Evangeline Rempel's trip to America

My Trip to America

The Diary of

Evangeline G. Rempel*

1922-1923

Translation and Introduction by the Author

Palo Alto

1964

*Later, Miss Rempel became Mrs. Dietrich G. Dyck

Introduction

As the first lines of the following account, “My Trip to America” indicate, it was written primarily for the pleasure and benefit of the young author herself and perhaps members of her immediate family who would know her background and experiences preceding this trip.

Then, as very busy years were followed by those of retirement and leisure, the blue faded pencil-written booklet, put away in some bottom drawer, was re-discovered, enjoyed by the immediate family, and copied in ink on new paper to make it easier to read. But since it was written in German, the number of readers was of necessity limited.

Being encouraged to do so, the author translated the diary into English in the early 1960’s. Now that more people could read the diary, questions came with each reading. “What happened to your brothers?” “Why did you come to America?” “Did you return?”, etc.

Pre Trip

My background? Dutch, yes, but born in South Russia. My forebears had settled in Russia in the early 19th century with probably several hundred other Dutch agricultural settlers. They became Russian citizens, though to some extent they kept their culture and way of life unchanged. Russian and German were spoken and taught in schools beginning at the first grades. 

It was a peaceful existence, but not without the hardships, rigor and work connected with pioneering anywhere. After a century or so, well-planned settlements with brick and tile or thatched roof houses and barns, orchards, green fields, flower gardens, well-built churches, schools and institutions were proof of the goodness of their way of life.

By the winter of 1922, the Gustav Rempel family, just as all others, had lost all their possessions (money, furniture, clothes) and did not own a house. One older brother had been murdered, the youngest died of hardship at age 9 and both parents lost their lives in epidemics that took a high toll. Life, possessions, plans for the future, became unimportant as the family, crowded in small quarters, had one main thought, that of survival.

Then in 1922 came a ray of hope. Father’s sister Margaret Rempel Neufeld and her husband, Uncle Will, who had emigrated to California ten years before, left their big family and traveled first to Germany and then to Russia where they helped with relief work and made arrangements to “get out as many of their relatives as they could”.

Packages of food from these relatives had sustained us during the early spring of that year, before the gardens were able to help provide food. Needless to say, nothing could be bought. Bartering or trading of stuff, be it a needle or material for clothes, was done for food or services.

During that summer, as things looked up and hopes revived, my sister Margaretha (nickname of Greta) became engaged and her husband-to-be planned to emigrate to the U.S.A. though poor health and other situations kept them from doing so. As the Neufelds prepared the papers for my four brothers, ages 12 to 20, my sister and I went to California with them. But then Greta decided to stay. She and Walter Jacob Loewen were married in October, 1922, in an impressive ceremony and by necessity a very modest “feast”.

Post Trip

November was a time of hopes soaring and shattered, much red tape, goodbyes to loved ones, visions of a new life in a new country, much courage and ambition. But also fear and trembling that this dream of a future without terror and oppression would remain only a dream. Well, trusting God and thanks to the concern of our American relatives, we “got out” and entered the U.S.A. as wards of the Neufelds in February, 1923.

What happened then? It was not all easy. Herman and Dietrich, the two older brothers, were delayed in Moskwa, traveled south and managed to leave Russia six months later by way of Georgia, Turkey and France. Much later, they worked their way through college. Herman became a chemist. Dietrich became a sculptor and later worked at a rubber toy manufacturer in Akron, Ohio.

Frank, Arthur and I with good health and much ambition to work, to save and to stand on our own feet, survived the difficult years of the twenties. We went to night school, worked in the fields and canneries, washed for others, and took every opportunity to earn a dollar. Uncle Will passed away in the spring of 1923 after severe illness (the trip didn’t help). We three “Russians” had a hard time. But by 1930, Frank and Arthur were both studying and I was finishing my nurses’ training course in Oakland, Calif. Arthur later got his Ph.D. in biology at U.C. Berkeley and is currently professor at Whitman College, Walla Walla, Wash. Frank graduated from Berkely as an architect and draftsman, stayed a bachelor, and always had employment until his illness in 1957.

Sadly, our sister Greta died in Russia in 1947. Her husband and two children were re-settled in Siberia. One son (Walter Loewen) managed to emigrate to Canada.