Janzen - Reimer
The Janzen Branch
Conventions used:
Numbers preceding names refer to generations, beginning with my paternal grandfather.
b. = born
d. = died
m. = married
1. Peter Martin Janzen
b. March 30, 1899 Ebental, Memrik Colony, Ukraine
Article on Memrik Colony, Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
d. January 17, 1978 Spokane, Washington, U.S.
Notes: Peter studied at the Tschongraw Bible School in the Crimea until the Communists planned to take over the school. Elected leader of their refugee group, he used his knowledge of the Russian and English languages to negotiate sponsors and passage to America. He immigrated to U.S. arriving at Ellis Island on the ship Saxonia in October 1923 (his name and that of his wife, Mary, appear on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor on Ellis Island, thanks to my Dad's sister); worked as a house painter; places of residence included Ontario, California (a suburb of Los Angeles) and Ritzville, Washington. They had 4 children, the first of whom died at age 16. I had the opportunity to learn to love this gentle and generous man before his death of congestive heart failure when I was 15. I remember a visit to Ritzville when we sat in the backyard garden together; I remember him being asked to pray when visiting our family in Kansas and it was in German..."Wir danken..." I remember our family hosting his and Mary's 50th anniversary in 1974, inviting other Mennonite immigrants, and featuring zweiback, plumamoos, and other ethnic delicacies. Stories paint a picture of someone who would see someone in need and act immediately, e.g., in the grocery store checkout line, buying someone a bag of groceries; on the other hand, not necessarily paying all bills on time. He had rather advanced hearing loss in his later years. His special name for me was "Mary from the prairie."
View image Naturalization photo September 1932
View image Peter with his Ford Truck, 1940s
m. August 10, 1924, New York City
View image Around the time of their wedding
View image House at 216 E. Nevada St., Ontario, California, their home 1934-1950
View image 50th anniversary 1974
Mary Dirks
b. July 3, 1905 Gnadenfeld, Molotschna Colony, Ukraine
d. April 16, 1995 Kidron-Bethel Village, North Newton, Kansas
2a. Martin Johann Janzen
b. October 1856, Memrik Colony, Ukraine
d. December 12, 1912, Memrik
View image Martin Janzen
Notes: Martin's first wife was Anna Hildebrand (1853-1890); they had 5 children. After being widowed, he married Katarina. He and Katarina had 7 children: Gerhard (1892-1938), Martin (1894-1934), Tina (1894-1945), Peter (1899-1978 -- my grandfather), Maria (1901-1971), Sara (1902-1973), and Kornelius (1903-1938). After Katarina died, he again remarried, to Helena Enns (10-18-1873 to 4-19-1917), and had 4 more children, Susanne (4-6-1906), David (1-19-1909), Isaak Herbert--he changed names after becoming a Nazi, not wanting a "Jewish" name (1911-1990), and Aron (11-16-1912). After Martin died of asthma, Helena was married to another man who moved her and her children to some new Mennonite villages in the Ural Mountains near the city of Ufa, where after 5 years, she died. Then the children were taken to an orphanage in the Molotschna Colony. The administrator Abram Harder then took them to Germany. Susanne, called Tanta Susa by our family, married Hugo Scheffler. They were very dear to our family. We visited their home in Bellingham, Washington in the '70s and later I saw Tanta Susa in Ritzville, Washington during our 1984 Bethel College choir tour.
View image Tanta Susa and me (Source of info on Tanta Susa is correspondence to my father from Susa's daughters Eva Marie and Ruth.)
Notes from my father: "Opa's brothers and brothers-in-law mostly died in the 1930s from Stalinist terror. Our parents had wisely fled before things got worse in Russia, though they suffered a great deal on the way. Part of their suffering was due to newly enacted immigration laws in the U.S. which were caused by fear that Eastern European immigrants would 'mongrelize' the pristine northern European races which were predominant in the U.S. at that time. Talk about race prejudice! When the German armies invaded Russia in 1941, Stalin declared all ethnic Germans in Russia at that time to be enemy aliens. So he shipped the Volga Germans to work in the mines of Northern Russia and shipped the southern ethnics to Siberia. Our Janzen relatives were caught up in this migration and suffered terribly before they became established. The surviving women had to work in forced labor camps during those war years. After Stalin's death, things eased up some, so many moved south to the Asian lands like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where the climate was somewhat milder. Cousin Sara Loewen and her children [whom my parents visited in Germany in the late 1990s] lived in the latter before they migrated to Germany. When the Soviet empire broke up, the Asians pressured the Germans to leave. Our Aussiedler [emigrant] cousins then came to Germany."
On the exile of the men of Memrik under Stalin, see next to last paragraph at http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M46040.html
On Germany's stance toward the Ausseidler, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return#Germany
m.
2b. Katarina Reimer
b. ?, Memrik
d. ?, Memrik
3a. Johann Janzen
b. ?
d. ?
m.
3b. Elizabeth "Liese"
View image
d. ?
3c. Gerhard Reimer
b. ?
d. ?
m. ?
Traditions of fun stuff for children handed down, with the usual gruesome Germanic undertones (see also notes at bottom of Dirks-Dueck page):
Have child hold palm out and trace circles on it, saying "Scramble the eggs, scramble the eggs." Starting with pinky, grasp each fingertip, saying, "Give him some, give her some, give him some, give her some," then on the thumb, "Take his head off and throw it far, far away!" (throwing motion)
This Low German speaking branch ultimately derived from the Netherlands (possibly Friesland), migrated to Prussia (now Poland), and moved to colonies in the Ukraine in the late 18th or early 19th century; the exact dates are unknown.
