We live in a noisy, unrelenting world in which the ring of smart phones, the ding of email alerts, and the other sounds and sights of social media and networking apps keep us all connected and on our toes. Amid this cacophony, it is good for the soul to lose itself for a moment, even if only visually, within a pastoral context. Dmitriy Prokopovich’s photograph of Svitle, the village we know as Alexanderwohl, provides just such a setting and scene.
According to the map posted here, the photo was taken to the southwest of the village, roughly even with the end of wooded area. The photo looks to the north, and one can see the street that traverses the village in the right background. The Behim-Chokrak stream is beyond that, after which the terrain rises noticeably. Alexanderwohl, of course, stretched across the lowland along the stream; the pastures and fields were mostly on higher ground to the south and the north.
Visually and mentally entering this pastoral scene brings a certain degree of peace and quiet, without requiring us to suffer the attendant hardships that characterized life in Alexanderwohl during its early years. The residents of Svitle similarly share the best of both worlds, it seems, living as they do in such a tranquil setting even as they enjoy the connectedness hinted at via the white satellite dishes on the corner of the house in the center left of the photo.
Ironically, the final resting place of our ancestor Benjamin Heinrich Buller, a long-forgotten grave in an abandoned, farmed-over cemetery, lies not many yards to the southwest of where photographer Dmitriy Prokopovich stood to take this photo. May Benjamin and all the other early residents of Alexanderwohl continue their rest in this peaceful setting.
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