Jacob Lehn

born 1932 in Neuenburg, Russia

I started school at eight years of age in Neuenburg where Helena Buhr was my first teacher. The school had two rooms with four grades in each room. Miss Buhr was an exceedingly thin woman, something we often commented on. The older children were taught by Mr. Isaac. The high school was in the neighbouring village of Neuendorf. There was a store across the street from our school which was built on a slope; it had an apartment at the back where my Uncle Jacob and Aunt Susanna Wiebe lived.

My parents were Jacob Lehn and Maria Wiebe; I have one sister, Lydia. Mother worked on a collective farm (Kolchos) where they grew and picked tomatoes and cucumbers. My father was a foreman on a grain farm.

I remember that my parents were frightened when someone came to our door after nightfall. We children were able to live a fairly normal life. I recall a day when we boys decided to smoke cigarettes in the school's outhouse; soon the clouds of smoke were seen rolling out.

In 1943 we were evacuated and taken by train to Oberschlesien, Poland. We lived in a camp in Oderberg for three months. It was an old army barrack; one room for four families with blanket dividers. When I was 11, the young people needed to leave their homes and become part of the Hitler Jugend (youth) where we lived in barracks in Teschen, Oberschlesien. The girls in the Hitler Jugend had their own barracks. The Mennonite young people who had Jewish or Biblical names such as Sarah, Jacob, Abram or Isaac needed to change their names. Mine was temporarily changed to Willie.

In 1944 my father was drafted into the German army and our family moved into an apartment. When the Russian army advanced into Germany in 1945, Dad was made a prisoner of war. We lived in the American occupied zone in Germany where Mom worked on a farm. My sister and I went to school. At this time, my uncle and Grandmother Wiebe took the ship Volendam to Paraguay.

In 1948, my mother, sister Lydia and I crossed the ocean to Canada on the American ship SS Marine Tiger. We travelled to Altona, Manitoba where my grandmother's sister and husband P A Rempel, a teacher in the Bergthaler Mennonite Church, lived. It was November; first it rained and then it snowed so we were not too impressed. When there were no farm jobs available there, we came to Leamington, Ontario. Ältester Heinrich Winter had written a letter to us, inviting our family to Leamington.

Here in Leamington our family worked on farms together. The first two summers, we worked on Jacob Mathies' farm and during the two winters I worked in the tobacco factory. In 1950 I got a job in the assembly plant at Ford's in Windsor where I made good wages. I had purchased my first car in 1950, a 1939 Chevrolet, when I turned 18. Then I bought a 1948 Chevrolet from Paul Klassen. I carpooled with Jake Hildebrand, Peter Loewen, Henry Unger and Howard Philips.

I was not part of the church Youth Group, but took part in the Sunday morning services and other programs. Whenever I was laid off at Ford's, I worked at the Point Pelee orchards. Here I met my future wife Annie Penner who worked in the Point Pelee apple orchards.

Annie and I were married in 1955 in the Leamington United Mennonite Church by Rev. N N Driedger. During the first year of our marriage we lived with Mother, upstairs on Hodgins Street. At this time I got work delivering milk for Lakeside Jersey Dairy in Leamington. We built a house on Sherman Street in 1957. In 1964, I started work at the Chrysler Engine Plant in Windsor. Here I worked for 14 years followed by 15 years in the Assembly Plant after which I retired.

Annie and I raised three daughters together. In 1985 Annie was diagnosed with Parkinson's and in 1998 she went into the Mennonite Home. Annie died on March 17, 2005. When I look back, my best years were spent when we were still together raising our children.

AK 2008

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