Reinhard, Anna Lehmann

I was born in Volhynia (which was a province of Poland at the time, now it is Western Ukraine), in 1936 of ethnic German parents. My ancestors emigrated to Volhynia from Central Poland where they were born in the 19th century. In 1939, after Russia and Germany partitioned Poland, we were resettled back into Middle Poland close to where my great-grandparents came from. In 1945, before the Russian army came in, we were again moved west by horse and wagon and sometimes by train into Germany.

We lived in Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony) from 1945 to 1949 at which time we immigrated to Canada.

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM A BOOK WRITTEN BY EDMUND LEHMANN ABOUT THE FAMILY'S EXPERIENCE IN CANADA:

Going to Canada

Sometime in late 1947 or early in 1948, Dad's cousin in Morris, Manitoba found out our address through the Red Cross; it may have been the other way around but anyhow we started to correspond. In time the decision was made that we would immigrate to Canada. This all happened before the 1950's boom started in Germany. In 1946 the money (Reich mark) was devalued and the almighty D-Mark was brought in. Each person received a hundred D-Mark which basically put everybody without property on the same financial level, regardless of how much money they had. This also was the time when a lot of DP's (Displaced Persons), as we were called, started to look to improving their livelihood.

Some moved to the Ruhr or Rhineland, where there was more industry and better paying jobs. Others started migrating to North or South America. In early 1949 we packed up and took a train to a pre-immigration camp called Muehlhausen near Hanover. This was where the Canadian immigration officials and doctors screened all prospective immigrants. If anybody in the family did not pass the medical examination, they, or the whole family, were rejected. We stayed in this camp for a number of weeks. Finally, at the beginning of February 1949, we were taken by train to Bremerhaven where we boarded what seemed to be a huge ship. This ship was the Beaverbrae. It was in fact only a 9000 ton old ex-German freighter that had served the German navy as a supply ship during the war. The Canadian Pacific Co. bought it from the government, refitted it and put it in service transporting immigrants to Canada on the North Atlantic route. The Beaverbrae made 51 Atlantic crossings between Bremerhaven and Canada in the years 1948 to 1952. She carried between 500 and 700 passengers per trip of whom 1 in 5 were children.

She was a rather small ship; there were no cabins just one large area for male passengers and one for females. We boarded the ship towards evening. People were hungry not having had anything to eat on the train from Hanover to Bremerhaven. I will never forget the first supper on board; it was wieners and sauerkraut. As we sailed into the North Sea channel, the seas became rather rough and many people, including me, became seasick. I can only state that as a result of this experience I did not eat wieners for about 15 years. The voyage was not a good experience for me. I was seasick for 10 of the 11 days of our North Atlantic crossing, which was particularly rough because of the season.

One night about halfway across, the ship apparently rode up on a monster wave and crashed down into the through. There was a loud bang almost like an explosion and loose objects were flying about all over the ship. The next morning the captain was reported as saying he could not believe that the ship did not break in half as a result. I think God had other plans and the German shipbuilders had probably done an extra good job when they built that ship. Apparently the ship's welder was kept busy for a long time welding the cracks that appeared. After 11 rough days we finally sighted Halifax harbour. What a relief.

We disembarked at Pier 21, were processed by the immigration officials and loaded onto a special immigrant train and headed west. We stopped in Truro where the Red Cross was handing out sandwiches and coffee on the train platform. It was a rather uneventful journey through the Canadian winter wilderness.

We arrived in Winnipeg 3 days later. I remember seeing my first Winnipeg policeman who liked like a big bear to me. In those days the police had to be a minimum height of 6 feet and in the winter they wore buffalo fur coats and a beaver hat which combined made them look twice as big. My uncle (Dad's cousin) had hired a man who owned an auto dealership in Morris, and therefore had a nice car, to pick us up from the CPR station. The younger kids and Mom went in this man's car which had heat. Dad and my brother and the baggage went in Uncle's car without heat. Needless to say they almost froze the 40 miles out to Morris. We went out down the Pembina Highway which turns into Highway 75, which was a gravel road at the time. The snow banks along the road seemed enormous to me.

We arrived at my uncle's farm to a warm welcome. Since the farm buildings we were supposed to live in were a mile from my uncle's place and the road was impassable in the winter, we stayed at my uncle's until spring break up in early May. Their house was very small by today's standards; about 600 square feet. Our two families numbered 11 people. My aunt was a very happy and generous lady. Besides being a great cook and baker, she loved telling stories about when she was a little girl in Russia and about their experiences since they came to Canada. I enjoyed staying with them and later visited often.

Ever since I found out that there was a country called Canada and that we might be going there to a farm, I literally prayed for it to happen. So here we were in Canada on a farm; my prayers had been answered. In May we moved to the "old place". It was the farm where my uncle and aunt had lived for a number of years before and during WWII. The buildings were fairly old, had never been painted and needed a lot of repair and a good clean up. There was no electricity and water had to be carried from a dugout or pond on the yard. The only way to keep milk or other things cool in the summer was to hang them in a well that had been dug next to the pond.

Dad got a job working in the bush in the Sandilands forest about 40 miles away. My brother spend the summer working on my uncle's farm so Mom was left alone with us three smaller kids without any kind of transportation except our legs.

School was now over 4 miles away. Sometime at the end of March or the beginning of April my sister and I started going to school. We attended armour school which was located 3 miles west of my uncle's farm. It was a one room school with a two acre school yard. There was an ice house for storing river ice for drinking water in the summer, two outhouses (toilets) for summer use, and a small stable for the horses that some kids rode to school. Our teacher's name was Miss Johnson; a good looking lady with flaming red hair. This was of course my first experience going to a one room school house with grades 1 to 8. I had no knowledge of the English language at all. I started out with grade 1 readers and workbooks. In Germany I had been in grade 6. At the time, the grade 1 reader was called Dick and Jane. I remember feeling foolish being in a class with kids that could not understand German.  There was one girl, a little older than me that I fell in love with, although I don't think she even noticed me. The months of summer vacation went by rather quickly and by then I could read Dick and Jane fairly fluently but I did not know what I was reading. That first summer went by rather quickly what with learning and experiencing so many things such as picking saskatoons, driving the tractor and helping out at harvest time.

In the spring of 1949 the church congregation got together and held a shower for our family. This was something new which we had not experienced before. Along with household items, clothing, furniture and food, we also got a cow; in short, almost everything we needed to start a new life. I thought it was very generous of total strangers and we were very thankful for all of it. Among the items we received there was a pair of rubber shoes. Since I did not have a pair of work shoes I wore these all summer and as a result burned my feet to the extent where I suffered from athlete's foot for many years.

In 1955 I moved into WP6. I started working at the CPR Weston shops as a labourer. After 7 years I quit the CPR after taking night classes and correspondence courses as a third class power engineer. In 1996 I retired from the Health Sciences Centre as Chief Engineer after 41 years in this field of work. One of my sons now lives in Halifax and works for the city.

Edmund Lehmann