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

ated family situation into her second marriage. As Sara Engbrecht she had first married a widower, Johann Reimer. Reimer had three children: Abram, Johann and Katherine. Three additional children were borne to their union: Peter (1888), Jakob (1890), and Sara (1892). When Reimer died in 1893 the guard¬ ian of Reimer s children from his first marriage found homes for them elsewhere since, according to the legal practices of the time, they were now orphans. The objections of their stepmother were apparently of no avail. Sara’s union with Heinrich A. Martens produced seven children: Justina (1896), Heinrich (1900), Abram (1903), Mariechen (1906), Lena (1911). The other two children died in infancy. The oldest child of Sara’s second marriage, Justina Martens, was endowed with a remarkable memory and, by her own admis¬ sion, with the gift of storytelling. At the age of eighty-five, she orally recounted her life experiences, concentrating on the 1930s and 1940s. Her autobiography is especially unique in at least one respect: it is one of relatively few surviving female accounts of the Mennonite exile experience in Asiatic Russia during the 1940s. In that setting of hardship, living and working conditions made it difficult or even impossible to keep journals or diaries. Local mili¬ tary or civilian supervision would also have made it unwise to accumulate such material. As a consequence the exile story could only be told later and depended on a retentive memory, exacting in its recollection of events and experiences. Justina, with her ability to remember detail and sequence, was ideally qualified for such a task. She was endowed with another unique characteristic: a survivor mentality. In her innermost being she possessed the capacity to deal with tragedy and extreme hardship without being numbed or dulled by the process. She confronted the vicissitudes of life squarely, all the while acknowledging her moments of de¬ spair, her many tears and her overwrought nerves. 50 JOURNEYS In her memoirs Justina again and again acknowledged that her fortitude stemmed from her implicit faith in the all-pervasive presence of God. The first pages of her memoirs, not included in this translation, relate something of her religious pilgrimage. Ac¬ cording to Justinas recollections the family initially practiced a conventional piety common to the Mennonites of the early twen¬ tieth century. Regular church services were augmented at home by the reading of Ludwig Hofackers sermons and the singing of Christian hymns. Just prior to W.W.I a religious revival in Kleefeld saw widespread conversions among the youth as well as the adult population. As a result the entire Martens family joined the Mennonite Brethren, a dissenting group which left the Old Church in 1860. In the years that followed Justinas private spiritual jour¬ ney was nurtured through weekly worship services, Bible studies and choir practices. Singing was es