From Kleefeld With Love, Edited and Translated by John A. Harder
2003. 205 pp. ISBN: 978-1894710282
The letters in this collection were written by Mennonite women during the onset of Soviet Russia's most turbulent years, 1925 to 1933. Most were written by Mariechen Harder to Abram and Anna Harder and family, her relatives who had left Kleefeld for Canada in 1924.
"Personal letters ... are still the grassroots stuff of history. While readers with a Russian Mennonite heritage will feel this is their own story, the letters belong as well to a universal story. They speak of refugees who survived the almost unspeakable trials of harassment and persecution, of family losses and home dislocation, as they faced the challenge throughout of seeing somewhere the hand of God to offer 'meaning' to it all."
- Lawrence Klippenstein