Skip to main content

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence …


In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay.

Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop the horses from sliding. She says he saved their lives.

Walter never talked a lot; Adina makes up for that in spades. And because she is 11 years older than my mother, she remembers much more from the terrible 1930s under Stalin.

Adina's father was arrested by the NKWD (secret police) in March 1937. Eight months later—on November 19, 1937, 11 days before Walter’s father was arrested—Adina’s mother was also arrested in Sparrau. The charges were not stated, though Adina’s father Johann had been secretly tried in Melitipol two days earlier and sentenced to death by shooting together with two of his brothers—Kornelius and Jacob Neufeld. This was only confirmed in 2019.

Adina's mother Helene was imprisoned in a Waldheim village prison cell with other women; it had four concrete blocks—with no beds, blankets or mattresses, and only iron bars separating her from the cold outdoors.

11-year-old Adina and her 6-year-old sister Wanda were taken to a children’s home in larger Mennonite town of Halbstadt. Helene pleaded unsuccessfully that her children be left with her father who was living in their home—a reconfigured, leaky old blacksmith’s shop.

In Halbstadt, the women who were in charge were “Low Germans” (Plautdietsche) i.e., “Mennonite” background. They only came in at night to ask and ensure that the children did NOT pray. There was no instruction otherwise that Adina could recall. The children were given enough to eat, as Adina recalled, and they could play outside, but they had almost no clothing to speak of and it was winter.

The girls were eventually taken by their Aunt Marie (Schmidt) Klassen in Alexandertal, who had five children of her own. This happened only after a visitor to the home let Adina borrow his very small stubby pencil and after finding a small scrap of newspaper on which she could write a formal request.

Adina and her sister left the children’s home for Alexandertal with shaven heads--as children of convicted criminals. This was embarrassing for the girls and they were teased at the school. Their mother was released from prison a few months later and could join them in Alexanderthal, and they returned to Sparrau.

After the German army arrived October 1, 1941, the Neufelds moved 15 km from the village of Sparrau to Marienthal—where Walter’s family also lived.

His father, and so many other fathers had been arrested and shot during the purge. This pain is still real, but she wants to forgive.

Adina has a few very early memories. In 1929 when she was only three, her family started the journey to Moscow hoping with thousands of others to emigrate. Her parents however were turned back with hopes dashed. She has vague memories of the train trip as a child and her fear of a “house on wheels.”

Adina does not recall anyone who starved during the famine of 1931-32, however she does recall how their yard was searched with the help of “Young Communists” for illegally hidden or buried food supplies.

She has no memory of church from her childhood; the church buildings were shuttered in 1933. Though Mennonites were more-or-less free to read scripture after Fall 1941 with German occupation, and she was an active, baptized church member since the 1950s, she tells me it was only a few years ago that she actually took up the challenge to read her entire Bible. There was a lot that was difficult, but it was good, she told me.
There are so many "what ifs" that one could ask, especially for that generation. And this takes me back to the Queen of England again and the mysteries of God's providence. What if ...? Aunt Adina's life was so much harder, yet here she is, age 97.


            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

To cite this page
: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 9, 2023,  
https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/queen-elizabeth-ii-and-aunt-adina.html.

  Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws.  It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44

They walked in one end as Soviet citizens, proceeded through a few wagons, and emerged out the other end as naturalized citizens of the German Reich . Below is a newspaper article marking the completion of the registration and naturalization of some 35,000 Mennonite resettlers—plus other Black Sea Germans. By July 1944 all the treks or transports had arrived from the Black Sea region into Greater Germany [most in Warthegau], and almost all were now registered for a more permanent settlement situation in German-annexed Poland—or so they thought. The translation is important because it offers a clear account of the process of naturalization, application and assessment. While not all Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine 1943-44 were naturalized in one of the visiting mobile Immigration Central Office trains, most were. The article and photos fill a gap in our knowledge of that experience in Nazi Germany and how naturalization was approached and experienced by some 30,000-plus Mennonites....

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...