In 1925, the Jacob and Maria (Kroeker) Becker family of Schoensee, a village in the Molotschna colony, wanted to leave Soviet Ukraine. Although they still retained their yard and buildings, the Soviet government had expropriated their farmland. However, the cost of travel documents and transportation to Canada deterred the family.

The family received a letter from Maria’s uncle Peter Quiring from Henderson, Nebraska, who had married a sister of her father, Jacob Kroeker. Her uncle told all the descendants of Jacob Kroeker to leave the Soviet Union immediately and that he had paid for their transportation. Most of the siblings of Maria prepared to leave. Without delay, the Jacob Becker family and their Kroeker relatives prepared for the journey to Canada.

After deciding to emigrate, Jacob Becker sold the yard and moved his family into the house of his uncle Peter Becker, also in Schoensee. Jacob was forty-two years of age, and Maria was thirty-seven. He had six children ranging in age from five to seventeen. On November 24, 1925, the Becker family left Schoensee by horse and wagon for the Bolshoi Tokmak station, ten kilometres away. It was raining and the roads were muddy.

Most of the village of Schoensee accompanied them to the station. Other families from the area were also leaving. Everyone knew this was permanent. They would never see their neighbours and relatives again. Although the Soviet Union had stabilized somewhat after the chaos of the revolution and the civil war, life was still unsettled.

The two railway cars ordered by the departing families did not arrive. After some discussions with the stationmaster it was agreed that the railway cars would arrive the next day. Everyone went home to repeat the process the following day. Once again, most of the population of Schoensee accompanied the emigrants to the Tokmak railway station. They boarded the train around four in the afternoon. There was much hugging and kissing, and tears were shed. Although those who stayed behind suffered horribly during the Stalinist terror a few years later, in that moment no one anticipated such a future.

For the Jacob Becker family, who had never travelled far from home, the prospect of moving to a distant country where they would be penniless and unable to speak the language must have seemed daunting. Henry Becker, who was seventeen at the time, regarded the migration with the optimism of youth, viewing it as an adventure, although still he recognized the solemnity of the occasion.

The railway through Tokmak was a branch line, and the railcars had to be transferred to the main line. There was a twenty-five hour stop while the group waited for the train to Moscow. With no available lodgings at the transfer point, the entire group spent a restless night on the floor in the station with people coming and going throughout the night.

The Becker family arrived in Moscow on November 28. After their arrival, the family discovered that the money sent by their relative Peter Quiring was gone. It had allegedly been used by Rev. D. M. Hofer and his friends to support a newspaper. Everyone would have to continue their travel on money borrowed from the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR).

The CPR had an office in Moscow to receive the emigrants and to arrange for travel on to England through Riga, Latvia. Arrangements included a medical exam. All of the Becker family passed the medical exam except for Henry, who was diagnosed with trachoma, a disease of the eye.

Trachoma is caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and is spread by direct contact with secretions from affected individuals, or through contact with contaminated objects such as towels. Repeated infections can eventually result in scarring of the cornea and blindness. Today it is easily treated with antibiotics, and in the late 1930s it could be treated with sulfonamides. In the 1920s, therapy was much less effective; treatment consisted of topical applications of copper sulfate.

Jacob and Henry promptly visited several physicians for a consultation. They asked that Henry be treated in Riga. This was not allowed. Jacob searched for alternative destinations. He was advised that there was an option to go to Mexico where there were no medical restrictions. However, Jacob elected to continue to Canada.

As the rest of the family travelled to Latvia, Henry had to stay behind in Moscow. He stayed with the Abram Wall family, who were also from Schoensee and diagnosed with trachoma. Henry and the Wall family were not entirely alone, as other Mennonites were also travelling through Moscow on their way to Canada.

