Item 678.0 - Unidentified family

This composite of seven siblings was used by Gerhard Lohrenz on the second last page of his book, Heritage Remembered, to illustrate the story of a typical Mennonite family from the Molotschna between 1935 and 1970.
Their fate could serve as an example as to what has happened to many other families. The father was torn from the family. When the war began the older two children too were taken. The mother with the small children was dumped in the empty steppe of Kasachstan. Three Mennonite women with their fourteen children found refuge in a small miserable hut. In the first winter, hunger and typhoid fever caused the death of all three mothers, the youngest children also died. What has happened to the other children? The oldest son is an engineer. The second child, a girl, all alone, has reached Canada. Another of the girls, after her service in the labour army, is now a member of a collective in Siberia. Two of the boys, still children, were brought to a coal mine in Karaganda. Here they had to work very hard. They studied after working hours and today are trained specialists. The youngest two children, both girls, at that time 3 1/2 and one year old, were brought up in an orphanage. The one today is a teacher and the other a metallurgist. Both are married to Russians; both men are teachers by profession. For 23 years these siblings did not know about each other, each believing that the others were dead. Now they are corresponding. Names and addresses cannot be given. What is important here is to see the fate of many Mennonite families from Russia. [HR 277]