Sister Love

Lately I have again been going through old correspondence. This time it is a box of letters my Dad received from his two older sisters in Russia.

As I go through these letters, I have the feeling that their story needs to be told, and that Tina and Greta (Katarina and Margareta Neufeld) are asking me to tell it. Theirs is a love story, about that unadulterated agape love that is so hard to put into practice and yet seemed to be part of their DNA. They never married, they just looked after their four little brothers and supported each other. Their father died of typhoid fever in 1920 (when he was only 48), as bandits roamed through Russian villages leaving disease and destruction behind them. Their mother was left to care for six young children, and she was not well. Tina and Greta learned responsibility at a young age.

Four years later, at age 47, their mother died. There was support from the Mennonite community around them and from relatives, but a lot of the burden of looking after the family fell on the shoulders of these two older sisters. Perhaps it was because of the hardships they went through together that they formed a bond that lasted a lifetime.

Tina and Greta in the middle, with their four brothers. My father (the second youngest) is second from the right.

I don’t remember these precious aunts because we were separated before I was two years old, and we never saw each other again.

The photo above was taken in North Germany in 1944. My parents are standing in the back; I am in my mother's arms. Tina and Greta are on the left in the middle row, their sister-in-law on the right.

At the time the above picture was taken, no one knew that we would never see each other again. We were refugees, desperately fleeing the advancing Russian army. The Russians had made an agreement with the Americans and the British that all those who had fled from Ukraine would be returned. My father knew what that meant -- slave labor in Russia's vast north. He insisted that we move south as quickly as possible. His sister-in-law, however, refused to leave. She said that her husband (conscripted into the German army at the time) knew where she was, and if she left he would perhaps never find her. Tina and Greta decided they could not leave her alone, and would stay behind as well. This decision sealed their fate. The Russians came and they were sent back. Our family went south, eventually boarding the Volendam at Bremerhaven, headed for Paraguay. Five years later we emigrated to Canada.

My father was the only one of his entire family to escape being returned to Russia. Some of his nieces and nephews have since immigrated to Germany and Hardy and I have had the opportunity to talk with them about their experiences. At times they were so hungry that they were at the point of starvation, but gradually times got better. My cousins, the two little girls in the photo above, told me that they lost their mother when they were young teens and the woman their father then married was not kind to them. At one point, on a visit to Tina and Greta's place, they refused to go home and begged their aunts to take them in. So, once again, the aunts looked after family.

The letters I am reading now were written when the sisters were in their seventies. They were still looking after children, at this time the children of their nieces and nephews. In spite of the hardships they endured, they lived until their early eighties.

My father didn't talk much about his sisters. Perhaps there was guilt and a feeling that he had abandoned them, but he knew what he had to do for his own family. He made an effort to have them emigrate to Canada but by the time he had secured the papers they could no longer make that journey. He always wanted his daughters to be named after his sisters, but for a variety of reasons that didn't happen until the youngest of his eight children was born; she received both of their names -- Margaret Katherine. She is the only one in our family to have two names. She is certainly doing her part to live up to the names she was given by raising twin daughters as a single mom and being a huge support to the children brought into her life through her second marriage. I tease her that some day she might be looking after her older siblings as well!

”History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.” 

                                                                                                                 Maya Angelou