This book was recommended to me at least fifteen years ago. I was warned that it was hard to find. It’s been so hard to find that even with an actively saved search on eBay this is only the second copy I’ve seen in that time. Someone bought the first one before I could even click on the link in my email. This second one is now mine. It’s been a good wait and purchase.
I opened this book without a single memory of what I’d been told except that it’s a memoir. It turned out to be the story of Anna Kosloff and her daughter, Anna Bilbrough. Born in Bolshevik Russia as a Mennonite to a comfortable farming family. From Orenberg the Mennonite families decide to travel to Siberia. Years later Kosloff is married and after not being able to fulfill their obligations to the government they have to leave.
Their travel leads them to China where her husband and a daughter die. Then India, with a new husband and more children, and finally to Germany just in time for WWII. After twenty years of being citizens of no country i.e. stateless, Anna Kosloff eventually finds her way to Australia. It is an absolutely amazing story and well worth the wait.
This book is engrossing and a challenge to put down. Anna Kosloff faces each challenge with courage and dignity. She uses the skills she learned on the farm to keep her moving forward and to create jobs for herself. In China she taught people how to make buttons. She made a useful amount of money by becoming a partner to the family who had everything needed to make buttons except the skills. She taught the skills and they made her a partner and helped her to find accommodation. At another time she taught the skill of making stockings to some other people. All skills she’d used on the farm.
They have a lot of help along the way. Once they get to Slavgorod where they expect to stay for some time the neighbours help make them a house. I loved the construction. Essentially, they cleared the snow, took off the turf and dug a 25 foot square hole, about five foot deep, stamping the soil to make nine foot high walls before lining the walls with the turf and then cutting in windows and a door. It sounds incredibly cosy and is called a zemleyanka, or earth-dwelling. They then built a petschka, or oven. A huge oven which can dry the washing, heat the house, cook all the food and also be used to sleep on once the fire had died down. I loved all of those details.
Quite some pages on they’re travelling through Turkistan. Here they see the Kirghiz or Kalmucks pitching their yurts. We get a description of a yurt and how they are easy to set up or take down. It makes being a nomad much easier.
It seems there are many cultures who believe that a person lives forever while their name is spoken, or while they live on in other’s hearts. This is demonstrated in China with the following excerpt:
‘I will always remember you, ‘ I said in my best Chinese.’
‘Cho cho,’ she answered. ‘Not to be remembered is not to have lived. To live in the memory of others is to have everlasting life,’ Cha-sah interpreted for her.
The phrasing is delightful.
The bit that really got me was where she made her own yeast. Apparently it was something she did back on the farm in Russia. She just casually made her own yeast. Then she makes bread from it, I’m sure the bread was delicious. Some time later she started selling bread. Again, using skills she learned on the farm to make money. I’m still in awe of the yeast. When I want to make bread I open up the frig and take out the dried yeast granules that I’ve bought from the shop.
If you’re able to find this book it’s well worth a read. It’s great on detail about how they managed to travel, sometimes under their own steam, other times with people smugglers. I’ve often thought that farmers must have a great set of skills and this book proves that delightfully. I would have loved to have met Kosloff, but she died before this book could be written. Her daughter, Anna Bilbrough, put this tome with extensive notes Kosloff had left behind and also with her own memories. Bilbrough was also able to consult her siblings to get their memories.