Homes away from Home:  Ukraine to Canada, 1943-1948
by Selma Hooge

My husband and I don’t mind hosting friends and relatives for a few nights at a time but we would find it very difficult to be gracious  if we were told, by the government, to take in a family of strangers, for an indefinite length of time. Worse yet, what if we were ordered out of our home to allow refugees to move in? That’s exactly what thousands of Europeans were forced  to do during and after WWII. Yet among the many hosts our family was thrust upon during our five years as refugees,  we seldom encountered ungracious, difficult people.
 Four weeks after we began our Trek from the Molotsch under the leadership of the German SS in September 1943, we were to resettle in a village west of the Dnepr River. Half the Ukrainians were forced to move in with other Ukrainians while we Mennonites from Marienthal took possession of the vacated houses and began harvesting the local crops. That lasted only a few weeks. Then as the Russians advanced, our Trek had to move further West. We spent the winter close to the Polish border. In this village the homeowners of very small houses had to share their tiny spaces with Mennonite families. There were seven of us crowding a couple and their two children. After their initial dismay our hosts  were kind to us. Among other things, they showed us how to get rid of the lice which we had accumulated along the way.

 As we fled further west ahead of the retreating German army, we came into Poland. There too, the Polish home and landowners were displaced and we Mennonites moved in because we were Volksdeutsche, more valuable human beings  than the Slavs in the eyes of Hitler’s Germany. January 1945 saw us fleeing even further west to escape  the approaching Communists, our countrymen. This is when thousands of our people were caught and sent back to Russia. We were among the fortunate ones to get as far as the Lueneburger Heide in the British Zone when the war ended.   Our first hosts in Mueden were the only terrible ones we encountered. Fortunately for them and us, after a few months we were able to move across the street where the kindest elderly couple gave up their entire upstairs plus another room on the main floor for my sister and baby.  My dad hadn’t been so happy in years; he could work in the flour mill owned by our host. Two years later while languishing in Fallingbostel, waiting for permission to enter Canada, dad was able to go back to work in Mueden for some time.

 It was in this village, in October of 1945, where CF Klassen, a Canadian MCC worker on a mission to register Mennonite refugees, found us and many of our relatives nearby, as well as Jacob Neufeld, author of Tiefenwege, a book which describes our Trek and flight from Ukraine. After a few months of peace and rejoicing that we were not caught by the Russians, my parents and other adults became fearful of being sent back to the “homeland.” Rumours had it that the Russians could force their citizens back even though we had been made German citizens in Poland and we did not want to go back.

 C.F. Klassen had left a document with my parents and other Mennonite refugees in that area. The document stated: In case of extreme danger from repatriation, go to Holland…ask for Peter Dyck, MCC…. do it secretly…” My Mom’s sister Agatha and her family and others did just that. A week or so later, we and a few other families  hired a truck and left in the middle of the night, hoping to cross the border into Holland at Gronau in Westphalia, as the document had instructed..

However, by the time we arrived in Gronau, political wheels had been turning and the exit from Germany ground to a halt. We were among hundreds of other disappointed refugees.  Homeless again.

 Thanks to MCC  and IRO workers, schools in the city and surrounding area were turned into temporary refugee camps. Several hundred of us spent  two months in the Wilhelmsschule in Gronau. Then a group of 270 was taken to a little Catholic village of Oeding, another border town in Westphalia, in April 1946. This area  had not been bombed and we were the first refugees to arrive here.

 Oeding was surrounded by small farms. The farmers and some of the town’s business owners came to an inn to choose their workers from among the  Mennonites. Each of my three sisters went with a farmer; my brother was chosen by a bricklayer but my parents and I (ten) stayed at the inn for two more days.

  When someone finally came for us it was the hired man of a small factory owner in the village. Our hosts, Maria and August, looked us over carefully when they took us to the attic room in their two story house. This was by far the fanciest house we had ever lived in and my Mom was afraid we wouldn’t be good enough for these fine people.  As our hosts learned to know us, they got over their fear of “Russian” refugees and as we got to know them, we were convinced that “Catholic” also meant “Christian.”   According to my mom’s diary, this was the experience of most of the  refugees in this village.

