A Waldheim family returns in 1999
by Irmie Konrad, West Vancouver, BC
The Konrads, Irmie left & John with guide Nina, history teacher V. Liah of the Waldheim School
and children Heather, Lori, Doug & Gary
John and I took our children, Doug and his wife Lori, Heather and Gary, on the Mennonite Heritage Cruise in September 1999. We wanted them to see the villages where their grandparents were born and through the whole cruise experience gain greater insight into their Mennonite heritage.
My father, Isaac A. Neufeld, and his parents were born in Waldheim and my great grandparents lived there for many years. Also, John’s grandmother was born just a short distance down the street. When my parents and grandparents left Russia in 1926, they left from this village, so Waldheim is a place of great interest to our family.
The Waldheim school site has special significance to our family. It was on this site in 1889, that my great grandfather, Isaak Johann Neufeld together with his oldest son, my grandfather, Isaak I. Neufeld started the Neufeld farm machinery factory. Although they had many challenges the first ten years, the factory developed into a very successful operation.
In 1909, my grandfather, also Isaak I. Neufeld, established a flour mill in Waldheim. He did this because he wanted to build a business for his four sons. My grandfather and his father were partners in the flour mill and my grandfather, continued to have some responsibilities in the factory.
We had some extra school supplies and we thought it would be appropriate to give them to the Waldheim school. We had asked Walter Unger how we might do this and were given good direction. Our first stop in Waldheim was at the school, the site of the Neufeld factory. Once at the school, Nina went in to look for the Principal, while we waited on the steps.
She returned a few minutes later with the Principal and two staff members. Through Nina, we told the Principal who we were and that we hoped to see the site of the former factory. The Principal said we must see the history teacher because he had an archive of the village. When we entered the classroom, he was teaching some eight or ten junior high students Canadian history.
When the Principal told the history teacher why we had come, he pointed to posters and binders which was his archive. He brought out a well-kept binder, obviously a precious possession and opened it to show us pictures of Waldheim in the Mennonite era.
After handing over our school supplies to the Principal, the history teacher left his students in the class room and accompanied us on our tour of the site and village. As we walked around the building, we found bolts protruding out of concrete slabs, obviously the mounting pads for heavy machinery. Behind the school was a stream, which my father called a ‘kanal’, and a footbridge now used by students to reach the school. We have pictures of the original bridge which the family used to reach the factory.
After taking photos at the school, we all got back in the bus, along with the history teacher, and visited the site of the flour mill and the street on which my grand and great grand-parents lived. Nothing of the flour mill and houses is left but the duplex that was built to house the miller and the engineer and their families is still standing and is used as a dwelling. The present owner told us that, nothing has changed except fresh paint and a new roof. My grandparents and their family lived in this duplex after they returned to Waldheim in the spring of 1924, having fled to the Crimea earlier. They rented back their mill from the government and ran it for about two years.
We now passed a building which was on the site where the M.B. church once stood. During our earlier 1997 cruise visit we thought this was the former church building which had been turned into a club in the late 1920's. When we asked the history teacher about that, he informed us that indeed the church had been on this site and was turned into a club, but the current buiding is a new club house, set back a little farther from the road. Also, very close to the M.B. church site was the place where John's great grandparents, Johann and Anna Dirks once lived.
As the history teacher, V. Liah, was born in Waldheim and has lived there for most of his life, he was able to tell us what happened to the factory and mill.
The factory continued to turn out farm machinery for several years and was then converted to a tractor factory. Some of the machinery was shipped to Tokmak for use in another factory. During WWII, the factory produced artillery shells . In 1954, it stopped working for good and the bricks, etc. were removed by people who needed them for what they were building. That ended the story of the Neufeld factory which was started by our great grandfather in 1889.
The flour mill had a sudden demise. The retreating German army torched the mill in 1943 and the grain smouldered for two years.
As Liah was so interested in anything we could tell him or show him about the Waldheim, we sent him some pictures and have since received from him a large newspaper clipping which was published in their local paper and recalls the Mennonite presence in the village. It shows pictures of the factory and mill and refers to material we gave him. Here's a scan of part of it. The title is "Hello Waldheim" in Russian.
