An Adaptation of Russian Memoirs By Walter Bergen
As told to Victor Epp April 21, 2004
I Would Have Been Here Sooner But Things Kept Coming Up
By Victor Epp
The spring in his step belied his ninety-nine years as he mounted the last curve of the circular stair. He hadn't felt this energetic since he was forty. The briefcase under his arm contained all his papers. Wearing his clean shirt pressed just so, shoes polished to perfection; Walter was as ready as he'd ever be.The stair stopped abruptly at a very large foyer. Walter sucked in his breath in surprise. He never, even for a minute thought it would be like this. As far back as he could remember there had been a picture in his mind of a long golden staircase with angels on either side playing harps. Gabriel should have been beside the pearly gates blowing his trumpet to welcome him to his eternal rest in heaven. Instead, before him was a pair of large glass doors. The gold leaf lettering simply said, 'Heaven', and underneath, 'Reception Area'. Well at least he was in Heaven and not the other place. That was a relief. He swung the door open.
The room inside was spacious in an off-white sort of a way. The carpet underfoot felt soft over a solid floor. The walls though, while they looked similar were somewhat fluid, like hazy clouds. At the far end of the room was the only furniture in the place. It was a large wooden desk around which several chairs were placed. A white-haired man in a blue serge suit occupied one of them. 'Blue serge suit', thought Walter to himself, 'wouldn't you just know it'. The man didn't look any too friendly either. He was preoccupied with a stack of papers and didn't appear to notice the intruder.
"Jacob Walter Bergen!" announced Walter in military German as though he was reporting for duty. "Geboren - Niederchortitza, Ukraina". He opened his briefcase and plunked it on the desk, presenting all his credentials. He noticed the little nameplate on the desk. It said 'Peter'. Below that, in small letters was inscribed the word 'Registrar'.
The man peered over his glasses perched on the end of his nose, ignoring the briefcase. "You're late!" he announced in English, "very late."
Uh oh, thought Walter, this is not starting off on a very good note. During his long life, he had been in more jams than he could count. If there was one thing he had learned it was that you had to tell it like it was. There was no use in bending the truth or saying what the other party might want to hear. Come to think of it, he had no idea what this Peter guy might want to hear.
"Now look here, Peter", he began, using the name on the nameplate, this time in English. He was a little miffed at the use of language. It had never occurred to him that they would speak anything but a very proper High German in Heaven. Fortunately he was fluent in several languages and could handle about anything they threw at him here.
"That's St. Peter to you sonny", said the other man.
Walter gulped hard, but he didn't back down. "Now look here, St. Peter, I would have been here sooner but things kept coming up. I was in the neighborhood many times and was quite ready to drop in, but something always happened, and that's the plain truth of it."
"Tell me about it", muttered St. Peter".
"Just one of those things, I guess", Walter mused, taking the remark as something people say to acknowledge a condition.
"No, I mean tell me about it", replied St. Peter.
"You mean my whole life story? How will I remember all that?"
"No, no", corrected St. Peter. "You should just tell those things that stick in your mind". St. Peter's demeanor seemed to soften a little as he explained the purpose of the exercise to Walter.
"The whole idea is to clear your mind of the things you have been carrying around all these years. You see we already have all the details, so it is not for us. But for you, it would help to tell about the things that have lain on your heart for a long time. I think they call that 'debriefing' these days".
With that, St. Peter leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk, and with his hands clasped behind his head he smiled at Walter. "Any time you're ready", he said. "We have lots of time". That seemed to amuse him. "In fact", he chuckled, "we have all of eternity".
Ever the stickler for getting things straight, Walter just had to say, "If I could just ask one question -".
"Ask away", said St. Peter, not moving from his comfortable position.
"Well, I made it all the way to ninety-nine years old. Couldn't I just have waited one more year until I was an even hundred? It would have been such a nice round number."
"You wouldn't have liked it. Once you get to be a hundred, the quality of life goes downhill in a hurry. We didn't think you'd appreciate breathing tubes stuck up your nose, IV's in your veins, catheters stuck in the most uncomfortable places, things like that. You've put up with enough misery in your lifetime, so we thought we'd do you a favor".
That seemed reasonable. Maybe this was the real McCoy after all. Following St. Peter's example, Walter put his feet up on the other side of the desk and settled in to tell his story. It took him a minute or two to figure out where to start. Ever the logical one, he might as well start at the beginning.
