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The train still rumbles through Lichtenau, Harry Giesbrecht’
s birthplace in the heart of Ukraine’s historic “Mennonite
region.”
It carries passengers and freight, but not nearly the
throngs of the 1920s. Then its cargo was Mennonites. Lots
of them.
The mainline station on the edge of the village holds a
mystical grip on the memories of Mennonites who gathered
there in droves to escape the unfolding Bolshevik tyranny.
That was where thousands of them clambered aboard with
their few possessions, leaving behind homes, farms and
relatives as they headed for a new life in Canada.
You can still watch the train come through, but today there
are no teeming crowds of emigrants, no tearful farewells,
no mournful singing of hymns and prayers.
Harry Giesbrecht never made it onto one of those trains.
By the time he came along the flow of emigration had
ebbed. When he left, it was on foot.
Lichtenau was one of the first villages in the Molotchna
colony, which was settled by Mennonites from Prussia in
1804. It was located a few miles south of Halbstadt, a larger
administrative and educational center. For more than a
century Mennonites flourished there.
But that ground to an excruciating halt. At the age of four
Giesbrecht was sucked into the swirling conflict of the
Bolshevik Revolution. His father, who had been a bank
manager and worked for a trade mission, was arrested as a
political prisoner, dispatched to a prison camp and forced
to work on the Trans-Siberian railroad. Giesbrecht’s mother
and her seven children were ordered to leave.
“We were thrown out of the house,” says Giesbrecht. “We
were allowed to take only what we could carry on our
backs. So we walked. We walked for three days, sleeping in
the ditch at night, to Melitopol, and spent a year there
before moving to Nikopol.”
That was home until 1943 when they and many other
Mennonites managed to get to Germany during the Second
World War. The years were hard and hungry. “I never knew
the feeling of a full stomach until I got to Canada in 1948,”
Giesbrecht says.
His father was eventually released from prison and
rejoined his family. “But he was never the same after that,”
says Giesbrecht. “He was broken in spirit when he came
back.”
The years of flight and scrounging to exist were like
something out of a refugee novel. He describes the gritty
struggles in an accent thickly graveled with Russian, his
first language.
The scars have not made him bitter nor dampened his
lively wit. Instead, the memories seem to fuel his
irrepressible spirit as he enthuses about the myriad
projects he now carries on as a refugee who returned, who
“made good” and now “does good.” There aren’t many folk
around who do more business in Russia – or more mission.
Stories abound of his free-flowing generosity: sending
containers of supplies to orphanages, replacing a furnace
at a village clinic or digging deep to rescue a struggling
business.
He doesn’t hesitate to point out the shortcomings of the
system that nearly wrecked his family but nor does he
gloat. He has chosen a higher road – to share, repair and
show a better way.
“What, after all, is life all about if you cannot give, and
only take,” he says.
When Giesbrecht reached Canada it didn’t take long to
find outlets for his work ethic. He found a job at a Winnipeg
sausage company but soon saw opportunities as an
engineer, and worked for Manitoba Hydro designing
substations for the emerging electrification of the province.
But even in his new land of freedom he encountered
limitations. “Harry’s a fine engineer,” he overheard a
supervisor say. “Too bad he’s German.” When he learned
that this prejudice was more than lunchroom talk, he began
to look elsewhere and soon found work with a growing
construction company where his skills and entrepreneurial
spirit could flourish. When the owner decided to retire, he
offered the construction division to Giesbrecht on
convenient terms.
Soon a new company was born in partnership with two
other members of Giesbrecht’s Mennonite church. Called
Central Canadian Structures Ltd., it would grow to become
a premier contractor of grain elevators and dryers in
Western Canada and as far as China, Romania, Hungary
and Egypt. When traditional grain handling facilities were
supplanted by large regional terminals, Central Canadian
Structures moved into other types of construction –
factories, warehouses, schools and hospitals.
In the mid-1980s he was invited “out of the blue” to the
Soviet Union to participate in a “technology exchange.” For
three days his hosts picked his brains.
“They took everything out of me that I had, and then I
asked them to give, too.”
But there was nothing forthcoming.
The plainspeaking Giesbrecht told them, “‘This is not an
exchange of technology, it’s a transfer of technology.’ So I
went home.”
Six months later he got a letter from the Trade Union, the
biggest organization in the Soviet Union with 16 million
members.
“They owned every hotel and every resort, and now they
wanted to know if they could host foreigners,” says
Giesbrecht, who instantly saw this would be impossible
without massive upgrading or rebuilding.
So they invited him to build a brand new 13-storey 365-
room hotel in Leningrad (since renamed St. Petersburg),
the second-largest city in the country.
That $10.5 million project was Giesbrecht’s first job there,
and “I stayed ever since.”
The venture gave him media exposure as the first
Western company to work in the Soviet Union. He told the
press that his purpose was more sentimental than financial.
“It’s almost a case of revenge in reverse, of turning the
other cheek,” he said at the time. “We have decided to
forgive and help out because we believe the Soviets are
sincere.”
One of the people he would encounter was a bright and
serious young man who was deputy mayor of Leningrad.
His name was Vladimir Putin. They would become friends.
The hotel project was anything but easy. Although Mikhail
Gorbachev was in power, and the improvements of
perestroika were evolving, conditions were still far from
Western standards.
“We had to import absolutely everything – even nails,”
says Giesbrecht. “There was no construction material
except for gravel and cement, and even for that we had to
use our connections with Putin. We imported supplies by
the containerload.”
<next page>
s birthplace in the heart of Ukraine’s historic “Mennonite
region.”
It carries passengers and freight, but not nearly the
throngs of the 1920s. Then its cargo was Mennonites. Lots
of them.