Conventions used:
Numbers preceding names refer to generations, beginning with my paternal grandfather.
b. = born
d. = died
m. = married
1. Peter Martin Janzen
b. March 30, 1899 Ebental, Memrik Colony, Ukraine
Article on Memrik Colony, Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online
d. January 17, 1978 Spokane, Washington, U.S.
Notes: Peter studied at the Tschongraw Bible School in the Crimea until the Communists planned to take over the school. Elected leader of their refugee group, he used his knowledge of the Russian and English languages to negotiate sponsors and passage to America. He immigrated to U.S. arriving at Ellis Island on the ship Saxonia in October 1923 (his name and that of his wife, Mary, appear on the American Immigrant Wall of Honor on Ellis Island, thanks to my Dad's sister); worked as a house painter; places of residence included Ontario, California (a suburb of Los Angeles) and Ritzville, Washington. They had 4 children, the first of whom died at age 16. I had the opportunity to learn to love this gentle and generous man before his death of congestive heart failure when I was 15. I remember a visit to Ritzville when we sat in the backyard garden together; I remember him being asked to pray when visiting our family in Kansas and it was in German..."Wir danken..." I remember our family hosting his and Mary's 50th anniversary in 1974, inviting other Mennonite immigrants, and featuring zweiback, plumamoos, and other ethnic delicacies. Stories paint a picture of someone who would see someone in need and act immediately, e.g., in the grocery store checkout line, buying someone a bag of groceries; on the other hand, not necessarily paying all bills on time. He had rather advanced hearing loss in his later years. His special name for me was "Mary from the prairie."
View image Naturalization photo September 1932
View image Peter with his Ford Truck, 1940s
m. August 10, 1924, New York City
View image Around the time of their wedding
View image House at 216 E. Nevada St., Ontario, California, their home 1934-1950
View image 50th anniversary 1974
Mary Dirks
b. July 3, 1905 Gnadenfeld, Molotschna Colony, Ukraine
d. April 16, 1995 Kidron-Bethel Village, North Newton, Kansas
2a. Martin Johann Janzen
b. October 1856, Memrik Colony, Ukraine
d. December 12, 1912, Memrik
View image Martin Janzen
Notes: Martin's first wife was Anna Hildebrand (1853-1890); they had 5 children. After being widowed, he married Katarina. He and Katarina had 7 children: Gerhard (1892-1938), Martin (1894-1934), Tina (1894-1945), Peter (1899-1978 -- my grandfather), Maria (1901-1971), Sara (1902-1973), and Kornelius (1903-1938). After Katarina died, he again remarried, to Helena Enns (10-18-1873 to 4-19-1917), and had 4 more children, Susanne (4-6-1906), David (1-19-1909), Isaak Herbert--he changed names after becoming a Nazi, not wanting a "Jewish" name (1911-1990), and Aron (11-16-1912). After Martin died of asthma, Helena was married to another man who moved her and her children to some new Mennonite villages in the Ural Mountains near the city of Ufa, where after 5 years, she died. Then the children were taken to an orphanage in the Molotschna Colony. The administrator Abram Harder then took them to Germany. Susanne, called Tanta Susa by our family, married Hugo Scheffler. They were very dear to our family. We visited their home in Bellingham, Washington in the '70s and later I saw Tanta Susa in Ritzville, Washington during our 1984 Bethel College choir tour.
View image Tanta Susa and me (Source of info on Tanta Susa is correspondence to my father from Susa's daughters Eva Marie and Ruth.)
Notes from my father: "Opa's brothers and brothers-in-law mostly died in the 1930s from Stalinist terror. Our parents had wisely fled before things got worse in Russia, though they suffered a great deal on the way. Part of their suffering was due to newly enacted immigration laws in the U.S. which were caused by fear that Eastern European immigrants would 'mongrelize' the pristine northern European races which were predominant in the U.S. at that time. Talk about race prejudice! When the German armies invaded Russia in 1941, Stalin declared all ethnic Germans in Russia at that time to be enemy aliens. So he shipped the Volga Germans to work in the mines of Northern Russia and shipped the southern ethnics to Siberia. Our Janzen relatives were caught up in this migration and suffered terribly before they became established. The surviving women had to work in forced labor camps during those war years. After Stalin's death, things eased up some, so many moved south to the Asian lands like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where the climate was somewhat milder. Cousin Sara Loewen and her children [whom my parents visited in Germany in the late 1990s] lived in the latter before they migrated to Germany. When the Soviet empire broke up, the Asians pressured the Germans to leave. Our Aussiedler [emigrant] cousins then came to Germany."
On the exile of the men of Memrik under Stalin, see next to last paragraph at http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/M46040.html
On Germany's stance toward the Ausseidler, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_return#Germany
m.
2b. Katarina Reimer
b. ?, Memrik
d. ?, Memrik
3a. Johann Janzen
b. ?
d. ?
m.
3b. Elizabeth "Liese"
View image
d. ?
3c. Gerhard Reimer
b. ?
d. ?
m. ?
Traditions of fun stuff for children handed down, with the usual gruesome Germanic undertones (see also notes at bottom of Dirks-Dueck page):
Have child hold palm out and trace circles on it, saying "Scramble the eggs, scramble the eggs." Starting with pinky, grasp each fingertip, saying, "Give him some, give her some, give him some, give her some," then on the thumb, "Take his head off and throw it far, far away!" (throwing motion)
This Low German speaking branch ultimately derived from the Netherlands (possibly Friesland), migrated to Prussia (now Poland), and moved to colonies in the Ukraine in the late 18th or early 19th century; the exact dates are unknown.
