Arthur Rempel's Story 

This is a story of the life of Arthur Rempel as told by himself at the age of 83. He was one of four Rempel kids who were emigrate from South Russia in 1923. The others were Evangeline, Herman and Dietrich. The diaries of both Evangeline and Herman give their accounts of this emigration. The fifth Rempel kid, Greta,  stayed behind and her story is recorded in her letters to her sister and brothers in America. Because Arthur put his thoughts down on paper some 70 years after this big trip, and due to his academic discipline, he gives a much wider context, both before and after. He traces is family's roots in the Mennonite community as far back as the migration from Germany to South Russia. Part of his childhood was spent on one of the two estates that my great grandfather owned. Like many other Mennonite families, the Bolshevik Revolution initiated a period of violence, epidemics and famine and these all affected the Rempels as well as the Klassens. Arthur, however, is an American success story. he eventually became a professor (zoology) at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. There is a nature trail near the college named in honor of him. He passed away in 2007 at the age of 97 as noted in the Whitman College Notice.