Christa Bonde

Christa Bonde was born in Burwalde, Ukraine on August 29, 1927 to Gerhard and Maria (Harms) Derksen. She was the middle child of seven: Gerhard, Maria, Anna, Christa, Erna & Jakob. One brother Peter passed away in infancy

Christa was predeceased by her parents Gerhard and Maria, infant brother Peter, brother George, sister Anna, sister Erna, sister Maria, and brother Jakob.

Christa passed peacefully into the presence of Jesus, her Lord and Saviour on Monday, September 22, 2025 at 3:00 pm at the Bradley Centre, the long-term care facility where she had resided since January 30, 2024.

Christa is survived by her children Ruth (Greg) Haggerty and Peter (Anna) Bonde, eight grandchildren (Lauren, Jordan, Janelle, Micaiah, Jeremiah, Shekinah, Zephaniah and Peter) and two great grandchildren (Joshua and Weston). She is lovingly remembered by her family and friends and leaves behind a legacy of love, faith, and resilience to all who were blessed to know her.

The family would like to send their heartfelt thanks to all medical professionals and friends – Dr. Basson, Dr. Hamilton, Arron Docksteader, all of the excellent staff members at the Bradley Centre, and especially her faithful friends Ruth, Billie, Sandra, Todd, Helen, Maria, Gerlinda, Elke, Calista and Eleanor for their kindness and compassion towards Christa.

A celebration of life will be held at the Woodlawn Funeral Home on Hocking Avenue in Chilliwack on Friday, October 10 at 2 pm. If desired, donations in memory of Christa to the Mennonite Central Committee or Cloverdale Bibleway would be gratefully accepted in lieu of flowers.

Christa will be deeply missed by all of us but we celebrate because we know that she accepted God’s gift of a ticket to heaven, not based on her merit but because of His suffering, loving kindness, grace and mercy.

Eulogy:

Christa was born in Burwalde, Ukraine (which belonged to Russia at the time) on August 29, 1927 to Gerhard and Maria (Harms) Derksen. She was the middle child of a total of seven siblings: Gerhard, Maria, Anna, Christa, Erna & Jakob. One brother Peter passed away in infancy.

Christa lived through the unimaginable hardships of World War II. They were severely malnourished. One night, the family had one beet for supper between all of them and Christa’s mother cut it into slivers until everyone agreed they were even portions and they each got 1/8 of a beet.

Her mother traded all her beautiful. embroidered velvet dresses for food (she came from a well-to-do family). She would pack up what she thought was going to get some food to keep her family alive. She traded all their furniture and most of their feather bedding and her Singer sewing machine for eighteen pumpkins that kept them alive for a little longer. They would get a four-inch square piece of pumpkin for every meal – they had two meals a day.

After she traded all that she had, they slept on straw in the living room with very little to cover up with, but they had plenty of straw and the living room had wood floors, so they were warm enough. That was when Christa was four or five years old.

To keep the house warm, they had to go to the fields and cut down sunflower stalks and carry them home on their backs. She remembers being so cold that there was terrible pain between her shoulders. They had no warm clothes and very few other clothes to wear and the weather got to be 40 degrees below zero (Celsius).

In kindergarten they received a red star to show that they were “October children” – step #1 to becoming a Communist. In school they were always pressured to join the “Pioneers”. That’s the second step to becoming a communist. For the third step, you got to wear a red neck-cloth to fasten with a clip that had three flames on it. After that, you became a Communist and got a certificate.

For the school years they were always labelled “Germans” which did not have a good meaning. It was considered a degrading name.

In the winter, around 1932, there was absolutely no harvest.

Around 1934, Tina (their mom’s stepdaughter), who was fifteen years old, worked in the barns to feed corn cobs into a contraption where one girl was feeding cobs in and the other was cranking it to remove the seeds. They got a bowl of soup and a piece of bread for their pay. Tina would eat the soup and bring home the piece of bread. She stole a small bag of corn hanging between her legs so she could bring something home for Mom to cook.

One winter, maybe in 1934, in desperation, Dad told Marie and George to go begging. They left to walk miles and miles to find some villages where the farmers still had some food because they were in the back country and they were too close to a big city. They walked for miles and it was snowing. Marie wanted to lie down to sleep but George knew better that that. They had taken off their shoes; they had no feeling in their feet anymore. If they would have stopped to rest and sleep, that would have been the end of them. Then they heard a dog bark and kept walking toward it. They came to a Russian farm. The couple took them in and rubbed them with snow to save their hands and feet. There was no phone so the man went to the village office to send word to our village to say that they were found. They ate the few bread crusts out of their pockets and waited until their village sent a big sled filled with straw to bring them home. It took a long time to recuperate.

