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

o the Ukraine! Yet we had more rights than previously. One year we harvested nine sacks of sunflower seeds. We roasted several pails on Friday and Heini drove me to the market in Martuk before he went to work. This provided good income. We were deeply grateful that we had enough to eat and could bake bread again. How wonderful the bread tasted and of course, there was milk as well. We were also able to exchange our old cow for a young one. We recognized Gods grace and mercy in the rapidity with which the German people recovered. God led them through deep suffering, but He also restored them. It is true that only a few of the men returned. Many women also perished in the Trud-Army or starved in the villages around Martuk, espe¬ cially in a Kazakh collective where our relatives, the Aron Dick family were. Here some sixty people died of starvation. The peo¬ ple were too weak to bury their own dead and so they lay among the living for days. We lived in the Russian village of Pervo-Maysk in Kazakhstan for twenty-one years, from 1941 to 1962. Naturally all of us silently hoped to leave the place of our exile one day. When we were released from the regional command in 1956 ... we Germans began to wander. We tried to move to¬ gether and began to write to one another. We tried to find out if our loved ones were still alive because we knew nothing of one another. After writing hither and yon I received a letter from my sister Lena. She, together with Edi and father, had been exiled from Poland to Kustanaj and worked in the collective there. Father died on February 20, 1956 .... Through letters we also learned that our brother-in-law Reimer worked in the Siberian forests with Mika and Sara. They too had been deported from Poland .... When we had all the addresses we could tell each other what we had all 94 JOURNEYS experienced during those long years .... But we were also so far apart. We prayed and planned how we could get closer together .... God led wonderfully and Lena and the Reimers were able to come to Martuk, a district in which there were many Germans as well as believers. It was only eight kilometers from Pervo-Maysk and so we often visited together. A year later Sara and Justa were also able to purchase a small house and move to Martuk. The Reimers had their own house and Lena and Edi built a house on the Reimers yard. We were so happy and pleased that we could visit one an¬ other. End of the translated text. The remaining pages of Justinas autobiography continue to focus on recovery and restoration. Good things begin to happen amid all the flux and dislocation. Heini, who had become Heinrich, married Kaetie Dyck in 1958. When the young couple travelled to Frunze for a wedding in 1962 they were intrigued by the many Germans who had moved there, by the opportunities for spiritual fellowship, and by its mild, benevolent climate. They soon moved to the city. Justina also hoped to come to