From Kharkivto the Netherlands

A railway family in Kharkiv

ConfirmedTheodor Tokarenko was born in Kharkiv on 5 February 1900 by the Russian calendar, 17 February by ours.[9][4]

ConfirmedHis father was Viktor Pavlovich Tokarenko, a railway official, and his mother Theodora Grigorievna. Judging by the patronymic, his grandfather was named Pavel.[3]

BackgroundAround 1900 Kharkiv was one of the most important railway junctions of the Russian Empire, where lines to Moscow, Crimea, the Donbas and the Black Sea met.

ConfirmedIn 1921 Theodor was registered in Amsterdam as Roman Catholic.[1]

HypothesisIn predominantly Orthodox Kharkiv, a Catholic faith may point to Polish roots in the family. That would also explain his Polish passport.

Likely‘Grigorievna’ is a patronymic: Theodora was a daughter of Grigori. Her surname is unknown.

The Lublin puzzle

ConfirmedIn 1921 Theodor told the Amsterdam authorities he was born in Lublin, Poland, on 8 February 1899. In every later document he gives Kharkiv and 1900.[1][2]

ConfirmedAround 1898–1902 there was a Tokarenko in Lublin: Evgraf Vasilievich, army veterinarian with the 14th Army Corps, born in 1852, trained at the Kharkiv Veterinary Institute and Russian Orthodox. In the 1898 yearbook he is the only Tokarenko in the city.[43][44][45][46]

HypothesisEvgraf cannot be Theodor's father, as his patronymic differs. He may have been an uncle or great-uncle with whom the family stayed in Lublin around 1899.

HypothesisAnother explanation: after 1918, anyone born in the new Poland could get a Polish passport, a legal way out of Soviet Russia. Claiming Lublin may have been a way to escape.

Family storyPoland does not feature in the family story.

The escape

BackgroundOn 12 December 1919 the Red Army took Kharkiv. The White armies retreated towards the Black Sea, followed by tens of thousands of civilians. Typhus raged along the railways.

ConfirmedThe Dutch consul in Kharkiv, A.J.C. (Alphons) Uchtman, an engineer, also represented Polish, Belgian and French interests as consul of a neutral country. He sent seventeen trains of refugees and prisoners of war to Odessa and Novorossiysk, from where they went by ship via Constantinople to Marseille.[57][16]

ConfirmedTheodor's Polish passport, number 3369, is dated Kharkiv, 2 January 1920.[1]

LikelyBecause Uchtman handled Polish interests in Kharkiv, the Polish passport almost certainly came about through him. It also explains why Poland awarded him the knight's cross of Polonia Restituta in 1922.[57][20]

LikelyThe Van den Muyzenberg family writes in its family history that Theodor fled with them: ‘A young Russian and friend of Kees, Theo Tokarenko, travels along.’ Leendert Willem van den Muyzenberg was director of the Dutch salt mine ‘Peter the Great’ near Bakhmut; Kees was his son, the same age as Theodor. According to the same family history, Uchtman took the initiative for the escape.[49][50]

ConfirmedThe Van den Muyzenbergs' eyewitness accounts tell it like this. In the night of 22 to 23 December 1919 a party of six left the salt mine: Leendert Willem, Kees, Marx and three others. They drove ten days by horse and cart to Rostov. There they joined Uchtman, who had obtained a rail wagon ‘packed with people’. Rostov fell the morning after they left.[57][17]

HypothesisIn those accounts Theodor is not among the party that left the mine. He lived in Kharkiv. He probably travelled in Uchtman's wagon, which according to Leendert Willem was full of ‘family and acquaintances’, and joined in Kharkiv or Rostov.

ConfirmedOn the way they saw trains full of typhus patients and dead bodies on open wagons. Marx fell ill and died in the wagon on 9 January 1920, near Ottomanskaya station between Rostov and Novorossiysk. His wife in Bussum only heard on 6 February.[17][18][57]

Family storyAs told in the Tokarenko family: Theodor fled ‘by train and freight wagons among sick and dead people’. It was a hellish journey, and he went by way of southern Europe. The family places it around 1917–1918; the documents point to the winter of 1919–1920.

ConfirmedAccording to Erwin van den Muyzenberg's diary, the journey continued by French boat from Novorossiysk to Constantinople. They stayed there a few weeks, and Theodor received his first visa there. Then they went by boat to Marseille, where a railway strike was on, and by military train to Paris. Through Belgium they reached Roosendaal on 6 March 1920.[57][1]

LikelyThe register of aliens mentions an identity document from Bloemendaal dated 17 March 19.. (the year runs off the page). If that is 1920, it was eleven days after the arrival in Roosendaal, which fits Theodor making the whole journey with Uchtman and the Van den Muyzenbergs.[1]

Arrival in the Netherlands

ConfirmedHis first address in the Netherlands was Verbindingsweg 82 in Bloemendaal, for six weeks. He then lived for over a year in Blaricum, ‘Angerechtsweg with Post’, and ‘worked there with Schutte’.[1]

ConfirmedConsul Uchtman owned a house in Bloemendaal: in 1922 he offered it for rent from Amstel 300.[21]

ConfirmedThe Van den Muyzenberg family had lived in Blaricum since 1912, in the house ‘Nascha Chata’ on Noolseweg. Leendert Willem wrote his reports on the escape from Blaricum in March 1920.[57][49]

LikelySo Theodor began his life in the Netherlands through his travelling companions: first Bloemendaal, where Uchtman had a house, then Blaricum, the village of his friend Kees van den Muyzenberg.

