My first memory is of chasing a ball in the summer of 1920. The ball was made of rags covered with canvas. Later that year I got my own rubber ball.

We lived in Grünfeld, which was located near Slavgorod, Siberia. My parents, Peter and Margareta, had six daughters and three sons. Two children died in infancy, and my brother Cornelius died of small pox when he was three or four years of age. My sister Anna died of diphtheria at the age of eight years.

Worship services were held in the village granary during the summer months and in private homes in winter. My father Peter P. Epp, Rev. Kampen and others were pastors. At eight years I started school next door to our home. The Rempel family lived on the other side of us, the Nickel family across the street. We farmed with horses and grew wheat and oats. We had cows, sheep, pigs and chickens. Flour for our family's use was milled in Alexandrovka. In our garden we grew potatoes, beets, carrots, cabbage, muskmelon and watermelon. The growing season there was too short for fruit trees.

There were two reasons that prompted my family and all others in our group of over 300 people to leave Russia. Firstly, the severe restrictions on faith and life practices, and secondly, the collectivization on the economy. As a result, in October of 1926 my parents, their siblings and their spouses packed up their trunks with clothing, made bed rolls and filled their wicker baskets with roasted Zwieback (double buns). We travelled the five hours to Slavgarod by horse and wagon. Then we boarded freight cars and headed for Moscow which was 1,800 miles away. Father was one of the group leaders and when he did not have a French language passport, our family was unable to leave the country. As a result, we spent 14 months in Moscow in an upstairs apartment of a building rented by the Mennonite Agricultural Association of Russia. Peter Froese was chairman and Father did the legwork for this Association. Cornelia (Nellie) Dyck had an apartment in the building which was heated with a wood stove. Nellie made a deal with me. I should chop the wood and keep the wood box in the kitchen filled. She, in turn, would provide me with soup and bread daily - my only source of food - and teach me mathematics, reading, writing, Russian history and geography. My older sisters babysat for the C. F. Klassens and the Froese family. In the summer of 1927 the Klassens rented a Datcha (cottage), one hour away by train. My sisters and I could stay there for a week.

Moscow was a culture shock for our family. The streets were not safe. Hungry Russian teenagers roamed the streets in search of food and money. The police were feared. There were streetcars, autos and cobblestone streets. Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, Museum of Culture and History were all places we had not seen previously. I remember the church bells ringing beautifully. One day my Father and I, along with three men, attended the Moscow circus where we saw trapeze artists, clowns, jugglers, tight rope walkers, lions and elephants.

One night Dad was arrested. Two armed policemen came to the apartment and led him away. He was gone for three days and two nights and then came back. They had tortured him mentally by putting him into a windowless cubicle with sitting space only. The lights were turned off and on periodically. He was branded as an enemy of the state, a fabricated allegation, and sent back to Slavgorod in fall of 1927 for trial. There was insufficient evidence and Dad returned to us in November. He then applied for a passport the ninth time.

The Agricultural Association building in which we were living had a telephone in the hallway. One day I listened as Mr. Froese spoke to an old school friend who had become Stalin's secretary. First they talked about this and that and then Mr. Froese told him that Dad had no passport. The friend said: tell him to go to a certain office and ask for so and so: he’ll get you a passport in two weeks. We followed those instructions. After the two weeks were up, Dad and I went to that place. They told Dad that Mom needed to be present, so I kept Dad's place in line and waited for my parents' return. Dad got the passports and was ordered out of Russia in December of 1927. And thus our family came to Gull Lake, Saskatchewan, Canada. What a shock from what Moscow had been!

AK 2008