Hunger

The first time I saw the statue at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, I gazed at it for a long time, mesmerized. A young girl, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, long braids hanging down her back, stands with hands clasped to her chest, holding a sheaf of wheat. Her arms and legs are thin and her eyes look hollow. The expression on her young face is that of a worried older woman. The reason I couldn't take my eyes off the statue is because it reminded me of a picture of my mother at about that same age. My mother has a serene look on her face and does not seem to be starving. However, the photo belies the situation and times were desperate.

         

When I review my mother's early life, I realize that disaster stalked her every ten years or so. She was born May 30, 1921. I recall her saying that she was born in the Year of Hunger: [Ich bin im Hungerjahr geboren.] It was a terrible time of civil wars in Russia. The Bolsheviks, the Whites, and the Anarchists, fought against each other. They seized food from those who grew it, gave it to their armies and supporters and denied it to their enemies. Drought aggravated the situation. Approximately five million people died of starvation. Finally, Lenin allowed relief organizations to bring aid to the starving population. Because there was a large population of Mennonites in Ukraine, word got to American Mennonites, and they formed a relief organization that later became known as the Mennonite Central Committee. A bun and a cup of cocoa or milk every day saved the members of my mother's family from starvation. 

Just before my mother entered her teen years (1932-1933) another famine erupted. The Ukrainians call this the Holodomor. It was caused by poor harvests due to natural disasters, combined with increased food demands due to collectivization, industrialization, and urbanization, as well as increased grain exports by the Soviet Union.

During this time my mother's youngest brother Gerhard was born (August 1932). Almost two years later, in June of 1934, he died of dysentery. No doubt it was caused by the poor conditions in which the family found itself. My mother always said the day of Gerhard's death was the saddest day of her life (except for another day four years later when her father was forcibly removed from the family and imprisoned, falsely accused of having planned to blow up a dam; the family farm was confiscated and she never saw her father again).

Forward another ten years. My parents married in November 1940. The Germans invaded Russia in June 1941. They were happy with the German occupation and provided lodging to two German soldiers in the small home my father had built. Two years later the Germans were defeated at Stalingrad and in October of 1943 pulled out of Russia. They urged our family to join them on the trains going west. That was the beginning of years of refugee life for us. 

We made our way from Poland into southern Germany. In January 1945, toward the end of the war, my father was conscripted into the German army. My mother was highly pregnant, with two little children in tow. Her widowed mother and adolescent brother were with her as well. German farmers in Bavaria were compelled to take them in. My sister was born in March in the barn where we all slept. Life was sustainable but barely. My father returned two months after my sister was born, looking so emaciated that he was hardly recognizable. 

Before boarding the Volendam, 1947

When the war ended, our family had to find a way to avoid being sent back to Russia. Again, with the help of MCC, we were able to board a Dutch freighter at Bremerhaven in February of 1947. There were over 2,000 refugees on this ship.

When it docked in Argentina, we learned that there was a revolution happening in Paraguay and we had to set up a tent city not far from Buenos Aires for several months. However, because our mother was about to give birth, our family left almost immediately for the Fernheim colony (which had been established in Paraguay 25 years earlier). There my mother gave birth to her fourth child, a second boy. A few months after Bernie was born, our family set out with other refugees to establish another Mennonite colony in the Paraguayan Chaco which they called Neuland. The refugees were divided into villages, making their own bricks and building straw-roofed homes, digging wells, and making clay ovens. It was a pioneer existence. Everything was done by hand and foot. 

My mother's work never ceased, especially as she had two more babies, a boy and a girl. My father was often in other villages, helping the women who had lost their husbands in Europe, and preaching in villages where there was no pastor. It took five years of hand-to-mouth existence before our family was able to emigrate to Canada in October 1953. 

That makes ten years of refugee life, before our family settled in Canada. Two more daughters were born. Again, the beginning was tough, but my mother was so happy to finally put down her roots. My grandmother had arrived four years earlier, joining her family which had already immigrated to Canada in the 1920s. 

What does all this have to do with hunger?

Hunger stalked my mother from an early age. There was physical hunger, yes. Always on the edge of existence, scraping the bottom of the barrel, never sure where the next meal was coming from or how she was going to get it. This was the case for years, until we arrived in Canada. And it was not of her own choosing or of bad decisions she had made. It was the choice of people in power who thought only of themselves and their aggrandizement.

Then there was psychological hunger. My mother lost her beloved father when she was a young adolescent. He was taken from her by force. As a result, throughout her life, certain things such as open closet doors triggered panic in her.
She was an only daughter, with five brothers. One day my mother overheard her mother declare that she would rather have seven sons than one daughter.

My mother yearned to have a sister, and she always managed to find friends that became surrogate mothers and surrogate sisters. She was so delighted when her second child was a daughter, and so happy for every girl baby that came along. (There are five of us!) Her grandchildren are mostly girls (she had three grandsons and seventeen granddaughters). This was her gift from God and she loved them fiercely, and everyone of them is totally devoted to her. 

When my mother turned 80, my own family was still living in Ontario. I decided to send her flowers, but instead of sending them directly to her, I decided to send them to the church she and my dad attended faithfully every Sunday and where they served as deacons for many years. I wanted her to be honoured. 

To my surprise, my mother hated that publicity. She told me that she put the bouquet of flowers on her walker and went home as quickly as possible. She didn't have a desire to be respected and honored in public. She just wanted to love and be loved by her nearest and dearest.

She got her wish. My daughters and her other grandchildren think about her daily, and tell their children what a wonderful grandmother they had. 

50th-wedding anniversary celebration (with all the grandchildren), 1990

I may cry and I will die,

But my spirit is the soul of every spring.

Watch for me and you will see

That I'm present in the songs that children sing.

                                                                   -- Maya Angelou