Life in Moscow

Life was difficult in Moscow. The accommodations were not luxurious. Henry and the Wall family rented a room, where they were tormented by bedbugs. Henry made numerous visits to doctors in Moscow to treat the trachoma so that he could emigrate. In between visits to doctors, Henry visited the Menno Union and the Russian-Canadian-American Passenger Agency (RUSKAPA) to obtain visas, as the rest of the Becker family had taken the family’s exit papers with them, and Henry had been left behind without the necessary emigration paperwork. It was a time of anxiety and stress about the progress of his eye treatments, exit papers, and money. Henry ran out of money, but his uncle Johann Kroeker in Schoenau sent him a hundred rubles. There was also concern that the Soviet government would stop emigration completely.

Henry’s eyes were slow to improve. The doctors gave him many vague and conflicting opinions. He had to pay for every visit, and he wondered sometimes if they were simply fleecing him. Henry and the Walls pestered the various doctors, including the ones who had to certify they were medically fit to emigrate. It is easy to understand their anxiety. In retrospect, Henry wondered why the doctors did not get impatient with him.

Henry was still in Moscow on Christmas Eve, and as there were no Mennonite churches, he attended a German-speaking Lutheran church. Henry and Abram Wall, the only boy in the Wall family, were also on the lookout for entertainment. On December 26 they walked to the Moscow Zoo, and for the first time Henry saw many wild and exotic animals, including a lion. During his time in Moscow, he managed to see a movie about a man who visited the moon, go to a circus, and see Lenin’s tomb. But life was not easy. In their lodging they used a wood stove to cook, and finding wood was a problem. Henry would go to a nearby carpenter shop and scavenge shavings and small pieces of waste wood off the floor. The labourers swore at him, but never physically tried to stop him.

This adolescent from a small Mennonite village met many different types of people in Moscow. On one occasion he had a conversation with a Russian Orthodox priest, who had never heard of Mennonites. When Henry told the priest that Mennonites were pacifists and were not allowed to kill, the priest remarked that it was too early in human history for such an attitude. Perhaps in the future something like that could be realized. Henry commented in his diary that history has since shown that the priest may have been right.

On December 28, Henry received his emigration certificate from Benjamin Janz and a letter with the hundred rubles from his uncle. A few weeks later, on January 7, 1926, Henry and the Wall family passed their medical examinations. A letter from his father, sent from Canada, also arrived at the RUSKAPA office, begging one of the officials there to help Henry if he was still in Moscow. The next day he was able to pay his fare to Canada to RUSKAPA, 330 rubles, and things were looking good.

The true condition of his eyes was unclear. The treatment was painful, as in addition to receiving eye drops, which were presumably copper sulfate, his eyelids were treated by abrasion with alum stone. Alum stone is a potassium-rich mineral which was widely used in medicine because it is a good astringent and antiseptic. This could not have been very comfortable. In any case, it was probably clear to the doctors, including those who eventually certified him for emigration, that his trachoma was not cured. In fact, it was emphasized even after he was approved to emigrate that he should continue his treatments until he actually left. One doctor told him, “According to our Russian concept, the trachoma has been cured, but not according to the American concept.” He was given eye drops to use shortly before he was examined by the immigration doctors to temporarily suppress the inflammation caused by the trachoma.

Leaving Moscow

Things now moved rapidly, but not without incident. In the afternoon, they received their passports and other papers from RUSKAPA. In the evening, they were to be at the Vindavsky station to obtain their train tickets. They went shopping in the meantime to provision for the journey. Henry bought some garlic sausage while Mr. Wall went to buy some bread. While waiting for his change, Wall put his wallet in the outer pocket of his overcoat. He had been pick-pocketed, and his sixty rubles were gone. The family was upset, but between all of them they still had enough money to leave once Mr. Wall recalled that he had a hundred rubles hidden somewhere else. They paid their landlord with Henry’s twenty-three US dollars. But their problems were not over. They reached the train station by a horse-drawn vehicle at a cost of three rubles, but when it came time to check their baggage, they discovered they did not have enough rubles to pay for checking the luggage, and the baggage agent would take only rubles. It was late, and all the banks were closed. Fortunately, in front of the station they found someone who was happy to exchange dollars for rubles, and the problem was solved.