The most beautiful place I was ever at was Niederchortitza; at least that's what I think. That was the place of the giant old oak tree. Oh sure, it was only a small village, that's true. It was only a speck of dust on the map compared to the big cities of Europe, but I wouldn't trade it for any of them. You know why? It was home, that's why! Everything we needed was right there. If it weren't there handy, we boys would swim across the Dniepr to Saparoje to the market. Well, I shouldn't brag. We would first swim over to the south tip of the island and rest before continuing on to the other shore.
That was another thing Niederchortitza had - the Dniepr. I've traveled to many places in the world and never, never have I seen a river as beautiful as that. As young boys we would sometimes pull carrots out of the garden, we would wash them in the river for our snacks, and swim and play all day long. If we got thirsty, we could even drink the water. Of course it's different now. People who have been there in recent times say it is all polluted and dirty. That's a real shame to spoil such a beautiful river.
And on the island of Chortitza there were the beautiful homes and gardens of the wealthy people. Across the river at the south tip, that's where our village was. So you see, we had everything anyone could ever want. Of course, that was how it looked to us children.
Not everything was as rosy as that for our parents though. In 1933 there was a great famine in our area. Things were very hard for us so my father wrote to his brother Hans in Arkadak about our situation. He told us they were all right there and we should come and stay with them. We packed up are things and traveled to Arkadak slowly and with some difficulty by train. We stayed with Onkel Hans for a whole year in Village N. 1. As far as I know we always had enough to eat.
Arkadak gave me a lot of adventures, though not necessarily pleasant ones either. Of course now it seems unimportant but at the time these were big events. This was where I first learned to be frightened. I remember playing in the snow on my skis one day and there was a big, rough looking dog maybe one or two hundred yards away. That didn't bother me any. It was just a big shaggy dog. Suddenly a man carrying a gun came by. When he saw me he said, "Don’t you see that wolf there? Get inside. I want to shoot him". After he told me it was a wolf I was so afraid I grabbed his arm and he brought me into the house. He told me, "You must be from the old Colony. You don't know what wolves are"! From then on I was afraid.
There were a lot of wolves in Arkadak, at least in Village N.1 where we were. They could smell the cattle manure from miles away and would be attracted to it. One night they were scratching on the house door. There were about four or five of them wanting to get in. My uncle wanted to go outside to shoot them but my aunt stopped him. "No, no", she yelled. "If you do some will get inside"! I was deathly afraid he would go out to try shooting the wolves even though they were outside scratching on the wall.
And cold and snow was quite normal there. We never saw anything like it in Niederchortitza. Minus forty degrees Celsius was nothing special in Arkadak. It was very cold. I remember the snow too. Sometimes it would snow such a lot that you would have to shovel out right from the top of the door. You would gradually make a path so the women were able to go outside. That was a lot of snow. I could never figure out, even later on how they could grow such nice apples there with all that snow and cold in the winter.
All of the houses in Arkadak were made of wood - wooden logs, that is. Well, except where there might be a big business or something like that. Those were different, probably brick. But the log houses were well built with clay chinking to seal them. The windows had well crafted shutters, I remember.
Well now, school was quite another thing. The school was not in our village. It was in village N. 5. On Sunday evening or Monday morning we would go to school by sleigh in winter or wagon in summer, and stay until Friday evening. This was not only me, but children from other villages too. With good horses the trip would take at least an hour. We stayed in a dormitory where a housemother would see to it that we were washed and fed and went to bed on time.
For me school was a humiliating experience. In Niederchortitza all our instruction was in German. We had very good teachers who had been trained in Germany. I was in grade three. Here in Arkadak everything was in Russian. Everyone was laughing at me because I couldn't understand a word they were saying. They made me recite a short German poem. I did know Ukrainian. I'm still quite fluent in Ukrainian and Russian too, now. Then they made me recite a Ukrainian poem and they were just laughing. I was so embarrassed.
The teacher said it was no use so he put me back to grade two but that was no better since I still could not understand anything they said in Russian. When they wanted to put me back to grade one my father came to the rescue and took me out of school altogether. I never went back to school in Arkadak. When things improved we moved back to our home that we had rented out to a young couple while we were away. Once we were back in Niederchortitza where I was at home in my place the way I understood it I continued again in grade three.
