My maternal grandparents were Jacob Driedger and Anna Dyck; my paternal grandparents were Peter Rahn and Anna Tjahrt. I was born in Goldau, West Prussia to Emma and Johannes Rahn. My siblings are Werner, who died in 1993, Ingrid, and Manfred. My first memory is of riding a horse down the gravel road when I […]
"Stories Then" Archive
The posts below include stories told by refugees from Ukraine, 1920-1930 and 1947-1950.
Gertrude Hamm Toews, born 1921 in Shostak, Russia
I was five years old when our family arrived in Kitchener, Ontario. My parents, Jacob and Olga Hamm, had been able to pay their travel fare from Russia to Canada. I can remember a rainy Saturday evening when I was sitting on a wicker suitcase waiting for my father while he looked for our Reimer […]
Elizabeth Neufeld Hoch: born June 6, 1922 in Kronsthal, Russia
When I was about three years old, I got my new Sunday dress dirty. I was afraid my parents would punish me so I looked for a place to hide. Our home was just two houses back of the village variety store; I ran and hid in the barrel where the store owners kept their […]