One day at school (1936) Christa’s teacher (Paulina Phylipovna) went home with her to check if there was anything influencing her not to join. They tried everything. Their argument was that they would get better grades, but she and her cousin were already the best students. Paulina came home with Christa after school and saw the beautiful pictures of angels they had in lovely old golden frames. She said, “What’s that?” Christa didn’t dare open her mouth. She commanded them to take them down, “right now”. Then the children were asked if their parents were against them joining. Christa said, “Oh no!!!” Had she said yes, her parents would have been sent to Siberia and the children would have been put into orphanages where they would have brought them up “properly” (Communist). Christa was only nine years old at the time, but she knew exactly what to say.

One summer, her father was hired by a far-away village to survey their land and straighten out their bookkeeping. He worked hard all summer only to find out they could not pay him cash but would pay him in grain come fall. Sure enough, they brought him a large load of grain and helped Dad to carry it all into their attic. They would have had bread for years. No such luck – it leaked out that he got paid with grain and within days the village office people came with a wagon and took every kernel and left. They swept the place clean; there wasn’t a handful left. The village where he worked was called Rozmovka.

In October, 1937, when Christa was 10, her father was sent to prison because somebody stole two sacks of grain while he was watchman and they never heard from him again. Kuzma, his friend, told on him. Mom went to the city jail several times with warm clothing because he was taken just after he got home from the field, tired and sweaty and his clothes were dirty, but all they allowed him to do was to get his glasses before they took him. Mom was not successful in getting the clothes to him. You didn’t have to say much to have someone sent to Siberia because they got paid for telling. You just had to say someone was religious and off to Siberia they went. Her mother, Maria was now alone, destitute and poor, with all the children.

When Christa was eleven (1938), her mom was expecting her seventh child, Peter. Peter died at 11 months in the hospital. The nurse got orders to give him three drops of peppermint, but she gave him 30 drops and Mom saw the life being drained out of him and watched him die. Annie (about age 13) took his death very hard; she was the one taking care of him because Mom had to work from daybreak until sundown at the collective farm.

Instead of Sundays off, they got every tenth day off of school. When it was harvesting time, nobody got any days off.

One winter Christa was craving a carrot, so Mom went around asking for a carrot. Christa’s craving was so bad that she got sick. Then one day an old Russian couple stopped for overnight next door at her grandma’s. They had an old skinny horse to pull their little handmade cart with all of their possessions. Mom had to leave to trade what she could and she told the children that the horse was going to die that night and said, “Don’t you dare eat that horse because it is full of boils”. Sure enough, that horse died during the night. Well, they had a party eating some of that horse. George went over, cut off the best meat he could, avoiding the boils. Then George and Marie cooked the meat well and they ate. When their mom came home, they were all smiles because they were all satisfied. It’s surprising what a full stomach can do!!!

In August, 1939, Christa’s Aunt Lise (Christa’s mom’s youngest sister), was sent to attend a conference in Saparogje, the big city, and coming back she came by train to Chortiza, a small city where she had to be picked up. It was harvesting time and all the men, women and work horses were busy. Christa was twelve years old so they sent her to pick her aunt up with a two-seater wagon and a beautiful stallion; she was very afraid of the stallion.

Picking her aunt up took Christa much of the day to get there and back. She had to go through a two or three-mile wooded area and hooligans would pop out and grab the horse by the head and rob you and hurt you or take the horse and buggy. She was told to jerk the lines back and forth and the stallion would do the rest. She got there without running into hooligans, but after tying her horse, she was just going to find her aunt in this city building as a man tied his mare next to her stallion and the stallion got very loud and excited over the mare. He got so tangled up in his gear, kicking!!! A couple of men removed the mare and untangled the stallion, which took quite a bit, because the stallion was still very excited. Christa was never so scared in her life. The men stayed with her horse and buggy until she found Aunt Lise and they left to go home. It took one hour and thirty minutes to get home. They were not allowed to talk about God but he was there for her.

Christa worked with the horses all the time, bringing grain, straw sheaves and produce from the big community garden in the wagon - whatever needed to be done. They also had to bind the sheaves by hand and you had to be fast because you had to gather them, bind them, and toss them aside to make room before the horses came around again. They had to make their own binders with straw. She liked driving the horses better than loading or unloading or hoeing in the fields – the rows were so long that you could not see from end to end and it was hard to keep up with the robust Russian women. She worked in the fields until Oct 3, 1942.