Actually, they only had two hours a week of German instruction in Arkadak. Later on the German language was eliminated from the curriculum altogether. That was back in 1933. This didn't happen in Niederchortitza until about 1937 - 38. It would be about the same time as all the arrests started. The authorities would come, usually at night and take the men away and put them in jail. No one could ever find out why, where to or for how long they would be gone. They were never heard from again.
My father was arrested and taken away for no reason. When he was a young man, in better times, he had studied grain mill engineering in Germany. Now the excuse was that since he had been in Germany he was probably a spy. They used any lame excuse they could think of to achieve their ends. It was not only my father but also most of the men in the village.
After my dad was gone I worked a lot with tractors. I would have been about sixteen years old at the time. I was very much interested in machinery so I took a little shop course and then worked with combines and tractors.
Later, during the war when the Germans finally came all the way to our village, everything changed. They were welcomed with open arms. When you think about it, they really liberated us. I'm not praising Hitler, but given the times and what we had been through, our feelings were understandable. They rounded up all the top communists. What they did with them I don't know, but suddenly we were free to work the land again. That which had been taken away was returned to us. Whether it was fair or not is another question, but we were free. We had a church again. We had a preacher again, and everything returned to how it had been.
Then after a while someone came to us from the German occupation. We were all young men and they now expected us to volunteer our services in the German army as interpreters. Our German was good and so was our Russian. We could be invaluable to them. They put the matter to us like this; "We have liberated you and given you back your lands and your freedom. Now we are in a bit of a jam and we need your help. We ask you to volunteer. If you don't volunteer, we will order you to serve. If you disobey our order, you will be considered to be an enemy of Germany. Of course, we kill our enemies". It was a fairly clear and straightforward argument they presented, eliminating the need for any questions or negotiations.
I was in the German army until we came to Germany at the end of the war. That in itself is a long story. At first I was in the Caucuses just south of Stalingrad. Then we went back to our village again. The time came to go directly to Germany. Mennonites and Lutherans - all Germans were highly organized in everything. Mothers with children and older ladies were taken to a train and traveled to Germany by train. We young men who were older traveled westward toward Germany by horse and wagon. There were seven men to a wagon, covered by a canopy. Each day we traveled all day and when we had come so and so far we stopped. There was always someone there who guided us and had food for us and for the horses. That's how well organized everything was.
The Germans took care of it all. Finally we came to the Polish border, to a big city called Litzmerstaad - now called Ludj - where they took our baggage and the horses and wagons. There we were checked over pretty thoroughly, deloused where necessary, and so on. Then, according to name and other information, they put us on trains that took us to the camps where our families were. As I said, they were highly organized.
Sadly, my mother became ill on the train to Germany. She never recovered and passed away on May 5, 1945. I was the oldest son and already had my draft papers before mother died. Now I went to the director of the camp and tearfully told him how it was with us. Mother had died. I was the oldest at home and had four younger siblings to look after. What must I do? He gave me a document and instructed me to go to such and such a city where I should speak to a high-ranking German officer.
He gave me the document and I traveled by train to that city. There I made an appointment to see this military officer. He was not a Nazi but an old order military man. I told him my story and perhaps I cried a little, my mother having just passed away. The officer came over to me and put his hand on my shoulder. 'My son', he said, 'go home and don't worry. You will hear from us'. He took my draft papers away and then I was home for another three months after my mother passed away.
At this point Walter stopped for a moment to reflect on that. "You know", he mused, half to himself, "that was the first time I was in this neighborhood. But my mother came instead and in doing that, saved my life. Others who had their draft papers were taken in to the S. S. - an elite group. Some had already fallen within the three months that I was still a civilian and still working at home".
St. Peter only nodded in acknowledgement and Walter continued where he had left off.
Eventually I was drafted into the army - not S. S., but regular army - artillery. Even during my three months of training it was apparent that the war was lost. We were headed for the front when all of a sudden we stand up and the officer said, 'We need twenty volunteers to train as medics'. I raised my hand in a flash! My father had been a medic in the White army in the first war. He was with a hospital train. I was sure that by the time my training was done the war would be over so I was eager to sign up.
The rest of the men went to the front while I stayed behind with the volunteers. They sent us to a field hospital. There we trained to give tetanus shots, morphine injections, how to bandage wounds and all those things. The main thing though was our ability to give blood. We were all healthy looking boys and they knew our blood types. When the wounded came in they would call us in the night or any time to transfer blood to the wounded soldier. Sometimes the legs were blown off and he needed blood.
