Dietrich Heinrich Epp: founder of Der Bote
by Louise Bergen Price

 Dietrich Epp, former teacher of the Zentralschule and director of the Teachers’ Seminary in Chortitza Rosental, emigrated to Canada in July 1923 and arrived in Rosthern, Saskatchewan in time to help with the harvest.  He was a strong man, his biographer says, 43 years old, not used to hard physical work.  His job that day was to shovel the oats as it poured into the granary.  In the beginning, all went well, Epp later said.  But as the granary filled with oats, he sank in deeper and deeper.  He tried to work on his knees, even lying down—it didn’t help.  And still  more oats poured in.  In his opinion, the granary was completely full, but Mr. Wieler said it could hold lots more. That evening Epp began to wonder if he could find work in Canada other than farming!

 A newspaper for immigrants would be a good undertaking, he mused.  The Immigrant Committee was enthusiastic, and the idea for Der Mennonitische Immigrantenbote was born. with Dietrich Epp as editor.  The first issue appeared January 1924.   All the type had been handset by Epp and his assistant Agathe Lehn, neither of whom was experienced in this work.  When all 300 copies had been printed, Epp placed them in a baby carriage and brought them home, where he and his wife Malwine  folded and addressed them.  Often, Malwine wrote little notes in the margins of newspapers that were being sent to relatives and friends; a practical way to save paper and stamps!  Epp remained editor of Der Bote until his death in 1955.  He was 80 years old.

       from Dietrich Heinrich Epp, aus seinem Leben, edited by Abram Berg.             Saskatoon: Hesse House of Printing, 1973.
 
 

Through the Red Gate: Voices from Stalin’s Gulag
by Helen Rose Pauls

 No one was turned away, but every seat at Bakerview Church was filled on February 23, 2008 for Through the Red Gate: Voices from Stalin’s Gulag, produced by Dr. Ruth Derksen Siemens and Moyra Rodger of Out-To-See Entertainment.

 For the past six years, hundreds of letters written by Russian Mennonites in Stalin’s gulag to Canadian relatives, found in a Campbell’s soup box in the Bargen attic, have consumed Ruth Derksen Siemens, becoming the basis of her Ph. D. in the philosophy of language, as well as the impetus behind the film. Painstakingly translated over three years by Anna and Peter Bargen, some of the letters were edited and compiled by Peter into a book for their extended family.

 Although it is perhaps the darkest story in Russian Mennonite history, the world knows little of the catastrophic events of the 1930s, when sometimes entire families were sentenced to prison in Stalin’s gulag, a vast network of slave labour camps. The survival rate was often one winter. Millions perished.

 The film is comprised of Ruth’s videotaped interviews with Peter Bargen, who tells the story of finding and translating the letters; and of reenactments of his family’s dramatic escape from the Soviet Union in 1929 on the last train to Latvia, through the border’s Red Gate, and into safety from deportation to Stalin’s gulag.

 The film also features live interviews with two of the letter writers, Lena Bargen Dirksen and Tina Regehr, who tell their stories of survival. Whereas Tina speaks a broken English, Lena’s German narrative is obscured with English voice-overs which weaken the power and passion of her words. Perhaps subtitles could have been used here.

 Ruth’s book, Remember Us: Letters from Stalin’s Gulag, was launched with a presentation of the volume to Neil Bargen, son of Anna and Peter.

 Art displays by Hilda Janzen Goertzen, Edith Krause and Shireen Cotterall powerfully integrated images of the letters with photographs of the period.

 The Mennonite Historical Society of BC was asked to keep the evening “secular and academic,” but when Joel Stobbe played “Wehrlos und Verlassen” (In the Rifted Rock I’m Resting)  on his cello at the conclusion of the evening, there was no restraining the crescendo of humming voices joined in harmony, as the familiar melody united the audience. Surely this is how our faith was sustained during dark and subversive times.  “But God has never forsaken us.”