My Heroes

As children, my sister, my cousin and I often played that we were on a huge ship crossing the ocean. The large veranda of my cousin's house was always the ship.

I love the song "Barges," about someone sitting by the window watching ships sail by and longing to travel along with them [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dF2i6RQUqAE].

However, sometimes travelling by ship can be a nightmare. I sometimes think about the Titanic, the British passenger liner that sank in 1912 the year my father was born. Then, in more recent times, we read stories of people, desperate for asylum, crowding onto small makeshift crafts without food or water, just looking for a place that is safer than the one they come from. Many die at sea -- either of malnutrition, lack of water, or by drowning. No one seems to care for them or about them.

Lately, with the onset of the Coronavirus, cruise ships have been the center of attention. People who just wanted to enjoy a holiday in an ultra-luxurious environment, suddenly find themselves stranded at sea with no place to go, hoping they will not test positive for the virus. Once they are taken off the ship, they still have to spend time in quarantine. For people who are accustomed to having everything they need and want, this is quite a hardship!

Our family also made a perilous journey by ship in February 1947, thirty-five years after the sinking of the Titanic. My father made sure our family secured passage on an old Dutch passenger ship, the Volendam, which finally departed from Bremerhaven, Germany for Paraguay, South America, with over 2,000 refugees on board.
Recently, Hardy and I viewed a new documentary about that experience, called Volendam: A Refugee Story. This is part of my story and that of my family.

I didn't see myself, my brother or sister on the cover of the video (nor in the film itself), but we were there, somewhere! I was almost four years old when I experienced what is probably the biggest adventure of my life, but strangely, I remember nothing about it. It must have stayed in my subconscious, thus my fascination with ships!

My parents did not talk much about this adventure when we were growing up, but I do remember a picture that I often gazed at because the people on it looked so beautiful. Their names are Elfrieda and Peter Dyck, a young couple, just married three years and working for Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in war-torn Europe. For a newly married couple, they carried a lot of responsibility, helping to set up refugee camps in Germany for thousands of Mennonites who had fled Ukraine and other parts of eastern Europe.

These refugees were now in danger of being sent back to a country that branded them "enemies" and would send them to Siberia and other remote places where they would endure hard labor and starvation. Like the boat people of recent times, we had nowhere to go. However, we did have people who cared about us and MCC worked hard to find a solution. Paraguay was the only country ready to accept us, and people desperate to flee the Communist regime were willing to go there (even to the wilderness of the Chaco). Peter and Elfrieda were able to secure a huge Dutch freighter, The Volendam, and filled it to overflowing with refugees.

Elfrieda and Peter Dyck

The Volendam with C.F. Klassen, Elfrieda Dyck's older brother

Some of our family's passport pictures: My sister (right) is not happy. She was just having a meal when she was interrupted to have this picture taken. (If you look closely you can see she is holding a spoon in her hand!) She knew, from a very young age, what was most important for survival! I am the smiling girl in the middle.

Our family before boarding the Volendam

In the Mennonite Heritage Archives I found this photo of people on board the Volendam and I think I recognize my dad helping to move what looks like bales of some kind. This is symbolic of the life he lived, working hard to keep his family safe and happy.

In a previous blog post entitled Hunger (May 30, 2017), I wrote about the famine in Ukraine around the time my mother was born (1921) and how American Mennonites formed a relief organization (MCC) to help the starving Mennonites there. A young man by the name of Clayton Kratz (1896-1920), was one of the Mennonite relief workers. He mysteriously disappeared and was never heard from again; to this day no one knows what happened to him. He gave his life in the service of MCC. Without his willingness to help, at the risk of his own life, my mother, a toddler at the time, and thousands of others like her, would  have died of starvation. I and many others owe our lives to him.

Clayton Kratz

While doing some research for this blog post, I discovered that six-year-old Peter Dyck was one of the children who, like my mother, benefitted from the first MCC relief program in Ukraine and likely would have died had food aid not been available. His family emigrated to Canada shortly after. When he decided to work for MCC as a young man, he was simply expressing gratitude for the help he had received as a starving child -- by helping others as he had been helped.

My 12-year old granddaughter, Lena Kate, who lives in Ontario and likes to chat with me on the phone, recently asked me a question that made me pause and think for a while. She asked, "Oma, are you and Opa rich?" We chatted for a little while about what it means to be rich. From a global perspective we are wealthy because we have a home, a car, food on the table and clothes to wear. Lena Kate doesn't think of that as being wealthy because she takes these things for granted. When we were refugees, we weren't so fortunate. But we children never felt like we were poor because we had our parents, our grandmother and our uncle with us. They looked after us. And they had MCC, with people willing to risk their lives to help us survive. Yes, Lena Kate, Opa and Oma are rich! And you have a rich heritage!

Clayton Kratz and Elfrieda and Peter Dyck are my heroes!

... And of course my courageous dad, Bernhard Neufeld (1912-2005)