Born in Mariawohl 1925 - 1930

Herb Fransen asked me sometime ago, who of the older generation of cousins that we met at Rehe were born in Mariawohl. The simple answer is that they all were.

Here they are: Pictures taken at Rehe July 2009.

Top picture: The three women are sisters, daughters of Jakob Fransen (1885 - 1941), brother to my Grandfather Nicholas Fransen (1879 - 1922). The sisters form the left are: Justa Hildebrandt & Mariechen Flaming (twins born in 1927), whose 82nd birthday we celebrated at Rehe, and Tina Boese born 1925. Their older sister, Liese Enns born 1912 was unable to be present at the Treffen. The man between Justa & Mariechen is Mariechen's husband Peter Flaming who was born in Mariawohl in 1931. The man at the right is Abram Boese, husband to Tina Fransen; he has many relatives in Canada. He visited Mariawohl in 1970, as his wife was born there, and he was born in the neighbouring village, Paulsheim.
It was this Jakob Fransen family that moved from the house of Klaas & Elisabeth (Funk) Fransen in Mariawohl (they died in 1922 & 1919 respectively) to the home of our Grandparents Nicholas & Maria (Wichert) Fransen after Grandma & her children emigrated to Vineland, Ontario, Canada in 1926. Jakob Fransen was conscripted to compulsory labour on September 1, 1941 and never heard from again. His wife, Katharina Klassen Fransen spent sometime in Siberia, then moved to Kant, Kyrgyzstan, where my father & brother Herb visited her in summer 1971, before she died there in May 1972.

In the middle of the second and third pictures are Jakob Fransen born 1930, and Gredel Fransen Schneider Becker born 1928. They are the children of Abraham Fransen (1886 - 1934), brother to my Grandfather Nicholas Fransen (1879 - 1922). Abraham Fransen died of starvation. His wife died a month later. Jakob and Gredel were six and four years old.

Jakob Fransen was then raised by his father's brother and wife, Franz Fransen and Susanna Klassen, who lived in the parental home of Klaas and Elisabeth (Funk) Fransen in Mariawohl. Franz Fransen was sent to Siberia in March 1938 and shot shortly after that. Jakob and his adoptive mother, Susanna & her mother left Mariawohl in 1943 with the retreating German army on what is generally known as The Trek. (Susanna's mother died on the Trek that year). Most of the people who still lived in Mariawohl (the older men were basically gone having been sent into the Soviet Gulag) were evacuated at that time. In all approximately 35,000 Mennonites were on this journey. They spent approximately 18-20 months in the Pozan area in what is today part of Poland. Twenty-five thousand of these Mennonites were caught by the Soviets at the end of the war, told that they were taking them back to their homes but instead were sent directly to Kazakhstan and other places throughout the Soviet Union. In 1951 in Kazakhstan, Jakob Fransen married Sarah, the niece of his adoptive mother. In 1964 they and their children, and Susanna Klassen Fransen moved to Kant, Kyrgystan. My father and brother Herb visited them in Kant in summer 1971. My father, his wife Tina, Herta, Werner & I visited them in Kant in August 1978. Susanna Klassen Fransen died in June 1979. She and Katharina Klassen Fransen were sisters.

Sitting beside Jakob Fransen is his cousin Justa Fransen Hildebrandt and Herb Fransen.


Gredel was then raised by her father Abraham Fransen's half-sister, Maria Wiebe, and husband Johann Thiessen in Rudnerweide, Molotschna from 1935 until November, 1941, when Gredel and Maria Wiebe Thiessen were forced to go to Kazhakstan. Johann Thiessen had already been taken by the Communists. Maria Wiebe Thiessen died in 1942.

Gredel Fransen Schneider Becker is sitting between her daughter Luci & son-in-law Willie Muss, parents of Andreas Muss, who lived in Hutchinson, Kansas for two years doing Voluntary Service.