Forget-Me-Not

Living in our democratic country where I enjoy a culture of plenty and relative security, it is easy to forget that this is not the case for many millions of people and was not the case for our family living in the Soviet Union before 1943 the year we became refugees.

However, I have a small booklet which helps me to remember. It was given to my grandmother by her favorite sister Agneta, when they said their farewells and emigrated to Canada in 1923, leaving behind my grandmother Katarina Kroeger and her young family as well as my grandmother's single brother, Dietrich Epp. The booklet is called Christliches Vergissmeinnicht (transl. Christian Forget-Me-Not) and serves as a place to record important events such as births and deaths of family members and friends.

     

On March 15, 1938, my grandmother wrote: My dear husband Abram Kroeger was imprisoned. No one knew what happened to him in prison but he was never heard from again..

On July 28th of this year we received our answer to what we had long suspected, and I recorded it in my grandmother's date book -- November 14, 1938: My grandfather, Abram Kroeger was executed by shooting at 8:30 p.m. in Dniepropetrovsk. He was exonerated (of all charges against him) in 1989.

I asked myself why he was exonerated, and it occurred to me that it must be because he made no confession to the false accusations against him.

A similar thing happened to my grandmother's brother, Dietrich Epp, who was falsely accused and imprisoned on September 5, 1937.

In June 1944, my grandmother experienced another searing loss when her young son Dietrich (named after his uncle and conscripted into the German army), was accidentally shot while the soldiers were cleaning their guns. I wrote about this in a blog post (see Nov. 19, 2016).

My three brothers are currently on a trip to Ukraine and were able to access archival files. That is how they discovered what happened to our grandfather and our great-uncle.

My sister Irma assembled a collage (above) of these three innocent victims of a senseless war and is using it as a screen saver to honour them and also to serve as a reminder that they "lost their lives to senseless war and the misuse of guns. It's up to this generation to work towards 'Never Again'!"

"Oh, the Places I've Been!"

Almost-ten-year-old granddaughter Sasha stayed for an overnight recently. After breakfast she needed something to do and I was her only source of entertainment. The day before she had spent the whole afternoon drawing, coloring and writing stories in a book I began with the grandchildren at our rental cottage last summer.

The Artist at Work

Sasha needed a change from yesterday's intense drawing and writing activity. The teacher in me kicked in. I love nothing more than seeing the light in someone’s eyes when they discover something new. Better yet is when I too learn something in the process. 

We played a game using the big world map on the wall downstairs. We took turns selecting places we chose on the map and asking the other person to locate them by the count of ten. It was fun and we learned a lot about the world. 

I happened to see the word Taklimaken on the map and liked the sound of it, so I asked Sasha to find it. I gave her some hints and some extra time and she located it. I could not believe that in all my years as a student and a teacher I had not heard of the Taklimakan Desert, the largest desert in China and the second largest shifting-sand desert in the world! Sasha asked Opa and he had not heard of it either! We googled it and learned a lot about this fascinating area.

Taklimakan Desert in Western China

It occurred to me that although Sasha knew more about geography than I did at her age, she had always lived in one place and had never been further east than Ontario or further west than Alberta. As I traced my own journey around the world for her, I was amazed myself at what an experienced world traveller I had already become at age nine.

My journey began at the age of three months, when, in my mother’s arms, I left my birthplace, Ukraine, and travelled by train to Poland and further into Germany to escape being sent back to Ukraine where we would likely face slave labor and almost certain death. When my father returned to the family after having been conscripted into the German army during the last few months of WW2, he found us living on a farm in southern Germany (Bavaria). He was very concerned for our safety and decided we would be better off leaving Germany.

So by the time I was four, our family joined others at Bremerhaven (northern Germany) where the Mennonite Central Committee had rented a Dutch cruise ship, the Volendam, to take refugees to South America. With over 2,300 passengers our ship sailed for Argentina. We couldn't land for some time because we didn’t have permission from the Argentinian authorities to do so. 

["Yes, Sasha, I was also one of the 'boat people'!" Fortunately our sponsors were trustworthy people. Three cheers for MCC which is still helping displaced people around the world!]

In Argentina we lived in a tent city until we were able to go to the Paraguayan Chaco; there we spent five years (1947-1952) in a village we helped build (yes, even little children could stomp the bitter-grass into the clay to make bricks, chase grasshoppers and other predators from the crops, haul water, etc.).

