by Hans Werner
13 David J. Quapp to Siegfried Janzen, 5 July 1949, and J.H.W. Hudson, IRO, to MCC, 5 July 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 10, file 10/11, IRO Reports on Immigration, 1948–52, MCC Europe and North America Refugee Materials.
14 “Allgemeinen MCC Fragebogen,” 25 April 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 7, file 4, Refugee Personnel Questionnaires, We-Wiebe, H., MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
15 Undated statement, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13, file 2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.–Wer., MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
16 Ted Regehr, “Of Dutch or German Ancestry? Mennonite Refugees, MCC, and the International Refugee Organization,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 13 (1995): 19.
17 Siegfried Janzen to Frank Wiens, 29 April 1949, MCA, IX-14-2, box 2, MCC Gronau Files—Corres. Fallingbostel A–L, file 25, General Correspondence, MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
18 Louise W. Holborn, The International Refugee Organization: A Specialized Agency of the United Nations, Its History and Work, 1946–1952 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), 586; Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus: The Rescue and Resettlement of the Russian Mennonites since the Communist Revolution (Altona, MB: Canadian Mennonite Relief and Immigration Council, 1962), 405–06.
19 S. Scheuring, Regional Eligibility Officer, to S. Janzen, MCC, 21 September 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13, file 2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.–Wer., MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
20 John Werner, notes of a conversation, 14 September 1986.
21 Ibid.
22 Personal document, “Abkehr-Schein, 24.6.1952,” Eisen und Hüttenwerke, Lohnbuchhaltung.
23 G.R. Gaeddert to Johann Werner, 14 November 1950 and 26 February 1951; Margarete Vogt to G.R. Gaeddert, 23 August 1951, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13, file 2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.–Wer., MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
Chapter 11: Margarethe (Sara) Vogt (Letkeman)
1 Margaret Werner, interview tape 2, summer 1987.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 “Osterwick Village Report: List of 213 abducted persons,” www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/jr/ostabd.htm. This list is transcribed and translated from reports created for the Minister of Occupied Eastern Territories between 1941 and 1944, which are part of the Captured German Documents located in the Library of Congress. The reports for the village of Osterwick are in: box 6, reels 2-3, German Captured Documents Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
7 Margaret Werner, interview, tape 2, summer 1987.
8 Ibid.
9 Steve J. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 7–8, 116.
10 It seems my mother did not know about this event first-hand, which apparently became part of the villagers’ collective memory. The story of the Lutheran pastor–soldier is also told in J.J. Neudorf, D.H. Rempel, and H.J. Neudorf, eds., Osterwick, 1812–1943 (Clearbrook, BC: A. Olfert, 1973), 176.
11 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989.
12 “Allgemeinen MCC Fragebogen,” 27 March 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 7, file 2, Refugee Personnel Questionnaires, V, MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
13 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989. My mother’s account might refer to what Gerhard Rempel calls the “Massacre at Zaporozhia.” See Gerhard Rempel, “Mennonites and the Holocaust: From Collaboration to Perpetuation,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 84 (2010): 507–50.
14 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989.
15 Neudorf, Rempel, and Neudorf, Osterwick, 157; “Einbürgerungsantrag,” 14 May 1944, BDC.
16 My mother suggested he had been drafted, though few Mennonites were drafted into the German Army before they arrived in the Warthegau in 1943.
17 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989.
18 “Abschrift der Einburgerungsurkunde,” 14 April 1944, BDC.
19 The Soviet offensive would be diverted, and Ratibor would be captured only on 31 March 1945.
20 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989.
21 An account by Helena Wiens in the German-language newspaper Der Bote suggests they arrived in Wernigerode on 9 or 10 February. In her account, the train route was Opava–Olomouc–Prague–Dresden–Halle–Wernigerode. Helena Wiens, “Die Erinnerungen eines 17 jährigen Mädchens aus dem Jahre 1945,” Der Bote, 19 April 1989, 8.
22 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989. My mother’s recollection of the date was 5 May 1945; however, the account by Wiens puts the date at 11 April. The latter date coincides more accurately with maps of the front at the time. See Richard Natkiel, Atlas of World War II (London: Bison Books, 1985), 187.
23 Margaret Werner, interview tape 7, 28 January 1989.
24 “Resettlement Medical Examination Forms,” MCA, IX-19-6, box 8/6, file L, MCC Europe and North Africa Collection.