Those days the whole operation was quite primitive. I would lie on the table on one side with the doctor next to me and the patient next to him on the other side. He would take the blood from me with something like a bicycle pump. You could hear the sucking sound. Then he would turn a bit and inject it in to the patient until I'd given about enough. So that in my opinion was the main reason for our being there.
After my training I went to the front as a medic. To my relief I was, throughout the whole war, not allowed to carry a weapon. I could not carry a gun, or even a knife longer than about eight centimeters. The army was very strict about things like that.
It was there in the field where I felt God's hand at work again. I was helping a wounded man when I was wounded myself. Some shrapnel from a grenade went in to my seat on one side and came out the other, touching no bones or other vital parts. It was just a flesh wound, but it kept me in hospital until the war ended. For me there was no question but that it was God's hand to watch over me.
"Is this perhaps getting too long or boring", Walter suggested hesitatingly. "I can stop any time, you know". He didn't want to make a nuisance of himself.
"No, no", said St. Peter. 'Please continue as long as you like. You'll know when you're finished. I'll just sit here and listen. Oh I forgot to ask. Would you like a cup of coffee or a glass of tea or something? I know how you Mennonites like to have a meal whenever you visit."
This was the first time Walter could remember not wanting a cup of coffee or a nice slice of smoked ham on a zwieback. "No, thank you" he declined politely and continued on without missing a beat.
Later I became a prisoner of war in France. There the prisoners had it very, very bad. It was never made known but in the camp where I was, close to Paris, there were hundreds upon hundreds of German soldiers who died of starvation. There was hardly anything to eat in the beginning. Our keepers would give out very little food, but they would hand out that awful Moroccan tobacco. It was like black tea in a little packet. Every second day you would get a packet of tobacco to smoke. It was really meant to do us in. The very young and the very old, they could not survive that. Fortunately I had never smoked. There were always men who came to me and said, 'We will never get home alive anyway. Give us your tobacco and we will give you our piece of bread'. With the tiny extra piece of bread I managed to survive.
Among the other terrible things in France was the one thing I never thought would happen. As I said, I was a prisoner of war in France and I thought the Russians would never find me there. In the second year we were there, I gave my credentials to the office where we were registered as 'Walter Bergen, Niederchortitza, Ukraine. And then the Russians became aware that I was one of their men, born in their country. They took me to their office where they questioned me for the first time and let me go. They were speaking Russian naturally. I pretended not to understand but of course, I understood every word. They were using a lot of foul language too. The second time they brought me to their office there were no questions. They took me at gunpoint to the camp where they had gathered all from the Paris area. My estimate is that there were not less than five hundred men, all with names like Peters, Thiessen, Hildebrand and so on. Seventy-five percent were Mennonites. They arranged to ship us back to Russia.
I was in line to go but I hadn't received any mail. By 1946 mail was already starting to trickle through slowly. Of course they checked every piece of mail, they were smart enough for that. Those in the camp who received mail from wives or mothers were all singled out.
They were told that they were the lucky ones since they would go home by airplane. Of course the Russians knew they couldn't escape from an airplane.
I was one of the lucky ones, if you can call it that. We were to travel by train. All the four big railway stations around Paris had huge pictures of Stalin and Lenin hung outside so we traveled amid great propaganda. We were given American uniforms in exchange for our German ones - no insignias - just the clothes. The food was American too. That's how we came to that camp in the French part of Germany. Now I was on a train back to Russia. We came to the American zone. As soon as we crossed the Rhine we knew we were in the English sector. We also knew that the English were the most humane. The Americans and the Russians were just as bad as the French. We were on a freight train, sixty-five men to a car, sleeping on hay bails just like army guys would do. And then we were crossing the Rhine!
Mr. Weiss, an older man asked if I wanted to escape. Of course I did. We had to get away. If we go to Russia, it's certain death. After all, we had fought with the Germans against them. We were not only the enemy, but traitors to the communists to boot. To them killing us was no big thing.
We managed to pry the door open. I sat there with my little kit box between my feet and my guardian angel right behind me, watching the telephone poles fly by. We couldn't risk hitting one of those or it would be all over in a second. With our heels on the board just below the car floor, we saw a telephone pole go by and instantly we jumped. It was very high and I got caught in a bush. I saw the train was still going and it was such a relief to me. It was the best I'd felt in my life. When it was gone I got up. Of course my knees were skinned off, but my head was clear and I was in one piece.
