Shepards from Romania and Bessarabia

By Caroline Juler, Wales

Related to: General Bessarabia, 

I'm researching the lives of a group of Romanian shepherds who migrated east from the late 19th century. Some of them settled in Bessarabia but a lot went further east, establishing farms or folds in southern Ukraine, Crimea and northern Caucasus.

One of the families I'm interested was called Ciorogariu. They had a farm for breeding Astrakhan sheep in a village called Lambrivka. It's somewhere near Borodino, in Bessarabia province.

I spoke to Ion, the only surviving family member in 2007. He had returned to Romania with his parents after they fled Ukraine in 1940. They were not Jewish, but Ion remembers going to a Jewish school and learning Yiddish. He said his Yiddish was better than his Russian!

Here are two webpages about Mamalyga from shepards from Romania and Bessarabia, Caroline agreed to put at our website

Mamalyga

More Mamalyga

Caroline Juler, Writer and artist based in Wales

Web: www.mamaliga.co.uk

Blog: Carpathian Sheep Walk