Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1933-1948 , predominant 1945-1948 (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
3 cm of textual records
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Anna Peters was born on 11 June 1919 in Neuendorf, Chortitza, South Russia to Abram and Margarete Peters. She received very little education due to the conditions of the time in the 1920s. Her father was arrested and exiled to Siberia in 1930 when she was 11. The family was evicted from their home in Neuendorf. At age 13 (1932), her mother died, and Anna largely had to fend for herself. Her oldest sister Maria and her husband Jacob Bergen emigrated from Russia in 1923, settling in Graysville, Manitoba and later moved to Stephenfield, Manitoba. Her brother Jakob Peters, escaped Russia in 1928 across the Caucausus to Persia (Iran) and then found his way to Brazil and back to Germany by 1933. This brother eventually was stationed with the German invasion troops as a translator in Orel, Russia, from where he would visit the family in South Russia. In 1942, her brother Jakob Peters accompanied her to Berlin, where she worked in a German household and began to study nursing in Danzig. Anna Peters emigrated from Germany to Canada in 1948. She died 24 May 2015 in Abbotsford, BC.
Repository
Archival history
The letters were in the Bergen family possession and in the possession of Anna Peters who brought some to Canada in 1948. Margaret Bergen translated the letters. Other family members assisted with typing some of the transcriptions.
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Margaret Bergen
Content and structure area
Scope and content
This fonds has mainly the correspondence (1945-1948) between Anna Peters in Germany, her sister Maria (Peters) Bergen in Canada and her nephew John Bergen, at first in Oldenburg, Germany, later back in Canada, and her niece, Margaret Bergen in Canada. Anna's first letter to her sister Maria Bergen after the war was sent along with a Canadian soldier stationed in Wiesmoor, who was returning to Canada. No correspondence was yet allowed between Germany and Canada at the time. Maria was able to send a letter to her son John Bergen, who was in the Dental Corps, as a member of the occupation forces stationed in Oldenburg, Germany, and through him contact could be made and letters received. For several months all letters from Anna Peters (Germany) to her sister Maria (Canada) were forwarded via John Bergen in Oldenburg, Germany.
There are also three letters which pre-date the 1945-1948 period -- one written by Anna's brother, Anton Peters in 1934, another by her father Abram Peters in 1933, and one by Anna herself as a 13 year-old, describing their dire circumstances having the last potatoes, etc. taken by the communists and begging for a dollar (1933).
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
System of arrangement
Conditions of access and use area
Conditions governing access
Conditions governing reproduction
Language of material
Script of material
Language and script notes
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Inventory file list and some background notes
Allied materials area
Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
Related units of description
Notes area
Alternative identifier(s)
Access points
Subject access points
Place access points
Name access points
- Bergen, Maria (Peters), 1898-1983 (Subject)
- Bergen, John, 1922-2013 (Subject)
- Bergen, Margaret, 1928-2023 (Subject)
Genre access points
Description control area
Description identifier
Institution identifier
Rules and/or conventions used
Status
Level of detail
Dates of creation revision deletion
By Alf Redekopp, July 2009.