JOURNEYS Mennonite Stories of Faith and Survival in Stalins Russia, John B. Toews, 1998

ep in on Sunday morning but woke up early. As I washed I noticed a number of people around the microphone on the street.... They were upset and agitated, something was obviously wrong. Then I heard the news, war had broken out between Soviet Russia and Germany. The news left me very unhappy and dark thoughts overwhelmed me. What would happen to Russia’s Germans, both here and at home? Terrible consequences awaited them .... All radios were immediately confiscated .... In the evening all free workers were called into our chef’s office. Here NKVD representatives of “Section Three” informed us that our camp was now placed under a special regime .... The days which followed were very unsettling . . . but normalized after two weeks. The radios were again installed in the barracks and the head of the 134 JOURNEYS cultural division even read [news releases] to the prisoners .... Soon our camp received evacuees and refugees from all parts of the country. Many of them were NKVD officials with their families and relatives. I travelled to Karaganda a few times only to find the city overfilled with evacuees. The market was brimming with people selling their few belongings in order to obtain food. It was a terrible scene — emaciated children, women and old peo¬ ple clothed in old jackets and torn rubber boots. Everything was being traded to avoid starvation. The surrounding villages took complete advantage of these poor people. A Letter I had not heard from my family for a long time. Finally a letter from my sister Maria arrived. She reported that Lena and many other women and men had been arrested and were some¬ where in a camp. There was only Maria with her bed-ridden mother and my sisters-in-law with the twins Meta and Frieda, who were eight years of age. I petitioned the camp administration for permission to bring them to me, but was categorically rejected. The reason: the Karaganda camp was under military jurisdic¬ tion and had a special status. From Marias letter I also learned that Hans was in Vorkuta in the far north. He was in the hospi¬ tal and had bone tuberculous. Maria and Mother were in the region of Kustanai in Kazakhstan. They had been forcibly deported. Materially they found themselves in a very difficult situation. I immediately sent them food packages but none were accepted. By 1942 ... I was able to send several eight kilo par¬ cels containing lard and oatmeal. My mother died in exile in a small Kazakh village in 1941. She was already ill [before the deportation], then the weeks in packed freight cars and the starvation — all this speeded her de¬ mise. The Kazakhs did not allow her to be buried in their cem¬ etery and so my sister Maria interned her in the steppe in a homemade wooden coffin. Lena was arrested on June 25, 1941 just after the outbreak of the war. She died of dysentery in the Karaganda camp when I was already there. I only learned of this after the war. Even if I ha