Likely‘Post’ is almost certainly Bartholomeus J. Post, barber at Angerechtsweg 133a in Blaricum. ‘Schutte’ is D.J. Schutte's electrical installation office at Meentweg 186, which was hiring electricians in 1920–1921. This is probably where he learned his trade as an electrician.[23][24]

Amstel 300, with the consul

ConfirmedOn 26 October 1921 Theodor registered in Amsterdam, at Amstel 300 ‘with Uchtman’, where he also worked as an office clerk. He stayed until April 1926.[1][2]

ConfirmedA.A.J.Chr. (Alphons) Uchtman was acting consular agent and later Dutch vice-consul in Kharkiv. In 1921 he was made a knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, and in 1922 he received the Polish order Polonia Restituta. In 1923 he advertised an engineering office for electric heating at Amstel 300.[16][19][20][22]

LikelyThe company still exists. Uchtman B.V. gives 15 July 1922 as its founding date, by ‘engineer Alphons Uchtman’, ‘on the Amsterdam Amstel, opposite Carré’. Carré faces the Amstel locks, so that is Amstel 300. Theodor lived and worked there from 1921, making him one of the first people around the firm.[58][59]

LikelyUchtman had helped Theodor escape from Kharkiv, and probably also helped him get his Polish passport. Whether Theodor already worked for the consulate in Kharkiv is unknown.

Electrician and Dutch citizen

ConfirmedOn 1 April 1926 Theodor moved to Bussum, Kerkstraat 20.[1]

ConfirmedBy the act of 9 July 1931 he became a Dutch citizen. He was then an electrician and engaged to be married.[9][10][11]

ConfirmedIn 1935 he played in the football team of the Bussumsche Radio Centrale. The firm was founded in late 1926 by Messrs Schoemeijer and Ferrée and brought radio programmes by cable to homes without a set of their own.[26][27]

HypothesisHe probably worked there himself, perhaps as the ‘works manager’ named in his 1932 marriage certificate.

ConfirmedIn Bussum he became close to the Mols and De Groot families. Cornelis Mols, a bicycle dealer, was a witness at his wedding in 1932. In 1942 the ‘Tokarenko family’ is listed among the mourners of Petrus Johannes de Groot.[3][26][28]

Family storyAccording to the family, Theodor lodged with the Mols family in Bussum, at Huizerweg 60. The address books of 1930 and 1937 list ‘Mols, C., bicycle dealer’ at that address. Theodor himself is not listed, but lodgers were usually not included in address books. In 1932 he still played alongside C. and W. Mols in a team of Bussum football veterans.[55][56]

Family, chessboard and workshop

ConfirmedOn 10 August 1932 Theodor married Gijsberta van Putten in Hilversum. She was a daughter of Arend van Putten of Huizen (died 1929) and Matje van Klingeren of Soest.[3][5][6][7]

ConfirmedThe family first lived at Liebergerstraat 38 in Hilversum and from 15 February 1937 at Van Oldenbarneveltlaan 24, where Theodor lived for the rest of his life. The 1942 directory already lists him as head mechanic. In 1943 he appears in Hilversum's roll of the ‘zoengeld’, a levy from the occupation years. We know nothing more about the war years yet.[12][13][14]

ConfirmedOn 28 June 1935 their son Victor was born.[33][12]

ConfirmedTheodor was an active chess player and a board member of the Hilversum Chess Society. In December 1959 he welcomed the Soviet grandmasters Tigran Petrosian and Salo Flohr in Russian, forty years after his escape.[29][30][31][52][51]

ConfirmedHe worked as head mechanic at N.V. Diode, Laboratory for Electronics, on Emmastraat in Hilversum. In 1966 he was decorated for it.[4][32]

Family storyThe family, too, remembers that he worked at Diode.

ConfirmedTheodor Tokarenko died in Hilversum on 7 February 1980, ten days before his eightieth birthday.[4]

The son: Victor Tokarenko

ConfirmedVictor was born in Hilversum in late June 1935, the son of Theodor and Gijsberta. The paper reported: ‘Born: Victor, son of T. Tokarenko and G. van Putten’.[33]

LikelyHe was almost certainly named after his grandfather Viktor Pavlovich in Kharkiv, following the custom of naming a son after a grandfather.

ConfirmedIn 1953 he passed his MULO school diploma in Hilversum.[34]

BackgroundIn 1954 players from RC ’t Gooi in Naarden founded their own club, RC Hilversum. They no longer felt like ‘cycling to Naarden’.[41]

ConfirmedVictor played in that very first season in the first team, as a three-quarter. In December 1954 the side appeared in the paper with a photo as ‘The Gooi sports team of the week’. Victor kneels on the far right; a typo in the caption calls him ‘K. Tokarenko’.[35][36]

LikelyIn 1955 a V. Tokarenko obtained the marine engineer's certificate, almost certainly Victor. Whether he then went to sea is unknown.[37]

ConfirmedHe kept playing rugby for RC Hilversum until at least 1962, mostly in the second team, as three-quarter, full-back and later forward.[38][39][40]

ConfirmedIn 1960 Victor married in Hilversum.[42]