We stood there and didn't know what was going to happen next. Perhaps a soldier would come along and ask us for papers. Of course we had none so they might shoot us or something like that. Instead, it was a farmer who showed up. We had jumped in the nighttime and this was very early in the morning. It was September and there was dew on the ground. The other man - Mr. Weiss - had his nose broken, his cheek was cut open and he was bleeding very heavily. I took a towel out of my kit box, dampened it in the grass and put the cold cloth on his wound to give him some relief.
By this time the old farmer approached and I wondered what our fate would be. One horse, one cow, and one old farmer - that's the way it was in Germany after the war. Anyway, there was some clay or something he was busy loading. I went up to him and gave him a pack of cigarettes because I had cigarettes. I looked him in the eye and told him the exact truth about our situation. I said we were escapees. We were being taken by force back to Russia. I told him that I was all right but my friend needed medical attention. Was there a doctor in the village close by? No, he said, but there was a midwife. During the war midwives did all sorts of duties.
Then he pointed to the house close by. He told us to go there and tell his wife to give us civilian clothes - old civilian clothes in exchange for the American uniforms. We did that and the woman gave us things to wash and shave. We stayed with them for one or two nights but they were afraid of the consequences if the Americans or the English should find out so we left to see the midwife. She cleaned Weiss' wounds and dressed them like you would normally do to make them look somewhat decent.
Weiss had a wife in Hamburg and I had the address of an aunt in southern Germany. We left the village by train. My guardian angel must have been there too because no one checked me on the train. Arriving at my aunt's, I had no papers so it was necessary to report to the military government. They sent me back again to another camp where there was another Russian committee who actually wanted to set me free. Instead, they sent me from one camp to another to finally see a Russian American. I think his name was Weissharr. I am ninety percent sure that he was Jewish too. The Jews would not help the Germans after the war and who can blame them?
'Get out! Get out!' he shouted at me. 'The Russians want to set you free and that's fine, but I cannot'! So I went to another camp. I came there at night and entered the study, which happened to be that of a German officer. I didn't ask but I believe he knew what names like Bergen, Thiessen and the like were. He knew what Mennonites were. The officer then took my papers and tore them up. He took out a new sheet and I could see he had written on top; 'Original papers lost in transport'. Then he took down all my personal information as I told it to him except that Niederchortitza became West Prussia, which is of course where our ancestors come from. He advised me wisely that wherever I went not to tell anyone, not even my girlfriend that I was born in the Ukraine. 'You are not born in the Ukraine!' were his exact words.
When I returned to my camp the officer looked at my new papers and noticed the 'West Prussia' and gave me my discharge papers, which I kept all these years since. I was of course free. From then on I was under the care of the MCC in Ulm. I still remember Peter Dyck opening the trunk of his Austin Mini and pulling out a can of real meat for each of us. It had a yellow label that read 'In the name of Christ'. I had a whole box, just for myself. It sounds ridiculous now but in those days it was quite another story. Since then I have always been under the spiritual guidance of the MCC.
Walter suddenly paused and stroked his chin in reflection. "Do you know", he said to St. Peter, "Since I went to Canada in 1952, I have had a wonderful life. Oh sure, there were ups and downs like there are for everyone, but I got married, raised a family and provided a good lifestyle by working at what I enjoyed doing. These were the joys of my life when everything was in its place and I felt I had a distinct purpose. Yet I haven't told you a thing about those times. All I've done is to lament about the hard times. It doesn't seem right".
St. Peter watched Walter fidgeting in embarrassment for a minute before he replied. "It seems to me", he said, "that the very joys you speak of offered the strength to carry the burden that lay heavy on your heart for so long. You're no spring chicken, Walter. You couldn't have done it yourself. We know that here. Someone you know once said that for everything there is a season. That applies to you as it does to everyone and everything. You have been lucky to weather the seasons and those who helped you are lucky to have been touched by you. That's sort of the way life works - in the big picture".
As Walter sat there pondering the significance of what was said, St. Peter and the desk began to fade. Walter's feet slipped softly to the floor. The mist at the back wall began to clear. And there it was just as he'd always pictured it! The golden staircase stretched upwards with angels playing harps on either side.
"Well, I'll be", was all he could manage.
St. Peter stood at the foot of the stair. At his signal, Gabriel let loose a glorious blast from his trumpet. "Well, what are you waiting for"? he smiled. "Welcome home".
# # # #
Author's Note: The facts of the story are transcribed from a taped interview given April 21, 2004.