At 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 9, Henry boarded the train with the Wall family. During the trip, somehow Henry broke a small pane of glass covering a notice with his knee. When they carried their luggage into a large room at the border to be inspected, a conductor followed them and demanded to know who had broken the glass. Henry admitted to having done it, and fortunately had enough money to make one last payment of a few rubles for the broken glass.

Henry passed through the gate and crossed the border into Latvia. Away from the Soviet Union, he could breathe freely. He compared the way he felt to the Israelites leaving Egypt. In Riga, they were deloused and their clothes were disinfected. What a relief that must have been. He passed his medical examination in Riga and was cleared to travel to England.

In England

The Abram Wall family was detained in Riga because they did not pass the medical exam. Henry continued to London alone. On January 13, he left Riga on a ship which would take him across the Baltic, through the Kiel Canal, and then across the North Sea to England. Henry thought he had left lice behind him, but on the ship he discovered it was not to be. The ship was infested with lice, and he soon found his shirt was full of them. At one point on the Baltic Sea they were surrounded by ice, and had to be rescued by an ice breaker. He disembarked in London on January 19, at five in the afternoon.

The next day, he boarded a train to Liverpool, expecting to be on a ship to Canada by January 23. His hopes of departing for Canada were dashed when Dr. Hummel told him, after examining his eyes, that he would have to wait in England. Unfortunately, his one piece of luggage had gone on to Canada. On January 30, he was placed on a train to Southampton. On the train, he felt embarrassed by how shabby his clothing was in comparison to the clothes the British were wearing.

Although Henry was already learning English, having purchased a language booklet in Riga, his confusion over the spelling of his destination, Eastleigh, and how a similar-sounding word would be spelled in German caused him to travel past it. Luckily someone helped him get on a train in the opposite direction. A driver who had been waiting whisked him off to the Atlantic Park Hostel, between Southampton and Eastleigh, where he would spend the next two years.

The Atlantic Park Hostel

The Atlantic Park Hostel was not luxurious. During the First World War, the US Navy Air Force had a base at Eastleigh. Afterwards, three transport companies bought the old aerodrome and formed the Atlantic Park Hostel Company. In 1921, two hundred workers converted hangars into dormitories, dining rooms, kitchens, and bathrooms. The space now provided temporary shelter for the large numbers of immigrants travelling through England to North America. The hostel had a permanent staff of 150. The kitchens were designed to cook two thousand pounds of meat at one time and were able to cook three hundred gallons of soup. The meals provided generally served two thousand people or more.

This was where young Henry would spend the next two years. For a time, Henry stayed in a dormitory with many others. Eventually he moved to a “smaller” room, but still shared it with five other people. Yet he was luckier than some. He mentioned in his memoirs that one Mennonite acquaintance spent over five years at the hostel because of trachoma, all the while separated from his wife, who had gone on to Canada. Even worse was the fate of 980 Russians who were deported to the hostel after having been denied entry to the United States in 1924. Seven years were to pass before they finally left Southampton for North America.

Thousands of Mennonites passed through the hostel during Henry’s stay. Among these was his future wife, Helen Friesen. At that time they did not know each other, but later it became clear that their paths had crossed in England. The Friesen family was travelling with an acquaintance of Henry’s, and this had drawn Henry’s attention to the group. Henry was at the time with another man that Helen knew, and she recalled seeing Henry’s companion. At the time, they did not notice each other.

In some ways Henry was a prisoner at the hostel, although he was allowed to roam through the countryside and the neighbouring cities. The CPR had confiscated his passport, and would not return it until he was approved for departure. That departure depended entirely on receiving a medical clearance from the doctors.

Trachoma Treatment

Trachoma treatment in the age before antibiotics can only be described as brutal. In addition to various eye drops, salves, and rinsing of the eyes, there was mechanical abrasion of the inside of the eyelids with a “blue stone” made of copper sulfate crystals. These therapies were not very effective, but Henry endured them for over two years. Discouraged with the lack of progress from his treatment, Henry tried various remedies recommended to him by other immigrants at the hostel. These included taking turpentine orally and applying it to his eyes, and rinsing his eyes with his own urine.