 We Mennonites in Oeding were MBs and GCs; from the Molotsch, from the Old Colony, and from Zagradowa. Most of us attended the Catholic church a few times but then it was discovered that there were preachers among us and in neighbouring villages too, and that the small Evangelische Kirche was seldom used. Soon all the Mennonites worshipped together  regularly on Sunday mornings. Several  ladies organized a Sunday school for Sunday afternoons in the little school house that the Evangelische Kirche owned.

 All the village and farmers’ children attended the Catholic school and all the Mennonite children went to the little school house. An old man was our teacher. His granddaughter was the only non-Mennonite child at this school. We had no text books and very few scribblers. A few of us were lucky enough to own a Tafel and Griffel (slate and slate pencil). Nevertheless, we learned German grammar, arithmetic and geography, and were introduced to the German poets.

 It was in this village also where Mennonite young people had a chance to study catechism.  (Communism closed all churches in the early thirties.)  For my parents, and no doubt for many others, the day these young people were baptized was a very significant one. My three sisters, my brother, and a future brother-in-law were among those baptized.  Even though our Catholic hosts had never heard of adult baptism, my mother wrote that “They rejoiced with us.” One farmer offered his barn to be cleaned out and decorated for the event.  Townspeople provided lunch. Our hosts too made the day special by providing a dinner for us and several guests.  Baptisms were the one occasions when  MBs and  GCs had separate services.

 My mother’s diary is full of praise for the villagers of Oeding in general and our hosts in particular. At Christmas they showed their concern and generosity by putting on a meal and giving a gift to each refugee. While we were away at our Christmas Eve program, our hosts decorated our little table with gifts: new clothes for my parents; a little doll and a book of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” for me.  I still have that book but it is showing its age.

 It was in this village where we heard about the Volendam leaving for Paraguay with those rescued out of Berlin after safely traveling through the Russian Zone. There was great optimism and hope that soon Canada too would allow Mennonites to enter, at least those who had close relatives to sponsor them, as was the case for my mom’s sister Agatha  in Holland. We had no known relatives in Canada,  but my dad refused to consider Paraguay as our permanent home, even if we had to wait a few years in Germany. Life in Oeding wasn’t so bad. Maybe once Agatha was in Canada she could sponsor us.
         The story  of how we found sponsors is in  Road to Freedom , “Don’t Forget To Thank the Aunts.” The Rundschau and the Bote were instrumental in connecting thousands of refugees with their Canadian relatives. After a few sentences by Gertrude Reimer of Yarrow, B.C. appeared in the Rundschau,  we too finally had sponsors. We left our beloved Oeding hoping to be on our way to Canada in a few weeks. Instead, we spent another nine months in refugee camps: Buchholz and Fallingbostel. For us children, this was not a hardship; in fact, it was fun. But for my parents and older siblings it must have seemed like an eternity before we arrived in our new home, Yarrow, December 2, 1948.

Three unmarried Reimer sisters, their brother Nick Sr.(of Reimers Nursery) and other recruits in Yarrow opened their hearts and wallets to sponsor all twenty-three Kornelsens (my dad’s clan) and personally  provided a home for fifteen of us.  The “aunts” were very distant relatives on a modest farm income who had never met us. Yet they fixed up their empty chicken barn at the back of their property.  They made two two-room apartments, one for Tante Mariechen with six children, and one for our family. All the relatives, except one uncle, got to Canada before we did. My mom’s greatest joy in her new home, small as it was, was to have her own stove once more and to have some privacy. It had been more than five years since we left our home in Ukraine. During those years we had seldom lived alone.

Every time I think of our refugee years and  how many people had to put up with us and how much trouble the aunts went to to bring the Kornelsen clan to Canada, I am moved to gratitude and praise. God bless all those who are still doing similar acts for refugees today.