Honour the Truth

Karl Fast wrote two books. The first, Gebt der Wahrheit die Ehre! (1950–52), follows his own journey — as “Abram Siebert,” who mid-story must take the cover name “Heinz” — from a Mennonite village near Orenburg through war, occupation, flight, and four and a half years of Soviet captivity, to the reunion with his wife and daughter in September 1949. The second, Laß dir an meiner Gnade genügen (1989), tells what happened to everyone else: his mother, conscripted into the Trudarmee at forty-six; his brothers in the labor camps; his wife and infant daughter fleeing west through the collapse of 1945 — and the family’s emigration to Winnipeg, where these pages are written.