EDR's life in Paulsheim

Life in Paulsheim

Gustav’s last teaching position was in Paulsheim, a small village 3 km west of Gnadenfeld. The family moved there from Westersdorf in the fall of 1929. Frieda, Greti, Gusti and Sara were still at home. Heinrich was on his own, Neta had married Jakob Willms in 1926, Lydia and Linas went to Haalbstadt in 1927 to attend medical school. In 1928 collective farms were introduced.

Grandma writes:

My whole life was spent doing ordinary tasks at the stove and in the home for my beloved family. However, I also had the opportunity to serve my fellow sisters as a midwife and nurse. I never refused anyone who came to me and I made no distinction between German, Jewish, Russian or gypsy women. I respected their motherhood equally. With the coming of the Soviet regime my work as midwife ceased, others took over. I had enough work to do at home, since the children were busy studying or working on the collective farm.

The end of Gustav’s career as a teacher came with his dismissal by the Soviet regime. As a believer in God, he refused to join the atheist’s circle, not even as a matter of form. Some did so in order to keep their jobs.

We joined the collective farm (in 1931) to support ourselves. I mended potato sacks for three years and Gustav worked for seven years as a night watchman. His health, which had never been robust, suffered greatly. He got rheumatism that affected his legs and he had to  lay in bed for most of the day.  His pain, though not severe, was more like a shooting pain with resulting weakness in the legs. He ended up walking with a cane and finally with two canes.

The “artificial” famine

When we were living in Paulsheim, there was another famine, the so-called “artificial” one in the years 1932-33.

In 1932, after the collective farms had been organized, all the farmers lost the right to have a say in the affairs of their community. A committee made up of poor people had the power to make decisions. They decided by raising their hands who was to be sent to Siberia.

Old Susanna Fast with her weak eyes, for which she had often received homeopathic medicine from my husband Gustav, was a member of this committee of the poor. Our garden plots at the end of Paulsheim lay side by side. Once when she saw me, she said that teacher Gustav Rempel was to be exiled to Siberia. She alone had spoken against it, because he had never owned any land and had been a teacher. He was being blamed for the 12 sacks of grain hidden under the horse trough in Voth’s stable, in whose house we had received accommodation. Of course, he knew nothing about it. It had not been his grain.

I hurried home. Already our house was being searched by Hans Koop and the newly arrived communist party secretary named Kowalenko. All our winter reserves of food from the recent harvest of wheat, beans, corn and sunflower seeds, including the roasted ones, were taken.

We needed help, for which I cried to God. Thus our oldest son Heinrich (who was a communist party member living in Odessa) received a letter that I had written that night and which our son Gusti threw into the mailbox first thing in the morning. On the second day, a telegram arrived for me: “Get in touch with Comrade Holz in Halbstadt, whom I have already notified. Everything is to be returned.” Since we received our mail through the local Soviet authorities, they knew the content of the telegram and left us alone.

For the sake of peace, Gustav did not ask for anything back and nothing was returned to us. However, Kowalenko had to go to Halbstadt suddenly and he disappeared. He lost his party membership, but our Mennonite communist party men, who had divided up our harvest among themselves, remained untouched.

In the difficult days of the 1932-33 famine, Neta, who was teaching in Rudnerweide, sent us the address of the philanthropist Adolf Widmaier in Switzerland. I wrote to him and asked for a food parcel for us and for the big families of Hans Boldt and Franz Goertz in Paulsheim. The parcels got through, although the local Soviet authorities would have liked to keep them. They were a welcome help. The parcel had a verse written on top: “I called to God on high and he heard my cry and helped me in my need.” This came at the right time, just as it is written, “Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).

A house of our own

Since we had to move out of the teacherage in Paulsheim, we rented rooms in a house. This caused us many strains. To this day I remember with joy when in 1939 we received a telegram from our daughter Lina in Krasnodon, suggesting that we buy Regehr’s little house with a garden, hedge and vegetable plot. She would pay for it, as she was getting a good salary at that time.

How happily I cleaned everything up, for it had been neglected and the garden was full of weeds. How gladly we moved in and now our life was easier. We lived in this house for only four years. When the German army had to retreat, all those of German descent had to leave by horse-drawn wagons for the Warthegau district (Poland). Today I still like to think back to our little house and our young fruit trees that were starting to bear fruit.

Val in Paulsheim

Grandma wrote of an incident involving her little granddaughter Val, who was staying with her grandparents in Paulsheim. This was in 1941, when Val was 2-½ years old.

I had placed five fresh eggs on the top shelf in the pantry and also a jar of tablets of a disinfectant, which I needed in my work as a midwife. The jar was closed with a flat cork. When I came back from the garden, I was alarmed to see the cork lying on the floor and the tablets lying in a basin of water next to it and all five egg shells in it too. The high chair and little footstool showed how the two-year-old had been able to reach the top shelf of the pantry.

A wild terror seized me. Her face was covered with egg yolk. But when I saw that she did not look sick and that she drank milk with enjoyment, I was like one intoxicated with joy. Did her guardian angel come just in time to check up on her and protect us from disaster?

When you (Val) walked along the paths in our garden with the many fruit trees and sang your Hallelujah songs, we rejoiced over our granddaughter, whom her father still left with us a little longer, for he said that she was nowhere better looked after than in our home. He loved his little Val and wanted to take her to live with him soon, However, the war led all of us along paths we did not expect and separated us. But a heavenly Father, to whom we entrusted ourselves, did not forsake or forget us. Had we known how wonderfully He also protected and kept our loved ones, we would have always been ready to sing in our hearts our Hallelujah, too praise, honor and thank God.