac, then in the
former Yugoslavia and today in Croatia.
Until the age of 5, I spoke English, German
and Romanian, but have lost much of this
knowledge as the older members of the family
pass away.
I was always
interested in my family history, but did not
actively start looking into it until the death
of my maternal grandmother in 1998. I
found a shoebox full of memorial cards from
friends and relatives who had passed
away and I started by entering all this
information into a genealogy database.
I found that although I knew the basics
of my family history, I had no idea of
the extent of what I would find out,
first from other Hrastovac researchers
and email lists like the Banat list and
later the DVHH list and website. I
quickly was side-tracked from the
genealogy aspect into the history that
my ancestors had lived through and
participated in, including the
atrocities perpetuated with respect to
WW II. I have made many new friends
throughout the years and "met" many new
cousins all over the world.
Little did I know that this journey into
ancestry and family history is never
finished. It expands continuously,
filling my heart and also my home with
stacks and stacks of information which I
may never get properly
organized.
~ Darlene Dimitrie, 2015
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