View
A Storied Survivor
on Neta, Who Lived to Tell the Tale of Endurance
As the German army retreated from the Soviet Union during World War II, my grandmother fled west with her four young children. Anganeta Dyck Loewen (1912–2003) was a member of a German-Mennonite community that had farmed peaceably for generations in Ukraine's Dnieper Valley. Then came the Bolshevik Revolution. By 1943, Neta had already survived two famines that together had killed millions of Ukrainians. She had seen her three brothers deported to Siberia and had lost her husband in the war. So she and her children—including my mother, only five at the time—made their way across Eastern Europe. They traveled on wagon, train, and foot. They hid in cornfields and begged for food. They endured fierce cold, a lice infestation they had no means to treat, and the constant threat of capture and death thrumming at their heels like a threshing machine tearing up the ground.

At war's end they found refuge in a boarding house in Austria, a single room with two beds for a family of five. In a nearby Catholic churchyard Neta was hired to dig graves. She was paid a loaf of bread for every grave. And in the window of their boarding house room, she planted flowers.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Heather Ferngren Morton is a freelance writer based in Cheverly, Maryland, where she lives with her husband and three children. Read more of her work at heatherfmorton.com.
• Not a subscriber or wish to renew your subscription? Subscribe to Touchstone today for full online access. Over 30 years of publishing!
personal subscriptions
Purchase Print &
Online Subscription

Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
gift subscriptions
GIVE Print &
Online Subscription

Give six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for the reduced rate of $29.95. That's only $2.50 per month!
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
kindle subscription
OR get a subscription to Touchstone to read on your Kindle for only $1.99 per month! (This option is KINDLE ONLY and does not include either print or online.)
Your subscription goes a long way to ensure that Touchstone is able to continue its mission of publishing quality Christian articles and commentary.
more on biographical from the online archives
more from the online archives
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor