Fonds PP - Jakob Guenther fonds

Jakob Guenther, bookkeeper and teacher, was born 19 Sept 1897 in Sergejewka, Melitopol district, in Imperial Russia to Anton Guenther and Maria Sawatzky. He was baptized by Aeltester Heinrich Rempel on 25 May 1918 in the Orenburg settlement, and received into the community of the Deyevka (Djejewer) Mennonite Church. He married Margaretha Martens on 11 May 1919.

From 1937-1941 he worked as a bookkeeper in Chortitza. From 1941-1943 he was a teacher in Hochfeld, in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. He and his family fled the Soviet Union with the retreating German army in 1943. He was conscripted into the German military on 16 January 1945. From the end of the war until 19 February 1946, he was a Russian prisoner of war in Romania. He was separated from his family during the war. In August 1947 he immigrated to Canada. His family on the other hand had been forcefully repatriated to the Soviet Union. (Years later they immigrated to Germany) His wife died in 1981.

Jakob Guenther worked at various jobs in Canada to support himself. He retired in 1968. In 1985 he moved to the Menno Home in Abbotsford, where he lived until he passed away on 18 June 1998 at the age of 100.