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.
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!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
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.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on biographical from the online archives
more from the online archives
19.8—October 2006
on the Good Father’s Quiet Desperation by Russell D. Moore
27.2—March/April 2014
on C. S. Lewis & the New State Paganism by W. E. Knickerbocker
19.4—May 2006
The Culture War Is Between Religious Believers on Both Sides by Howard P. Kainz
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