San Francisco newspapers of the day describe the topical use of adrenaline by Chinese and Japanese immigrants to mask the signs of trachoma and fool immigration officers. In his memoirs, Henry recounts using this trick in Moscow and Latvia. Unfortunately, it did not get him all the way to Canada.

The doctors at the Atlantic Park Hostel and the examining doctors from the CPR had absolute power over if and when emigrants could leave for Canada. Henry and some of his friends wondered whether they were really providing an accurate assessment of the progress of their disease. The doctors seemed to give conflicting and inconsistent messages to Henry as to the state of his eyes. Henry may have been right in wondering whether the two years of treatment he endured at the hostel was a sham. Perhaps not an intentional sham, but one based on incomplete knowledge of the disease by the medical profession. Only later, in 1930, were small inclusion bodies in the cytoplasm of infected cells in patients with trachoma identified as the cause of the disease. It was not until 1954 that the causative agent of trachoma, the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis, was first grown in culture and identified.

It seems that the real problem with trachoma is the occurrence of repeated infection over long periods of time. The World Health Organization states that an individual’s immune system can clear a single episode of infection, but in areas where trachoma is common, re-acquisition of the organism occurs frequently. Finally, after many years of infection, the scarring of the eyelids causes the eyelashes to turn inwards and they scratch the cornea. This can eventually lead to blindness. Henry believed he was infected as a child through sharing a towel with a servant girl who may have had the disease. However, trachoma was not rare among the Mennonites in imperial Russia. In any case, if he had been able to avoid re-infection, his trachoma would likely have cleared up on its own. One wonders if by putting people with trachoma together in the close living quarters of the Atlantic Park Hostel, with six or more infected individuals sharing a room, the CPR was simply perpetuating trachoma in the patients. Henry knew of Mennonites who eventually gave up meeting Canada’s immigration requirements and emigrated to Paraguay instead. Without any further treatment, they seemed to be cured and had no further eye problems.

Henry was caught in a web of medical ignorance and bureaucratic regulation. He did not know if he would ever escape this web, but hoped and prayed that he would one day be able to leave for Canada. It all depended on whether the doctors would pronounce him fit to go.

Making Money in England

Henry had to learn to survive during his time at the Atlantic Park Hostel. Needing pocket money, he went into business. Those staying at the hostel received a small amount of money from a fund in Canada. The Mennonite boys at the hostel were not fond of the fried eggs prepared by the cook. They asked to be given the eggs raw so that they could cook the eggs themselves on a small stove. The cook supplied them with a large number of raw eggs, not all of which were eaten. The other young men would sell Henry their surplus eggs, as they also needed money, and Henry would resell them to a baker in Southampton. Before long he had a profitable egg business. On one day he accepted 382 eggs, so at times his business was quite sizable. He carried the eggs in a large canvas bag, and would travel with them by tram, bicycle, or on foot. One might question the ethics of obtaining eggs from the cook under somewhat false pretenses and then selling them. At times Henry seems to have had a slightly guilty conscience about this, but he kept dealing in eggs during most of his time in England.

The eggs at the hostel were not particularly fresh, and Henry examined them all with a light to ensure that he was not bringing any rotten eggs to the bakery. His egg business was perhaps an omen of things to come, as many years later while living in Marquette, Manitoba, he would drive to Winnipeg every two weeks with a car full of egg crates, and sell the eggs to a loyal following of customers that he developed. These eggs, too, he examined with a light to detect imperfections such as blood spots.

His business interests during his time at the hostel did not stop with the eggs. There was a continuous stream of refugees coming through from eastern Europe, including Mennonites, Jews, and Russians. Henry could speak both German and Russian and had also become fairly fluent in English. When these newcomers arrived, some of them would need new clothes. Henry would take them to a clothing store to shop. For every shilling they spent there, the store owner would give him one pence.

