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Letters from Stalin’s Gulag
“Remember us as we remember you” – the plea from a father for his family
in a prison camp in Stalin’s Gulag empire. Jasch Regehr’s letter is a criminal
offence. Documents of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret police agency,
confirm that “correspondence abroad” is punishable by arrest and imprisonment
without trial.
Yet somehow this father’s letter was delivered to a tiny prairie
town in Canada. From 1930-38, other letters (463) written by Russian Mennonites
– a nine-year old girl, her mother, brother and sister, extended family
and friends – arrived in Carlyle, Saskatchewan at the home of Franz and
Liese Bargen. Stored in a Campbell’s Soup box, they traveled from attic
to attic for nearly 60 years. In 1989, Peter Bargen, son of the recipients,
discovered the fragile cardboard box. For three years, Peter and his wife
Anne translated, compiled, and distributed copies to their family.
On February 23, 2008, Ruth Derksen Siemens will briefly
describe the letters and their tenuous journey. However, the focus of the
evening is the film, Through the Red Gate.” Also included in the
evening will be the launch of the book “Remember Us”: Letters from Stalin’s
Gulag. The book and DVD will be available to purchase.
Several artists (Edith Krause, Shireen Cotterall and Hilda Goertzen)
will also be exhibiting their work. A father’s plea to “remember” will
not go unheeded. We will remember and we will honour those who wrote.
March 8, 1932. My family is at work—all of them. Papa has
been taken. Here about 50% have been taken because of the bread. The government
has no more. One horse’s head costs 40 rubles and one pound butter 25 rubles.
If we had not received parcels we would have starved to death long ago.
Many people die around here. Uncle Hans has died too. Aunt Susie and the
children have typhus and nothing to eat. It is very sad in this Russia
and everyone is without bread. We never have enough to eat and it is so
terrible to be hungry all the time.”
Letter and sketch by 12-year-old Tina Regehr. To the left, the
smelter where Tina worked. Read the complete letter and more about
the project at www.gulagletters.com
Instead of a Preface
In the dreadful years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months
in prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a
woman standing behind me, blue with cold, who of course had never heard
my name, woke from that trance characteristic of us all and asked in my
ear (there, everyone spoke in whispers):
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