I left my beloved village for a much larger world when I turned nine (just a few months younger than Sasha is now). We travelled by train and small boat to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, where we spent several months waiting for our visas. From there we flew to Montreal and took the train all the way west to Alberta. After ten years, when I had just graduated from high school, our family moved to Winnipeg, where I met the love of my life and we embarked on further adventures in Africa. After 18 years we returned to live in Ontario and then, after 24 years in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, we moved back again to Manitoba. I believe we will not move again!

If you want to read some books to your grandchildren or nieces and nephews about children who have travelled the world, below are two delightful ones that are some of our family's favorites. The authors, both accomplished artists, wrote and illustrated their books.

 The story of Barbara Cooney's book takes place in the Canada's Maritimes.

 Miriam Rudolph's book about Paraguay is bilingual -- English/German.

Now That I'm Seventy-Five . . .

Before I had lived the first quarter of my life I used to wonder what it would feel like to be old. Now that I have lived three quarters of a century (I turned 75 at the end of May) I should know.

Strangely enough, I don’t think I feel much different than I did in my younger years! For example, I loved the smell of lilacs in the spring and I still do. I loved to read and write, to communicate thoughts and ideas, to sing and to listen to music, to eat delicious food, to spend time with friends. None of that has changed.

Bodily changes happened throughout my life ... as I evolved from babyhood to infant to teen to childbearing to menopause to old age. I should be used to them by now. I’m taking them in stride. What has probably made the biggest difference is life experience and the lessons I have learned as a result.

Being a #3 on the Enneagram, I’ve convinced myself that 75 is not really old yet. We just returned from a road trip to Ontario. Our son-in-law’s grandmothers, both of whom we have learned to love and appreciate over the years, are now 96 and 100. Comparing myself to them, I am still at the “young” stage of old age. I do realize that we all age very differently. The 96-year-old is still very much engaged in the life around her and her doctor recently gave her a clean bill of health! She served us warm biscuits and tea, and gave us some homemade raspberry jam (made by another senior in her complex). The 100-year-old has no quality of life and requires constant caregivers. Although her family celebrated her birthday, she was not aware of it.

I recently read an article in the Winnipeg Free Press ("Living longer not the same as living healthy longer," by Blair Roblin, June 1, 2018) in which the author writes about "health-adjusted life expectancy (HALE) which measures the average length of time people can expect to live in a healthy state, essentially without illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer. For Manitoba, Statistics Canada reports a HALE of 67 for males and 70 for females, more than 10 years short of life expectancy."

I am thankful that I have passed that statistic and have no health problems yet. However, I do want to prepare myself for the inevitable, without being morbid about it!

Right now I'm enjoying memories of our trip to Ontario and back (Hardy is 80 now and we were a little apprehensive about doing the yearly road trip, but we managed quite well by pacing ourselves and taking two night lodgings).

Our four grandchildren in Ontario were so excited to see us and to celebrate my birthday with me.

Their homemade card was very special and designed with so much love.

Our four grandchildren in Ontario were so excited to see us and to celebrate my birthday with me. They had prepared a puppet show that was pretty amazing. There were endless Aggravation games with Opa, and they kept a running score to see who won the most games! Oma told and retold and read many stories and spent time at the nearby playground with them. We ate lots of ice cream and pizza and went to Swiss Chalet together with the other set of grandparents who also had birthdays in May.

The day after we returned, Lena Kate (10) called us and said that she felt sad because we were not there. She said that she was lying on our bed missing the story times we had together. It made me sad too, but also happy because of the love we shared.

"Time is a valuable commodity which moves in only one direction. So the best present a parent [or grandparent] can give to a child is the Present. It will eventually become the Past on which the Future is built." (Libby Simon, Winnipeg Free Press, March 22, 2011)

Survivors

Nana Mouskouri

This woman gives me hope! She is 83 years old and is kicking off a 14-day cross-Canada tour on May 3, with stops in Calgary, Toronto and Winnipeg, to name a few! I just listened to her singing Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" and was amazed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po1ALayrqOE

Recently, in an interview with Hello! Canada magazine, she was asked: "Is retirement in the cards?" Her reply: "No way!" After a 60-year career, Mouskouri is still “elegance in action.” 
Hello! quotes her:
I’m getting older, but when I tried to retire, I realized I had no contact with creativity anymore. Even listening to music was sad for me. My message is this: when you love something, you really can’t separate yourself from it. It’s important to do what you love. If I stop singing, I don’t learn anymore. Life is about creating.

Nana Mouskouri grew up in Greece; besides her mother tongue she is also fluent in German, Italian, English, Spanish, and French. Having lived in several different countries myself, I agree with her when she says, “You need to understand the culture before you try pronouncing words ... .  And it takes patience.”

