Winnipeg-based author and poet Sarah Klassen, whose family came to Canada in 1926 from what is now Ukraine, was one of the people interviewed for the University of Winnipeg oral history project. (Travis Golby/CBC)
Researchers at the University of Winnipeg are working to capture stories about Mennonites who fled the Soviet Union in the 1920s before they are lost. It will be the largest oral history project on Mennonites undertaken in Canada.
“These stories are disappearing quickly,” Aileen Friesen told CBC Manitoba. Friesen, an associate professor in history and the co-director of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies, is leading the project, which focuses on the children of the Mennonites who immigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union between 1923 and 1930, in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution.
Their stories describe the struggles of their parents and grandparents as they adapted to a new life in Canada, but also the experiences of childhood and growing up. “What happens when you grow up with parents and grandparents who experienced war, revolution, immigration? How does that shape your childhood?” asks Friesen.
Friesen and researcher Kate Moulden have interviewed more than 70 people since January, with more planned in coming months. While most of the 21,000 Mennonites who immigrated to Canada in the 1920s are now dead, their stories are been carried on through their children.