Identity area
Reference code
Title
Date(s)
- 1923-2000 (Creation)
Level of description
Fonds
Extent and medium
16 cm of textual records
5 photographs
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Jacob Bergen (1897-1991) was born to Jacob Bergen (1872-1941) and Katharina Teichroeb (1872-1919). He grew up in the Borosenko colony, Russia. During the First World War he worked in the forestry camps doing alternative service instead of entering the military. His mother was murdered in 1919 during the Russian Revolution in the village of Felsenbach. Jacob and his father fled to the village of Schönhorst. While they stayed there, young Jacob met Maria Peters and they got married. In 1923, with their first born child, they immigrated to Canada. The family lived in Saskatchewan and Manitoba for a time and Jacob worked on the railroad. Eventually they settled in the Stephenfield area in Manitoba and established a family farm. Education was important to the Bergen family. Nine of the ten children spent some time at the Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna, Manitoba. Jacob and Maria were also involved with the Schönwieser Mennonite church. Jacob Bergen died in Carman, Manitoba in 1991.
Name of creator
Name of creator
Repository
Archival history
Immediate source of acquisition or transfer
Margaret Bergen (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Content and structure area
Scope and content
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.
Appraisal, destruction and scheduling
Accruals
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Conditions governing reproduction
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Script of material
Language and script notes
German and English
Physical characteristics and technical requirements
Finding aids
Inventory file list (Volume 2138:12-16; 5479-5480; Photo Coll. 589)
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Existence and location of originals
Existence and location of copies
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Notes area
Note
Acc. Nos. 1999-002, 2000-097, 2010-065.
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Dates of creation revision deletion
Described by Conrad Stoesz July 16, 2004. Updated by Alf Redekopp, October 6, 2010, December 14, 2010 and May 19, 2011.