Chapter 12: The Immigrants
1 MCC Hard Core Record, Case No. MCC/38-B, MCA, IX-19-16, box 8/6, Resettlement Medical Examination Forms, MCC, North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
2 P.W. Bird, CGIM, to MCC, 21 September 1949, MCA, IX-19-16, box 12/38, Refugee Personnel Files, Vogt, A.-S., MCC, North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
3 Margarethe Werner to Regier, 25 February 1952, MCA, IX-19-16, box13/2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.-Wer.; G.R. Gaeddert to Margaret Vogt, 13 January 1951, MCA, IX-19-16, box 7/35, Refugee Personnel Files, Let.-Lic.
4 Margarethe Vogt to G.R. Gaeddert, 23 August 1951, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13/2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.-Wer., MCC, North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
5 C.F. Klassen to P.W. Bird, 7 April 1952, MCA, IX-19-9, C.F. Klassen Files, Canadian Government Immigration Mission, 1947–53.
6 Anne Giesbrecht to Elma Esau, 14 May 1952, MCA, IX-19-16, box 9, CMBC, 1949–55, MCC, North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
7 Margarethe Werner to Frieda Dirksen, 20 June 1952, MCA, IX-19-16, box 13/2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.-Wer., MCC, North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
8 Anne Giesbrecht to J.J. Thiessen, 26 June 1952, MHC, CMBC, vol. 1364.
9 Personal document, “Abkehr-Schein, 24.6.1952,” Eisen und Hüttenwerke, Lohnbuchhaltung and “Immigration Card,” MCA, IX-19-16, box 13/2, Refugee Personnel Files, Wei.-Wer., North Africa and Europe Refugee Materials.
10 Notes of a conversation with Margaret Werner, 6 February 2010.
11 http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/descriptions/ShipsB.html.
12 J. Gerbrandt to John Werner, 30 April 1953, and Katharina Vogt to CMBC Board, 12 April 1952, MHC, CMBC, vol. 1364, file 1317.
13 “Saskatchewan Mennonite Cemetery Finding Aid,” Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan, Drake Cemetery, Margaret Ewert, 8 March 2006, and “Mennonite Central Committee, Hard Core Record,” MHC, CMBC, vol. 1364, file 1317.
14 In another conversation, he remembered it being $150 per month. John Werner, notes of a conversation, 14 September 1986.
Chapter 13: Memories, Stories, and History
1 Manfred Klaube, Die Deutschen Dörfer in der Westsibirischen Kulunda-Steppe: Entwicklung, Strukturen, Probleme (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1991), 91.
2 Linda Vogt to Erwin Vogt and Marie Rempel, 5 April 1967. The letter is in the possession of Edna Vogt.
3 Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, Archives of Memory: A Solder Recalls World War II (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 145.
4 Richard F. Thompson and Stephen A. Madigan, Memory: The Key to Consciousness (Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2005), 181; Ulrich Neisser, “Memory with a Grain of Salt,” in Memory: An Anthology, ed. Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt (London: Vintage, 2009), 82.
5 Susan Engel, Context Is Everything: The Nature of Memory (New York: Freeman, 1999), 15.
6 Hoffman and Hoffman, Archives of Memory, 148.
7 Engel, Context Is Everything, 147.
8 Augustine, Confessions, as quoted
in Frank Kermode, “Palaces of Memory,” in Memory: An Anthology, ed. Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt (London: Vintage, 2009), 3–4.
9 Neisser, “Memory with a Grain of Salt,” 81.
10 Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 76.
11 Steven Rose, “‘Memories Are Made of This,’” in Memory: An Anthology, edited by Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt (London: Vintage Books, 2009), 65. See also Cubitt, History and Memory, 77.
12 Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (1944), as quoted in Harriet Harvey Wood and A.S. Byatt, eds., Memory: An Anthology (London: Vintage, 2009), 398.
13 Cubitt, History and Memory, 76.
14 Jill Ker Conway, When Memory Speaks: Exploring the Art of Autobiography (Toronto: Random House, 1998), 7.
15 Ibid., 14.
16 Ibid., 11–12.
17 Marlene Epp, Women without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 15, 12.
18 David Thelen, “An Afterthought on Scale and History,” Journal of American History 77, 2 (1990): 591.
19 Roger Horowitz, “Oral History and the Story of America and World War II,” Journal of American History 82, 2 (1995): 618.
20 Ibid., 619.
21 Cubitt, History and Memory, 36.
22 Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (New York: Penguin, 2005), 249.