Nana’s older sister Jenny initially appeared to be the more gifted sibling and since the parents couldn’t afford both girls’ studies, the tutor recommended Jenny over Nana. However, it was Nana who had the true need to sing and became famous. A medical examination revealed that she had only one functioning vocal chord, but apparently this enhanced her singing voice. She sang a husky dark alto in her younger years and later changed to “a ringing coloratura mezzo.” (Wikipedia)

Although I am not musically gifted, Mouskouri’s experience of having to give up voice lessons reminded me of a time during my early teens when I longed to be able to play piano. We were an immigrant family and my parents worked hard to keep their eight children fed and clothed. There was no money for musical instruments or lessons. However, I begged, and somewhere my parents got an old piano. My little sister (eight years younger than me) was deemed to be the musical one. The piano teacher agreed that I could attend the lessons, but my sister would be the one to get the lessons and I would observe and also practise at home.

I really enjoyed playing the piano, but my first and only recital was a disaster so I knew I did not want to perform. However, my great-uncle John (who was to us like the grandpa we never had) would come over on Saturday nights and would sit by the piano and listen to me play. He was musically gifted and could play by ear but he never said a word, just listened. That was his gift to me. 
Later I paid for my own lessons with babysitting money. I still enjoy playing the piano, but we gave it to our daughter when we moved to Manitoba. So now I resort to playing the recorder when the spirit moves me!

Mouskouri’s stamina in her later years reminds me of my mother’s younger brother, my Onkel Hans. He is a survivor! He turned 95 this April and is the last surviving sibling in his family.

As a young man he was conscripted into the German army toward the end of World War II, and for several years our family did not know where he was. However, he found us in Paraguay and later joined us in Canada.

The above photo shows some of our family as refugees from Ukraine in Germany. Onkel Hans is on the right. I am the baby on the left. My grandmother (on the right) is holding my brother.

Onkel Hans loved to have fun with his little nieces and nephews by showing up at night with a glowing flashlight in his mouth and his eyelids turned inside out so they looked red, and then pouncing on us! We shrieked and ran, with him chasing us. After he got married, he would bring his little girl and throw her onto the bed where the four of us were settling down for the night and we all had a good romp. In Paraguay he taught in a village school and later became a pastor.

Onkel Hans sent me this picture of my classmates a year after our family left Paraguay

There was sadness in Onkel Hans's life. He lost his first wife (our Aunt Susan) to ovarian cancer. After several years he married again and it was a happy marriage until Aunt Frieda, too, passed away. He also lost a daughter to ovarian cancer. Some years ago Onkel Hans had a serious heart attack but he survived.

Onkel Hans especially enjoys wood carving as a hobby and in his retirement has made many beautiful pieces over the years.

My grandmother wrote a page in her Bible for each of her children after they were born. It was a big family Bible she and my grandfather received as a wedding gift. On Hans's page she begins very positively about the beautiful spring morning in 1923 (he was born in April) but her joy soon turns to sadness as she writes that he will not have the privilege of having his grandmother close by since she and the rest of the family will be emigrating to America in June.

Her last sentence seems almost prophetic:

Auch wenn alle dich verlassen, du mein Hans! 

Wird dein Heiland dich umfassen, will dich haben ganz.

[Trsl.: Even when all leave you, my Hans! Our Savior will embrace you, he wants to have you completely.]

Forever young! 

"I’m a young man trapped in an old man’s body."

(Onkel Hans's words as he celebrated his 95th birthday)

What If ??

Our oldest grandchild is graduating from high school in June. Ben's life in the outside world is just beginning as mine is diminishing. I have so much life experience and he has so little. I wonder what I can tell him. He hasn't asked me very much about my life. Later, when he is older, and I am no longer here, he will wonder about it and wish he had asked me more questions. Maybe he will read my blog posts and find some answers there.
Or he might read my memoir (I have so far only written an introduction and am having a hard time going beyond that).

My Mom, Ben's great-grandmother, sharing some of her joy with Ben when he was two

My Dad, imparting some of his life wisdom to one of his grandchildren

Jason Mahn, Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the Presidential Center for Faith and Learning at Augustana College in Illinois, gave me some insight:

Educators are called to tell their own stories in ways that include regret, remorse, mourning, and roads not taken. Only then can we help our students navigate a world where multiple, conflicting callings will always shape them into the complex, vulnerable creatures they are.

Maybe that is why I'm not making progress on my memoir. Who wants to write about regrets, mourning, and roads not taken?! 
There is always the nagging question in the back of the mind: "What if?" . . . 

What if . . . someone had encouraged me to stick to the university entrance math course instead of choosing bookkeeping in grade 11 because I hated geometry . . . ? 