The mainline station on the edge of the village holds a
mystical grip on the memories of Mennonites who gathered
there in droves to escape the unfolding Bolshevik tyranny.
That was where thousands of them clambered aboard with
their few possessions, leaving behind homes, farms and
relatives as they headed for a new life in Canada.
You can still watch the train come through, but today there
are no teeming crowds of emigrants, no tearful farewells,
no mournful singing of hymns and prayers.
Harry Giesbrecht never made it onto one of those trains.
By the time he came along the flow of emigration had
ebbed. When he left, it was on foot.
Lichtenau was one of the first villages in the Molotchna
colony, which was settled by Mennonites from Prussia in
1804. It was located a few miles south of Halbstadt, a larger
administrative and educational center. For more than a
century Mennonites flourished there.
But that ground to an excruciating halt. At the age of four
Giesbrecht was sucked into the swirling conflict of the
Bolshevik Revolution. His father, who had been a bank
manager and worked for a trade mission, was arrested as a
political prisoner, dispatched to a prison camp and forced
to work on the Trans-Siberian railroad. Giesbrecht’s mother
and her seven children were ordered to leave.
“We were thrown out of the house,” says Giesbrecht. “We
were allowed to take only what we could carry on our
backs. So we walked. We walked for three days, sleeping in
the ditch at night, to Melitopol, and spent a year there
before moving to Nikopol.”
That was home until 1943 when they and many other
Mennonites managed to get to Germany during the Second
World War. The years were hard and hungry. “I never knew
the feeling of a full stomach until I got to Canada in 1948,”
Giesbrecht says.
His father was eventually released from prison and
rejoined his family. “But he was never the same after that,”
says Giesbrecht. “He was broken in spirit when he came
back.”
The years of flight and scrounging to exist were like
something out of a refugee novel. He describes the gritty
struggles in an accent thickly graveled with Russian, his
first language.
The scars have not made him bitter nor dampened his
lively wit. Instead, the memories seem to fuel his
irrepressible spirit as he enthuses about the myriad
projects he now carries on as a refugee who returned, who
“made good” and now “does good.” There aren’t many folk
around who do more business in Russia – or more mission.
Stories abound of his free-flowing generosity: sending
containers of supplies to orphanages, replacing a furnace
at a village clinic or digging deep to rescue a struggling
business.
He doesn’t hesitate to point out the shortcomings of the
system that nearly wrecked his family but nor does he
gloat. He has chosen a higher road – to share, repair and
show a better way.
“What, after all, is life all about if you cannot give, and
only take,” he says.
When Giesbrecht reached Canada it didn’t take long to
find outlets for his work ethic. He found a job at a Winnipeg
sausage company but soon saw opportunities as an
engineer, and worked for Manitoba Hydro designing
substations for the emerging electrification of the province.
But even in his new land of freedom he encountered
limitations. “Harry’s a fine engineer,” he overheard a
supervisor say. “Too bad he’s German.” When he learned
that this prejudice was more than lunchroom talk, he began
to look elsewhere and soon found work with a growing
construction company where his skills and entrepreneurial
spirit could flourish. When the owner decided to retire, he
offered the construction division to Giesbrecht on
convenient terms.
Soon a new company was born in partnership with two
other members of Giesbrecht’s Mennonite church. Called
Central Canadian Structures Ltd., it would grow to become
a premier contractor of grain elevators and dryers in
Western Canada and as far as China, Romania, Hungary
and Egypt. When traditional grain handling facilities were
supplanted by large regional terminals, Central Canadian
Structures moved into other types of construction –
factories, warehouses, schools and hospitals.
In the mid-1980s he was invited “out of the blue” to the
Soviet Union to participate in a “technology exchange.” For
three days his hosts picked his brains.
“They took everything out of me that I had, and then I
asked them to give, too.”
But there was nothing forthcoming.
The plainspeaking Giesbrecht told them, “‘This is not an
exchange of technology, it’s a transfer of technology.’ So I
went home.”
Six months later he got a letter from the Trade Union, the
biggest organization in the Soviet Union with 16 million
members.
“They owned every hotel and every resort, and now they
wanted to know if they could host foreigners,” says
Giesbrecht, who instantly saw this would be impossible
without massive upgrading or rebuilding.
So they invited him to build a brand new 13-storey 365-
room hotel in Leningrad (since renamed St. Petersburg),
the second-largest city in the country.
That $10.5 million project was Giesbrecht’s first job there,
and “I stayed ever since.”
The venture gave him media exposure as the first
Western company to work in the Soviet Union. He told the
press that his purpose was more sentimental than financial.
“It’s almost a case of revenge in reverse, of turning the
other cheek,” he said at the time. “We have decided to
forgive and help out because we believe the Soviets are
sincere.”
One of the people he would encounter was a bright and
serious young man who was deputy mayor of Leningrad.
His name was Vladimir Putin. They would become friends.
The hotel project was anything but easy. Although Mikhail
Gorbachev was in power, and the improvements of
perestroika were evolving, conditions were still far from
Western standards.
“We had to import absolutely everything – even nails,”
says Giesbrecht. “There was no construction material
except for gravel and cement, and even for that we had to
use our connections with Putin. We imported supplies by
the containerload.”
<next page>
| Please Support OurFaith Digest 1-800-790-2498 |
| Revenge in Reverse The Story of Harry Giesbrecht By Wally Kroeker |
| The Soviets took his father an evicted his family, but when a window opened, Harry Giebrecht returned to do business. Now nearly 80, he still keeps a feverish pace to help repair and restore his homeland. |
| Copyright 2008 OurFaith Digest |