The Soviet Union was not kind to people who were different — especially Germans, Communism’s enemy. When German Mennonites founded the village of Grünfeld in 1927 in what is now Kyrgyzstan, those who survived early Soviet violence and later forced labor camps kept quiet.

Their silence led to a sense of mystery that Irina Unruh confronts in Where the Poplars Grow.

Born in 1979 in the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, Unruh grew up in Grünfeld, now known as Telman, until the family was able to immigrate to Germany in 1988. She grew up attending a Brüdergemeinde (brethren congregation) established by immigrant Mennonites from the Soviet Union.

“As an adult, I began exploring the extensive and intricate history of the Mennonites,” she told Anabaptist World. “I read numerous books and firsthand accounts. . . . Having learned about my ancestors’ journey, I have a deep humility and gratitude. It’s hard for me to fathom what they went through.”

Quiet memories and loud questions lingered, as the silence of survivors who carried their trauma to the grave left gaping holes in the family’s identity and sense of home or belonging.

An accomplished photographer, Unruh has been published in National Geographic, Stern and Geo. She uses photographs’ ability to carry both meaning and mystery — depending on the context — to meander through her family’s history and her own search for identity in her new book, published this year with support from Germany’s Cultural Department for Russian Germans.

Like Unruh, poplar trees grow in both Kyrgyzstan and Germany, offering a symbolic bridge between the locations of her childhood and adulthood. Beginning two decades after leaving her home, she returned to the nation tucked between Uzbekistan and China with a camera, acquiring many photos and few answers.

How did grandpa disappear? How did people from a German village in Ukraine find their way nearly to China? Where do I come from? Why was grandma so quiet?

“I learned a lot about myself, my grandparents, and my parents,” she said about addressing those questions through photography. “I realized that my family has incredible resilience. At the same time, I understand why I am always very restless inside — the name Unruh literally means ‘restlessness’ in German. It may have something to do with the fact that my ancestors’ history is one of constant unrest and migration.”

Within a stark hardcover exterior, pages of photos from the past and present pass by with little context, if any. Some pages fold out. A facsimile of a Soviet passport drops out, like a black-and-white family photo loosely caught where some ancient glue gave up. Fragments of history and contemporary snapshots mix vast landscapes, family portraits, odes to Lenin and scenes of everyday village life.

“I wanted to convey a feeling rather than tell a self-contained story, because so much has been lost,” Unruh said. “An aunt of mine passed away while I was writing this book. She lived in Kyrgyzstan, and she and her husband told me a lot during several of my visits there. When she died, a family memory was also lost. . . .

“My main goal was to convey the feeling of what it was like to have a German Mennonite past that, over time, could not be adequately lived and has become invisible and quiet.”

Unanswered questions are only partially resolved — as it should be — by a biographical essay on the Unruh family written with journalist Viktoria Morasch, originally of Kazakhstan with a similar family background, presented in both German and English at the end of the book.

“Irina’s images lead us into a story of the past, then into the present and back again,” says Sarah Leen, former National Geographic director of photography, in publicity materials from Shiftbooks. “It is a story of identity, migration, immigration and, most importantly, of family.

“The imagery, both archival and contemporary, holds many lives, many questions, much tenderness and beauty. The book design faithfully echoes and amplifies the memories both held and lost in the photographs. It is a poem, it is a memoir, it is a mystery. It is a book that reminds us that far too often, ‘The past is every bit as unpredictable as the future.’ ”

The book was launched on May 3 at the Museum for Russian German Cultural History in Detmold, Germany, which also hosted an exhibition of Unruh’s photos. Many Russlanddeutscher people in Germany have Mennonite roots and settled in the northwestern region around Detmold.

“Her pictures tell the story of Germans in Kyrgyzstan and an invisible collective trauma of many people in Germany with a history of resettlement from the former Soviet Union,” said Edwin Warkentin, a historian with the Cultural Department for ­Russian Germans, in comments provided by the publisher. “The result is a photographic art book to think about and reflect on both life in Central Asia and the German culture of remembrance.”

Where the Poplars Grow will be distributed in the U.S. at printedmatter.org.