Henry also dealt in apples. He would buy them in the city and sell them at the hostel. Carrying the apples could be a problem. Henry had two experiences during his time in England that illustrated this. On one occasion, Henry and a friend bought eight pounds of apples and were taking them back to the hostel on their bicycles. The apples were in a paper bag, and after a while on the road, the bag developed a hole and an apple fell out on the street. The rest of the apples quickly followed, and soon the street was covered in apples. People who were passing by helped to retrieve them, but before they retrieved them all, a passing streetcar had squashed three of their precious apples. On another occasion, Henry was carrying ten pounds of apples in a paper bag when it started to rain and the bag began to disintegrate. Desperate, he tried to take off his shirt and put the apples in it. Fortunately, at that point a little girl came running to him, likely sent by her mother, and brought him a stronger bag.

Living at the Atlantic Park Hostel

Thousands of immigrants passed through the hostel, and all sorts of medical issues arose. Babies were born, and people, especially children, became sick and were admitted to hospital. Henry knew the area and spoke English, so he was often called upon to go with people to the hospital to visit their relatives. Hospital beds seem to have been cheap and plentiful in England at that time, and children with communicable diseases like measles and chicken pox were often hospitalized in isolation for several weeks. Sometimes families were split up, with some members going on to Canada and others staying behind because of a sick, hospitalized child. Tragically, in those days before antibiotics, the outcome of these hospitalizations was not always positive. Henry recalled one day when three children from the Mennonite community were buried in England.

Henry had a strong religious faith even in his youth. He read a book entitled Hin und zurück (There and back), and it strengthened his conviction in the Bible. Quite often there were Mennonite ministers among the emigrants from Russia, and they would deliver sermons to the group staying at the hostel. He seems to have enjoyed these sermons, and a number of pages in his diary are devoted to discussing them.

He was very impressed with a prominent Mennonite of the time, Benjamin Unruh. Unruh had been part of a commission that organized the exodus of the Mennonites to Canada during the 1920s. Unruh had come from a poor family, but some neighbouring wealthy Mennonites had recognized his intelligence, and had provided him with a good education. He was now living in Karlsruhe, Germany. Unruh gave the young men at the Atlantic Park Hostel lectures on a variety of topics. These topics included archaeology, and one of his lectures included the alleged discovery of two stone tablets in the Sinai which were thought to have originated with Moses. Apparently, the writing on them utilized Egyptian hieroglyphics but the language was Hebrew. At the time Henry was very impressed, but later he had doubts about the veracity of this claim.

Unruh discussed theological questions with the men. Henry described him as being quite broad-minded, especially for some of the Mennonite Brethren. He believed that the Bible was the source of all truth, and he did not have much time for petty religious differences. Unruh had been active in a conciliatory way between Slavic labourers and the Mennonite farmers during the revolutionary period, and this may have saved some Mennonite lives. Unruh’s attitude was that “one must always be able to put oneself in the other man’s situation and not think only of oneself.” He also emphasized that God was there for all people, and that we must not have faith in our own experiences, but rather have faith in God.

Unruh travelled throughout Europe to straighten out issues with visas and passports, and visited the hostel a number of times, where he would spend time with the young men. He would play dominoes with them, and even take them out to dinner. He would discuss their problems, and at times advocate for them as needed with the authorities. Henry was taken with Unruh; he called him a very special person and thought that he had never seen a better man. Apparently Unruh was generous to a fault. Henry was told that back in imperial Russia, if Unruh butchered a pig, he gave so much away to the poor that it would leave his own family short of food.

The Mennonites of that era had certain ideas about the gender roles of men and women. It seemed that young men like Henry were incapable of washing their own clothes. They felt this was a job only for girls, and Henry mentioned that he had a “wash girl” who would do his washing. It is unclear just how he persuaded her to do this for him. In his diaries there is never any mention of payment for these services. It was problematic that on several occasions his “wash girl” was able to leave for Canada before he could, so he had several different wash girls during his time at the Atlantic Park Hostel. The wash girls did seem to try hard to be helpful. One girl, before she left for Canada, obtained a new wash girl for him.

