No More Summers, No More Sundays
For many generations, a significant number of Mennonites enjoyed a privileged lifestyle in Imperial Russia; although for many, it was a daily struggle. Nevertheless, at the peak of their comfortable lifestyle, it seemed to many that those days would never end. As one author expressed it in the title of his collection of photographs – “Forever Summer, Forever Sunday”.
These four stories epitomize the cruel fate that so many Mennonite families suffered during the Stalinist era, resulting in permanent family dislocations, separations, and in many, if not most cases, cruel hardships resulting in deaths. For Mennonites in Russia, the long “Summer” had come to an end.
Someone once said we all die twice; the first time in our physical death and the second time when the last person to remember us dies. If that is so, the people I write about in the following essays are in jeopardy of dieing their second death. Hopefully, this modest attempt to tell their stories will keep their memories alive.
Martin Loewen was my grandfather’s older brother, and Helena (Loewen) Funk, his older sister. Margareta (Eitzen) Driedger was my grandmother’s younger sister, and Johann Eitzen, her oldest brother. Their stories beg to be told, and their voices to be heard. In the recalling of their stories, it is my hope that their voices, once so cruelly silenced by a ruthless regime that only wished to eradicate their kind, will be restored to them.
Although these four families lived in four separate communities, including a great distance from the others, a common thread runs through their respective stories. Their comfortable lifestyle delayed their eventual decisions to attempt emigration and those delays would cost each family that opportunity, and impose a heavy personal cost instead to each extended family.
Three of these families also shared the common experience of arriving in Moscow in the fall of 1929 in the hopes of being allowed to emigrate, only to be denied and either sent back or arrested and condemned to the harsh reality of a labour camp.
The 1929 Flight of Mennonites from Russia and Reception in Germany. VIDEO (6 min.)
Martin Loewen (1870 – 1933), was an older brother to my grandfather, Abraham J. Loewen. He was married to Susanna Klassen (sister to my wife’s paternal grandfather), and was a successful farmer in the village of Gnadental, Ukraine.
His belief that better days were ahead, cost him the critical time in which to safely emigrate. This delay would place a heavy toll on him and on his family.
Johann (1861-1932) & Helena (Loewen) Funk (1863-1938) were founding members of Katerinovka, approximately 25 km NE of Baratov Colony. Johann was a successful farmer, as well as a skilled craftsman and a lay preacher. Helena was an older sister to my grandfather, Abraham J. Loewen.
The Funks were a devout Christian family; the only family of this village to join the Mennonite Brethren Church (at nearby Milloradowka).
Abram and Margaretha (Eitzen) Driedger were one of those couples who hesitated to emigrate when it was possible, because they believed better days were ahead. Unfortunately, their delay cost them the opportunity to emigrate, resulting in a life of suffering, misery, and death. This is an account of my grandmother’s youngest sister, Margaretha Eitzen Driedger, and her family. It is based on family memoirs, notes, correspondence received from them in the 1920s and 1930s, and current correspondence with grandsons living in Germany and in Ontario.
Johann Eitzen (1838-1915), was born in Berdyansk, South Russia. He married Helena Eitzen, Orekhov, where they settled initially and where Johann was partner in a flour mill with Peter Eitzen, his brother-in-law. Their children were all born in the vicinity, with Schoenwiese being the place common to most of their family events – births and baptisms.
In 1905, Johann and Helena Eitzen moved to the village of Suworowka in the newly established Orenburg colony.
Like so many others, his oldest son, Johann (1865-1933), who was a wealthy estate owner, resisted emigration initially, and when his family joined the thousands of other Mennonites at the ‘Gates of Moscow’ in the fall of 1929 in an attempt to leave, they found the gates closed and all hopes dashed.