“Liesel and Helene are second cousins- their grandfathers were brothers Gustaf and Dietrich Rempel of Gnadenfeld, Molotschna, Russia/USSR (now part of Ukraine). While Dietrich was able to emigrate from the USSR to Canada in 1926, Gustaf died tragically in the USSR. Liesl and Helene met only once, in 1988, during Liesl’s first trip to Canada.

During the last two decades Helene has found and translated many of her Grandfather Dietrich’s journals- some of which have been published, with the remainder scheduled to be published in 2018-19. After reading Liesl’s story, Helene thought that she would like to translate it into English, so that more of Liesl and Helene’s relatives and friends could read this important story.”

“Elisabeth (Liesl) Löwen- was born in 1929, in Gnadenfeld, Molotschna in the southern USSR, where she grew up in a Mennonite family and community. During the Stalin Era Liesl and her family experienced much privation and governmental abuse: the unjust imprisonment of her father; forced repatriation to Russia after the family had fled to Germany during World War II; forced labour in the Siberian forests, and much more. Through it all, Liesl maintained a grateful heart and a persistent faith in God.”

“Helene (Leni) Rempel Klassen- was born in 1928, in Ebenthal, Caucasus USSR. When Helene was onlya a year old her family received permission to leave the USSR and emigrate to Canada. The family moved all the way across the country to Abbotsford in the Fraser Valley, where Helene grew up, went to school, married and raised her family.”

Price: $18.00

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“‘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 this father’s letter was delivered to a tiny prairie town in Canada. From 1930-37, other letters written by Russian Mennonites – a nine-year old girl, her mother, brother and sister, extended family and friends – arrived in Carlyle, Saskatchewan. Most of the 463 letters traveled by covert means and circuitous networks. Aggressive prison guards, hostile censors and informers were obstacles to secure delivery. Once safely in Canada, the letters were stored in a Campbell’s Soup box. They moved from attic to attic for nearly 60 years, and were finally discovered in 1989 by Peter Bargen, son of the recipients.

For the author, Ruth Derksen Siemens (a first-generation Canadian of Russian-Mennonite descent) these letter writers are not faceless, nameless people from the past. They are her blood, her kin. From the position of an ‘insider,’ the author guides us through the accounts that depict not only death and horror – but also the hope that sustains the prisoners in their darkest hours.

The letters gathered in this publication (Volume One) have been written by one family: Jasch and Maria Regehr and some of their children.”

Price: $10.00

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