What if . . . that boy I had a crush on all through high school had actually had the same feeling for me, and not dated my best friend on grad night . . . ?

What if . . . I had done this, or chosen that, or listened to my heart instead of 
to my elders . . . ?

When I graduated from high school, I had two goals and both of them seemed impossible to reach at the time:

1)  I wanted to complete my education by going to university

2)  I wanted to get married

My Dad and I had a talk after graduation and he gave me some other ideas. I listened because I didn't know what else to do. The rest is history! I did achieve both goals I had set for myself, but in a different way than I anticipated, and that makes for an interesting life story (some of which I have shared in previous blog posts). 

What Thomas Merton (1915-1968) says in a prayer resonates with me. I have prayed this same prayer many times throughout my life:

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will 
does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you 
does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost

and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

My advice to my grandson at this significant time in his life is this:

A seed only flourishes by staying in the ground in which it is sown. When you keep digging the seed up to check whether it is growing, it will never bear fruit. Think of yourself as a little seed planted in rich soil. All you have to do is stay there and trust that the soil contains everything you need to grow. 
This growth takes place even when you do not feel it.
                                                                                                     (Henri J.M. Nouwen)

The Clock is Ticking

These days my maternal grandfather, Abram Kroeger, is on my mind. My mother lost her father in 1937, when she was 16, so I never met him. However, we have a few photos, and my mother has told me his story.

My grandfather came from a family of clockmakers who took their clockmaking business from West Prussia to Russia where they set up a clock-manufacturing business in the village of Rosenthal, Ukraine. This history is documented in a book entitled Kroeger Clocks, by Arthur Kroeger, which I featured in a blog post in July 2012. As the Mennonite population in tsarist Russia expanded rapidly, there was an increased demand for clocks.

Arthur Kroeger writes, "Traditionally, Mennonite clockmakers produced clocks by employing members of their own family. The older sons learned from their father, and the younger sons and female members contributed their skills by doing the painting and artwork on the clock dials. These clocks were beautiful works of art." (p.35)

Kroeger clock (1873), as depicted in Kroeger Clocks, p.157

Sons of clockmakers worked for their fathers until they were married. However, if a son married a farmer's daughter with land of her own, he usually left clockmaking and went into farming. That was the case in my great-grandfather's family: he had several daughters but only one son. My grandfather, as the only son, inherited the farm from his parents. 

My grandmother was proud to be married to a landowner, especially since her family of origin, with several sons, was landless and emigrated to Canada in the early 1920s.

However, owning land proved to be my grandfather's tragic demise. The eventual outcome of events after WW1 was not foreseen, since agriculture was flourishing and Russia had a robust economy and seemingly endless resources. All this came to a halt as the result of the Bolshevik takeover. (Kroeger Clocks, p.55)

The Kroeger family, still intact in 1934

The Kroeger family in 1936, just before their father disappeared 

(My mother's little brother, Gerhard, died in 1934 of dysentery [Rote Ruhr].)

It was shortly after the picture above was taken that one evening, just at bedtime, a black van (often referred to as "the Black Raven") appeared at my grandparents' home. My grandfather (the most peace-loving man) was accused of planting dynamite with the intention of blowing up a bridge. The police took him away and the family never saw him again. They accused him because they wanted to confiscate his land.

Years later, my mother's uncle from Russia visited my parents in Canada. He had been imprisoned with my grandfather but somehow managed to escape death. My uncle told my mother the last time he'd seen him, her father was in a cell just able to stand; he was being interrogated and beaten and his face was all bloody. When my mother heard this, she went into the bathroom, locked the door and wept.  

My grandfather is on my mind these days because of what I have heard on the radio and read in the Winnipeg Free Press lately. Below is a link to an article by Bill Redekop:

https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/u-of-w-fellowship-will-help-fund-research-of-kgb-files-on-mennonites-who-vanished-during-stalins-ukraine-purges-475247193.html

In the article, Royden Loewen (chair in Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg) writes about "this dark and hidden chapter of Mennonite history." Apparently the KGB archives of those missing persons are now being made available to scholars by the Ukrainian government, "perhaps as a snub to Russia."

I ask myself if our family will ever find out exactly what happened to my grandfather. It would be good to have closure.

In light of what happened to my grandfather and to many other innocent victims like him, I would say that we need to be vigilant in order to safeguard our democracy. Recent news points to Russian involvement in the American election process as well as in other areas. Russia's leader is hungry for world control.

Below follows an article about Russian links to the NRA, "one of the most politically polarizing organizations in the U.S." and a key part of Trump's conservative base.