Henry did considerable growing up during his time at the hostel. On one occasion, he fell in love. Unfortunately, his feelings were not reciprocated, and he was heartbroken for a while. On another occasion, a friend was medically approved to go to Canada and decided to have a little celebration. The friend, Jonathan Friesen, bought several bottles of wine and treated his comrades at the hostel to a few drinks. Henry does not seem to have had much experience with alcohol. While celebrating Jonathan’s good fortune, he drank some wine, and a little later, when they all sat down to supper, he got a funny feeling in his head. He believed he was drunk and panicked a little because he did not know how much worse it might get. He was still able to find his mouth with his fork, and felt that he managed to get through the evening without causing suspicion. He stated that this was the closest he ever got to being drunk.

In England, the Mennonites maintained their old customs. On the morning of January 1, 1928, Henry did grain strewing. This was a custom that the Mennonites seem to have adopted during their time in imperial Russia. If you could find a person in bed, you would lift the covers and throw grain on his body while saying, “I am seeding and dedicating and wishing you a happy new year.”

Medical Clearance

On March 3, 1928, word came that a Canadian doctor wanted to examine a group of the Mennonites at the Atlantic Park Hostel. A list was brought to their lodgings, and Henry noted that his name was last on the list. As he waited to be examined, he vacillated between hope and despair. There is an old German saying that the last one is bitten by the dogs, but Henry kept telling himself that this would not be the case today. He prayed and committed himself to the Lord.

Finally it was his turn. The doctor was from Saint John, New Brunswick. She examined his eyes carefully and asked him to look down and then look up. Then she was finished and he was sent on his way. One of his companions, a Mr. Penner who had been waiting for five years at the hostel to join his wife in Canada, did not pass. Penner was very upset, and Dr. McGee, the local doctor, came out and asked Henry to calm Penner down. Then he said the fateful words to Henry: “You are all right”.

There was still the small matter of his passport. While they were at the hostel, the Russian passports of many Mennonites, including that of Henry, had expired. Unfortunately, there had been a diplomatic row in London. The Soviet embassy was found to be a major spy centre, and all the Russian diplomats had been expelled from Britain. This meant that the expired Russian passports had to be sent to the Russian embassy in Paris. Henry’s renewed passport had not yet arrived from Paris.

On March 10 he was still at the hostel. It was already evening, and although Mr. Unruh had expected their passports by then, they had not arrived. They were having evening devotions with Unruh when the head of the hostel, Colonel Barber, appeared, interrupted them, and said he had learned that twenty passports were ready.

The next morning they were all up at six, and after breakfast Henry went by car to Eastleigh, and from there by train to Southampton. Goodbyes were said to all those staying behind, and they were off to the port. After receiving their cabin cards, they boarded and went to the dining room. The ship was to leave at two in the afternoon. At this point Henry learned to his horror that the passports had still not yet arrived. At last the ship from Paris arrived, but their passports were not on board.

They were told to disembark, and an automobile took them back to the hostel, where life went on as usual. Henry visited Mr. Collis, the pastry shop owner to whom he had been selling eggs for several years, and said goodbye. The baker gave him a cake for a present.

Finally, on March 16, Henry was summoned to the office and given his passport and visas. On Saturday he boarded the Melita and was on his way to Canada. The ship took on some passengers in Cherbourg, and then again in Iceland. Henry was lucky in that, unlike many of his friends, he did not get seasick. They did encounter a storm during their crossing, and at one point the ship lurched so hard Henry thought they had struck something. He expected alarms to go off at any minute, but nothing happened, and all appeared to be well.

On March 26, the passengers disembarked in Saint John, New Brunswick. Henry feared his eyes would be re-examined or there would be something wrong with his paperwork and he would be sent back. He passed through a number of steps with immigration, and eventually an official asked him if, given all the extensions in his passport, he had another paper. He did not. The official said, “This fellow must be CPR,” and walked off with Henry’s passport. Henry was terrified and thought, “They got me at last.” This was not, however, the case. The official came back, gave him his passport, and soon Henry had passed through a door marked “Out.” He was in Canada.

Ernest and Werner Becker are the sons of Henry. Ernest had a long career in physics and holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia. Werner received an MD degree from the University of Manitoba and has served as a professor at the University of Calgary and as Chief Examiner in Neurology for the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. They share an interest in history, and their parents experienced first-hand a fascinating and tumultuous historical period.