“Mrs.
Lena Zimmerman Willems was born in South Russia in the Firstenland in Syejowka
on February 6, 1893, to Rev. and Mrs. H. H. Zimmerman, and departed this life
at the age of 70 years, 5 months and 24 days in a Tulare, California hospital.
… She came to Winkler, Manitoba, Canada, with her parents in 1903.”[1]
My
grandmother, Helena (Lena) Zimmerman Willems, was born in a Mennonite village
on the south/east bank of the Dneiper River in what is now Ukraine, a land she
knew as South Russia. The year was 1893;
the name of the village was Sergeyevka, which was one of the villages in the Fürstenland,
a daughter colony of Chortitza, the first colony established by the Mennonites
in the steppe land bordering the Black Sea.
Grandma spent the first ten years of her life in that village, and she
remembered it after she left. She
remembered seeing people bathing naked in the river; she remembered being very
sick—rheumatic fever, and being buried in the river sand to bring down her
temperature. When her daughters asked
Grandma what this place looked like, she said it was beautiful. Her parents didn’t want to leave south Russia,
but they “smelled trouble,” and decided it was necessary.
Grandma’s
father was Heinrich H. Zimmerman, a Mennonite Brethren preacher. Her mother was Maria Dyck Zimmerman, who died
when my grandmother was a young girl. I
have known that basic information since what feels like forever, but exactly
when and where Grandma’s mother died was hazy.
My dad told me that his mom’s mother was sick when the time came for the
family to leave South Russia—so sick she knew she was going to die, and she
told her family they must go without her.
They didn’t want to, but she insisted.
Reluctantly, they obeyed her wish.
She died shortly after they left.
Dad told me this story in the early 1990s. He was almost eighty years old, crippled from
a stroke, and the thought of that his Grandmother Maria Dyck Zimmerman being
left behind to die haunted him.
 |
| Maria Dyck Zimmermann (1861-1905) |
My dad’s
dramatic story is not supported by family records: 1) The obituary written for Grandma’s funeral
says that she arrived in Winkler, Manitoba, Canada in 1903 “with her parents.” 2) The record of Zimmerman family births, deaths
and emigration dates received from my dad’s sister Mary gives April 6, 1905 as
Maria Dyck Zimmermann’s death date.
Grandma’s mother, Maria Dyck Zimmermann,
died almost two years after the family arrived in Canada. She was not left behind in Russia. She did not die alone. She died surrounded by her family. That story of her death is described in a
letter written by her husband, H.H. Zimmermann, which I found in the archives
of the Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies at Tabor College in Hillsboro,
Kansas. It was written just a month
after Maria Dyck Zimmermann’s death, and it is no less dramatic and compelling
than the one that gripped my father’s imagination. The letter was addressed to the readers of the
Zionsbote, the Mennonite Brethren
newspaper that circulated throughout the MB world—Canada, the United States,
South Russia. It was printed in the May
7, 1905 issue, written while H.H. Zimmerman’s grief was fresh, an out-pouring
of his heart. It is a long letter (1500
words), and in it HHZ tells about more than Maria’s death. He tells the story of his life up through
Maria’s last days and final release from suffering. I shall begin that story next week.
[1] Obituary
written by the family and read at my grandmother’s funeral 1963 (my aunt Helen,
the oldest daughter, is the likely author).
