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This fonds contains a transcript of an interview with Jacob Bergen, Jacob Bergen correspondence with the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization regarding immigration, payment of travel debt and the sponsorship of relatives coming to Canada after the Second World War and correspondence with the Schönwieser Mennonite church. The fonds also includes the letters written by Margaret Bergen (1928-) to her parents, Jacob and Maria Bergen, and the letters received by Margaret from her parents, while attending the Mennonite Collegiate Institute boarding school from 1941-1945, while attending Normal School in Winnipeg 1945-1946, and while teaching in various schools in Manitoba and on an exchange program in Coventry, England in 1961-1962.

This material shows the difficult situation some Mennonites experienced in Russia after the First World War, how one family coped and immigrated to Canada where they started a new life with their children. The letters show the high value that this family placed on education and staying in touch with each other when transportation, travel and communication was quite limited.

There is also one file of letters which Margaret Bergen received from female Ukrainian agronomist of Zaporozhye who began to care for the Mennonite cemetery on the Island of Chortitza in 1998. These letters contain a perspective of a Ukrainian who lived through World War II as a prisoner in Germany and then returned to Ukraine in 1957, and eventually attending the Mennonite Church in Zaporozhye which started in the late 1990s.