My parents, David Ediger and Anna Wiens, were both born in the Crimea: Father in 1881 and Mother in 1882. My siblings were Maria, Anna, Louise, David, Helena, Jacob and Elsie. My first memory is of attending a worship service of our Millerowo Mennonite Brethren congregation, held in private homes, with my parents in about 1925.

I was the youngest child; my siblings and we all managed to leave Russia and today I am the only sibling still living.

By 1929, the communists had taken over Mom's kitchen. They used it to cook for large crews, so we moved to Einlage on the west side of the Dnepr River. Here I attended school for seven years with teachers Mr. Kohler, Janzen, Wiebe and Schartner. Most students were Mennonite, we took one Russian language class daily. Our teacher had us memorize many German language poems. Father worked in a collective office and Mother stayed home with my siblings. We owned the house we lived in: a long building on a two acre lot with a large garden. Our area had a new electrical system; as a result the original old town of Einlage was under water. Church services were not allowed.

In 1936 the Russians picked up my Dad in Einlage and took him to Dnepropetrowsk; he was imprisoned there for three years. Mother was allowed to visit him on a monthly basis and supplied him with food and clothing. During these visits, she stayed nearby for night. During one visit, Dad told her that he was going to give in and sign the paper which blamed him for a crime he hadn't committed. When Mother came the following month they told her that she could not see him. Next month she received the same answer and discovered that Dad had died during the previous month, in 1939. No funeral service was held; he was buried in a mass grave. Mother was 57 at the time and I was 14.

One of my brothers worked at the electrical station which was in the process of being built, and my sister was employed at the restaurant for workers. I needed to cross the river to work at the Saporozhye steel factory where I repaired electric motors. We had classes during the mornings. The job paid little; mother was home and Helen and Louise had already married in Einlage.

On June 21, 1941 the war started. On Monday morning, August 18, of that year, I went to work. That afternoon, on my way home, the Russians stopped me half way across the bridge (Platina) because the German army was in Einlage already. Five days later, I decided to swim across the Dnepr River. It was a 15 minute walk across the bridge and a 45 minute swim across the river. I put my documents and my small amount of cash under my cap, kept my head up, and swam with the current to the island; on the way I saved a fully dressed drunken man from drowning. My friend Paul Rempel had crossed before me.

Our family lived on what our garden produced. In 1937 brother David (we called him Victor because Dad had the same name) was taken away at night. After three days Mom went to check the jail; he wasn't there. Later we heard through the Red Cross that he had died of stomach problems in 1942. We stayed until the Russians came in October of 1943. I had gotten work in the previous year as a German-Russian translator in Dnepropetrowsk in a garage where I stayed until1945.

Mom and my siblings were taken to Poland. I went to Odessa, then Romania, Hungary and Munich where I worked in a stove factory. Then the boss said "You have to return to Russia". The Russians were looking for their people. But I stayed in Munich. I had a bicycle and I exchanged clothing for food. In 1946 the first transport of our people went to Paraguay. I was in a refugee camp in Munich when a Neufeld from Holland came looking for people to go there. We went as far as the border but they didn't let us in because they already had more refugees than they could support. One evening the Russians were there. We were told to speak only Low German. All 314 of us got into a train and went back to the camp in Munich, Germany. In 1946 MCC with Peter Dyck and C.F. Klassen came. We moved to Backnang near Stuttgart.

In 1947 Maria Peters, whom I had met in Munich, and I were married in the Backnang Sports Hall by Rev. Penner. At the reception we ate a doughnut with an onion centre. This was to demonstrate what life could be like, they said.

On September 1, 1948 we sailed for Canada on the freighter General Stewart. The crossing took seven days; we needed to spend the night of September 7 in Halifax with all windows covered. Then the train took us to Vineland, Ontario. Maria's mother had left ahead of us and was already at her sister's in Vineland. John Dick, who lived on a tomato farm between Leamington and Wheatley took us in. It was September and we lived upstairs in their house. I got greenhouse work at Jacob Neufelds, parents of Eleanor, on Highway #3 west of Leamington so we moved into a renovated tobacco kiln there. I received $100. per month. We attended and became members of the Mennonite Church on Oak Street.

In September of 1952 I got work at the newly unionized Heinz Company where I had a wonderful boss named Fin Randall. In 1953 we built a new home on Hodgins Street. Maria worked with other Mennonite women in Harry Branton's packing shed at the railroad near Morse Growers. The forelady was Clara Kornelsen. In 1984, after 32 years, I retired from H.J. Heinz.

Our oldest child was born in Germany, the following two in Canada. Our daughter lost her life in a skiing accident in 1985 and my wife Maria died in 2002. Today I live in an apartment. I have two sons and three grandchildren who gladly assist me whenever I need help.

2008 AK