Item 1 - Bender to “Heart of Europe” tourists, November 7, 1929

Bender to “Heart of Europe” tourists, November 7, 1929 [typed letterhead of Goshen College]: pleasurable recall of the tour [dates not given], they having traveled on the “Canadian Pacific ‘Empress of Australia”...; mention of Paul Erb as in the tour party; letter looks back to the tourists’ eight weeks in Europe [June-August, 1929], albeit saying almost nothing of the tourists’ travels; letter gives details of Bender and a “Doctor Miller” [S. T. Miller, according to Keim] going to the Soviet Union [USSR; Russia] immediately after the group’s leaving on August 3; places mentioned--Luxembourg, Trier, Munich, Hellmansberg, Nuernberg [Nüremberg]. Rothenburg, Lautenbach, Berlin, Danzig, Koenigsberg [Königsberg], Moscow (three days), Leningrad, Helsingfors in Finland, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Cherbourg, New York; mention of visiting the historic Mennonite church in Danzig; Bender’s account of time and treatment in the Soviet Union mildly positive, certainly not harsh (e.g. ... “conditions ,,, much more stable than the average person relaizes [sic]”, and (after attending Greek Orthodox services in Leningrad) , continuing that they saw “more religious freedom than mnay [sic] suppose” and that “church services are absolutely free, and even protestant theological schools are allowed...”: on settling accounts with “the U. S. Lines office in Chicago” [having traveled on the S. S. George Washington; sending refunds of $5 each and had a general overage of $38 which Bender proposed to give to the Mennonite Historical Library; that in Munich he had “bought a number of rare and valuable books”....