Story of Henry Penner (Born 1926 in Franzfeld, Russia)
My parents, Henry and Anna Penner, lived in the village of Franzfeld, a neighbouring village of Nikolaifeld, in the Yazykovo Colony of Chortitza. These two villages shared a church and a school. The five villages in our area, named Yazykovo after a Count by the same name from whom the land had been purchased, had a secondary school.
Henry Froese, the Wiebe’s, and others, lived in Franzfeld as well. It was here that I started school in 1933. We received instruction in the High German language for two years. In the following years conditions were such that we received one year of schooling in the Ukrainian language followed by five years in the Russian language. While the Russian and Ukrainian languages have some similarities, the transition was not an easy one. For example, the Russian word for horse is Loschadj, while the Ukrainian word for horse is Konik. We spoke Low German in our home.
We had a Russian Hirte, a cowboy who lived at the edge of our village. His children attended the Mennonite school, but not our church. They could speak Russian, High German and Low German fluently. Early in the morning the cowboy needed to bring the village cows and horses out to pasture at the end of the village. By then, I was a teenager and I helped the cowboy every day. In the evening, the cows and horses were brought back into the village; each animal knew their home and turned in at the right gate without prompting.
In the summer of 1943, as a result of WWII, the churches were allowed to open up and German once again became the language of instruction in the schools. And it was then, when I was 17, that all young men were drafted into the German army. We were part of the youngest group; the Germans called us babies and we drank milk; the older soldiers drank coffee.
In September of 1943, the German troops were ordered to retreat and the Mennonite people were allowed to follow the soldiers west. My family spent several months in Hindenburg, then Katowitz, an area that is now Poland. Here a group of young people, including me, worked in an office with the Umsiedler from the east: German people from Poland, Czechoslavakia, and Yugoslavia. I worked in the Post Office as an errand boy 24 hours daily. A young Polish fellow who knew his way around had his horse and buggy ready for our errands to the Police Office, Transportation Department, the Town Hall and so on. We got pocket money, food and lodging. Ration cards were used for every purchase.
In January of 1944 my two Mennonite friends and I were sent to the Dresden training camp for the German police. When we explained that we did not want to fight, they gave us two choices: serve in the Wehrmacht (army), or be sent back to Russia which would mean certain death in a work camp. After four months, we were sent to the Trieste area of Italy and then south to Torento. The enemy was blowing up the bridges, etc. and we needed to keep peace and order in the village. The Italian people treated us kindly. We spent May of 1944 to November of 1945 there.
Many in my company* of 140 were killed; we needed to bring them back and bury them.
We three fellows had a chance to get out of Italy. I thought that father and mother had returned to the north but found no one. We checked out all notes on the billboards of railway stations, went to Westfallen and found that two friends were in Esslingen (French Zone) and the other found his relatives. We went to the city of Brilon/Westfalen and were told that our family members were in Münden in North Germany. The zones kept changing and now the Americans gave back Saxon and Thuringen. The trains travelled only from 5 am to 5 pm daily. We went to the Minden Estate and were told that they were taken to Russia. The secret police were picking up soldiers in Poland.
We were having a glass of milk and a piece of bread when a girl asked us to come talk to her. She told us that we’d have to leave here because the Polish wouldn’t give us a chance; and we shouldn’t go back to Russia. My friend and I hid in the bush overnight, then in the morning we headed for the railway station and went to Westfallen. We had the name and address for the estate of Witthaut where they told us that in Udorf/Westfallen there were 42 Mennonite people. There I found my parents.
Now we needed to work on our documents for our immigration to Canada. We were fortunate that C.F. Klassen and Peter Dyck were in Germany to assist us at that time and we eventually found our relatives: Wally’s father had been sent back to Russia and died there, John Penner came from Holland; Eddie from Italy out of prison camp, Annie and Rudy from Poland. Grandfather wrote to the Jacob Penners in Canada.
In the meantime, Wally Penner and I made plans for our wedding. We were married at the estate in Germany in June of 1947 by Franz Froese, a Mennonite minister from a nearby community. After the ceremony, fifty guests enjoyed a meal of Borscht and Platz (soup and squares).
In November of 1948 Oma, John, Rudy, Edie, Annie, Wally and I and our little son John who was six months old, arrived in Quebec City. In Leamington, Ontario, Jake and Olga Hamm were our relatives. We first found work at Point Pelee and lived in a house there, then we moved to a farm on concession 7 of Mersea Township where we worked for Jake and Gertrude Koop.
Wally and I have been blessed with four children, eight grandchildren and three great grandchildren.
* Army structure: 12 men make up a platoon; three or four platoons make up a company; a battalion consists of four companies.
AK 2008 Henry Penner born 1926 in Franzfeld, Russia