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/01/590076949/depth-of-russian-politicians-cultivation-of-nra-ties-revealed?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180301

To my mind, this news of the bullying tactics of the NRA is somehow connected to what happened in Russia to my grandfather and many people like him, and it frightens me.

Could what happened to my grandfather happen here in North America? 

Perhaps it is already happening, and with great regularity!

To those families who recently lost their nearest and dearest in a place they thought was safe, does it matter who pulled the trigger? 

Reconciliation

Recently my husband Hardy and I attended an exhibit at the MHCGallery entitled Reconciliation through the Arts, showcasing the works of Indigenous artists as well as those from the Settler community within the broad theme of reconciliation. The purpose of the exhibition was to generate intercultural dialogue between Indigenous and Settler communities, exploring themes such as traditional life, treaty-making, residential schools, etc.

As I looked at the different exhibits, I stopped in front of a black and white painting of a nun writing on a blackboard. The only word on the blackboard was the word 'English.' It was written in cursive.

(Andrea Gallagher-Courteau)

I couldn't stop looking at that painting. I was mesmerized! It took me back, way back to my nine-and a-half-year-old bewildered self suddenly thrust into a world I didn't know or understand.

Our family arrived in Canada from Paraguay in the month of October and the oldest three children began school shortly thereafter. That first year we lived in the country and were within walking distance of the school. It was a public school, but most of the students were children of Mennonite farmers of the area. The teacher was my mother's cousin. We spoke the same language (Low German) and most of the children at the school could speak Plautdietsch or at least understand it. However, no one did. The rule was to use only English at school. 

The teacher asked me if I knew the alphabet. Of course, I did. I had already finished grade two. I knew how to read books! She asked me to recite the alphabet. I recited it in German. Everyone smirked and snickered when they heard what to them was a distortion of their alphabet. The teacher said, "You must  learn it in English." And she wrote the word English on the blackboard, in big letters. Then she had all the children recite the alphabet in English for my benefit. I didn't think I would ever be able to learn it. I felt stupid and humiliated. 

I was so happy when the school day was over and I could go home to my familiar surroundings with the people I loved, who spoke my language. I went and sat beside the bed  my sister and I shared and tried to coax her out from under it. She had run home from school at recess that day and was afraid of getting punished for it! (I've written about this in an earlier post, see Sept.1, 2015, Two Little Words.)

Just recently I visited with a friend (just a few years younger than I am) who told me that she was born left-handed and was forced to write with her right hand at school. When she couldn't comply, the teacher tied her left hand to her chair so she couldn't use it. She is traumatized by that experience to this day, and panics when she is told to turn left or right, not sure which direction is which. For her driving test she wrote an L on her left hand and an R on her right! (I just noticed that the nun is writing on the blackboard with her left hand! Was that intentional on the artist's part, I wonder?)

As I stood there looking at the picture in the MHCGallery exhibit, I realized that my experience and that of my left-handed friend's is only the tip of the iceberg compared to what it was like for the Indigenous children in the residential schools. They couldn't go home after school to speak their familiar language, eat the food they loved, hug their parents, or sleep in their own beds. Not only were they deprived of everything they knew and loved, many of them were also physically and sexually abused. How did they even survive? Many did, but with broken bodies and spirits.

A little girl of about four or five years old did a beautiful butterfly dance for us. She was so innocent. I felt a deep sadness when I watched her and thought of all the children who were robbed of their childhood, whose lives were destroyed by uncaring adults.

One of the items on display was a a replica of a Manitoba residential-school uniform, adorned with colorful ribbons, tassels and silver jingles belonging to an Anishinaabe Jingle Dress, traditionally worn at Pow Wows. The artist, Jubilee Dueck Thiessen, writes:

A Pow Wow is a gathering to be thankful and to celebrate culture and friendship. I wanted to honor the reclaiming of that cultural tradition.  . . .  The Jingle Dress Dance is considered a healing dance.  . . .  My piece is an effort to mourn the horrific past of residential schools in Canada  . . . while celebrating the rich culture of the people who were impacted.

(The dress has been blessed by Aboriginal Elder Myra Laramee.)

(Maria Epp)

Regarding this painting the artist writes:

Reconciliation comes through loving bonds that form over long periods of time. This image is part of a greater place in my heart of forgiveness. Where my ancestors come to my friends' ancestors and apologize and ask for forgiveness. Where gifts are exchanged and a future is formed where our children are raised together in love.  . . .  I see our education system as the place where most change can occur. I am advocating for grandparents and elders to bring their stories to the children in the school.

(Daryoush Abbasi)