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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.

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