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Book reviews

Ted Friesen and Elisabeth Peters with Glenn Bergen. Memories of Grigorievka (Winnipeg, Manitoba: CMBC Publications, 1998) 295 pp.

Reviewed by Helene S. Friesen, Der Bote indexer, Mennonite Heritage Centre.

“Grigorievka, lieb Heimatland,/Der Ort da meine Wiege stand, . . . ” Thus begins the poem by Peter B. Krahn, about the subject of this book.

Drawing upon the recollections of members of most of the Mennonite families who resided in Grigorievka as well as a history of the village compiled some two decades earlier, Ted Friesen and Elisabeth Peters have assembled a collective history of a unique yet representative centre of Mennonite life in the former Russian Empire.

Settled in 1889 by Mennonite families from the Chortitza, Fuerstenland and Nepluievka colonies about 160 km. north-east of Chortitza and surrounded by a number of larger Russian villages, the village consisted of 41 farmsteads and a smaller section across the railway tracks which cut through the settlement.

Accounts of life in the village take the reader from 1889 to 1926, the year the village ceased to exist. Those who were able emigrated to Canada while others moved to Molotschna. Chapter 1, written by George F. Loewen, provides the details of early settlement, the important roles of education and church life, the growth of agriculture and industry, the hardships brought by World War I and the ensuing anarchy of Civil War, the NEP years which engendered hope for a return to better days, and the decision to emigrate.

In the second chapter, Peters provides an essential social history of life in Grigorievka, summarizing the “modus of life in our village” under the topics of social and medical care, night watchmen and fire brigades, mad dogs and school exams, engagement parties and Polterabend, weddings and funerals, and the wonderful traditions associated with marking Christmas and other holy days. Later, she remembers Grigorievka as it was when she left it as a nine-year-old.

The section on village teachers’ stories depicts the significance education held for the settlers. Excerpts of former teachers’ memoirs and accounts by members of their families, ensures documentation of each of the 25 teachers’ contributions to the community.

Bringing the village into the present, Susan Miller and Henry Klassen describe their visits to their birthplace in 1977 and 1996 respectively, contrasting the past with the present.

The greater part of the book provides a variety of family stories, where members of extended families tell us of their lives before and after they left Grigorievka. Here readers will meet acquaintances and perhaps find material for insight into the more recent past of Mennonite life, both in Russia and in Canada.

For a work of this detail, both the glossary and the index of names are an appreciated inclusion. Readers will find the book an enjoyable read, richly detailed about individuals and families, their anxieties and joys, and their finding their places in a new land. Memories of Grigorievka is a fine addition to the expansion of the portrait of our past.

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Wilmer A. Harms, M.D., The Odyssey of Escapes from Russia: The Saga of Anna K. (Hillsboro, KS: Hearth Publishing, 1998) 203 pp.

Reviewed by Ed Brandt, Historian and Researcher, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This book deals with the mostly German refugees who escaped chiefly from eastern Siberia to Harbin, Manchuria, beginning in 1928, at grave risk to their lives. Many perils faced them even after they eluded the bullets of the Soviet border guards. Harbin was a temporary refuge, since the city required no visas, but most had to stay there for a number of years before North American church organizations managed to scrape up the funds for passage to whichever countries were willing to accept them, primarily Canada, Paraguay and Brazil.

A list of 526 Lutheran refugees found in the Harbin Mission Files of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in Chicago and a longer, but less complete, list of 649 Mennonites are appended, with the place and date of birth given in each case. Some Roman Catholics, German and Russian Baptists, and Greek Catholics were also among the escapees, but they are mentioned only briefly.

Nearly 100 individuals, most of them Mennonites who had relatives here, came to the United States, initially to the West Coast.

The major portion of the book is devoted to accounts of the escape of various groups. Some of these had been published previously, but in German.

They are highly emotional stories of danger, tragedy, exploitation and blackmail, but fortunately also of the kindnesses of individuals of many nationalities and ultimate success in most cases. There are largely conjectural references to those who didn’t make it, but theirs remains an unknown story.

Part II (“The Saga of Anna K”) is the fascinating story of the author’s 1937 German teacher. Readers will readily see what prompted the author to undertake major expenses and Herculean efforts to get the book completed and published.

This book is not only for genealogists and people with German-speaking ancestors from the Russian Empire, but also for those who enjoy dramatic human interest stories and would like to know more about a very courageous group of ethnic kinfolk who risked life for freedom.

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