Her family endured bombings, starvation and displacement. When the German army retreated, on October 6, 1943, in rain and sleet, they fled from Ukraine to Germany via Poland in open cattle boxcars where they stayed in a deserted village for a couple of weeks because the Russian army were all around them so their transport was stationary. The German army managed an opening so they could go to Germany. They were ordered from the village to Apostolovo train station. They no sooner got settled after getting there when they were badly bombed. One bomb landed three feet from their boxcar and they felt it was the end. It shook so badly but the next morning they found that the bomb had not exploded; praise God!!! So, they travelled on to Germany. They had no food and no toilet in their boxcar – only a pail behind a blanket for privacy, and of course it all went overboard. There was no water and there was no Red Cross. They were allowed to take what they could carry. They left their home and orchard of 150 apricot trees. They managed to bring a sack of dried apricots, which weighed about 50 pounds. That kept the people in the boxcar fed for weeks. When the train stopped at times, they scrambled for water. There were 27 people in their boxcar sleeping on straw - young, old, children and teenagers. Christa was sixteen years old.

They arrived in Ratibor, Obershiesien, Germany on November 12, 1943. The trip took them from October 6, 1943 until November 12, 1943 because their transport was blocked by the Russians in Apostolova, Poland, where they were bombed by the Russians. They were put into a huge building with some bathrooms and bunkbeds. There were two bunkbeds on the bottom that her mom and Erna and Jake were assigned to; on top it was Mr. Enns and Christa with a blanket strung between them for privacy. It was difficult for Christa, a 16-year-old to be put together with Mr. Enns (an old man from their village), but they had to put him somewhere. That’s all the room they had – they could just barely walk between beds. Her mom had a few personal things under her bed. They were fed once a day with turnip soup and a piece of bread. The place was called Schutzenhof, Ratibor, Obershlesien.

Then, on Nov 22, 1944, Christa and her sisters Maria and Anna were recruited to the German Airforce. Twenty-eight young women, approximately 17 to 21 years of age from their group were ordered to join the German Air Force. Christa was only seventeen years old and her mother pleaded to be allowed to keep her back, without success. She had to go along with her two older sisters. They were medically examined, put into uniform in Rendsburg, Schleswig Holstein then sent to Augsburg for training for three weeks and then from Augsburg to action. Then they were sent to Hamburg to work in the twin towers, which were each ten stories high. Christa’s job was to use radar to relay co-ordinates to gunners. Then they had to retreat because the front was getting closer; they could hear explosions closer and closer.

In January, 1945, they were to march to Nimmersat, close to Hirchberg, Risengeburge. Next, back to Rensburg and then for action to Wilhelmsburg Cei Hamburg where they worked for the airforce in Hochbunker. When they came to Nimmersat, they were directed to an old gutted castle with no bathrooms. There were 300 girls sleeping on straw. They got soup and a piece of bread once a day. When they realized that the soup was running short, some water was added and they all got a bad case of the runs!!! The castle was on a hill and there was a lot of snow.

From there, they marched to Hirshberg to the train station. Christa was too weak to make it there, but the rest got onto the train. Two soldiers took pity on her and grabbed her to shove her through the window head first. She doesn’t remember how she landed, but later she found her sisters. There was a train full of wounded soldiers. Everyone got on. It was so crowded. By then they were a smaller group of about seventeen girls because some of the girls had already branched off to go home if they still had homes. People were hanging on the bars on both sides of the outside of the train. From there, they got orders to go to Beuten, and then Beuten to Kasel.

In Ratibor, they were housed in a very large building full of bunk beds. Each upper bunk occupant and lower bunk occupant shared the space under the bed to store their very few possessions. There was barely enough room to walk between the bunks. They were given German passports because they were of German origin and could speak German.

In April, 1945 they were each given a dress and dismissed from the air force so they would not be taken as prisoners of war. They were placed with families in Hamburg to do housework. In 1946, they went to work on a Gut (a very large farm), where hundreds of people worked in fields under supervision. Their pay was a certain number of grams of flour, dried beans or potatoes per work day. If you were sick—too bad—no provisions. Olhof, which was the name of the Gut, had a mailing address of Goflar, Am, Harz because it was near that city.

Between January 1 and 6, 1947, they went to Munich, Germany to obtain their papers to leave the country. They waited several weeks in Munich until they received their papers and then went to Bramerhafen, Germany. They left Bramerhafen, Germany on February 1, 1947 for Argentina and then Paraguay.

They were a group of about 1,100 Mennonite refugees who had fled Russia who after much misfortune, adversity and endangerment of life, had finally reached their destination, narrowly escaping with their lives. It was only at the last moment that Russian authorities gave the necessary permission required to travel.

In 1947, the MCC chartered a ship (the Volendam) to transport Mennonite refugees from Europe to Paraguay, and Christa was one of many on board. Here on the eastern side of the Paraguay River, began the strenuous and difficult task of creating a new life in the jungle.

One night in Paraguay, Christa slept in a room with a live rattlesnake all night and couldn’t get off the bed until someone came to get the snake out.

Christa had to have an emergency appendectomy in Paraguay. She had to ride a horse all day to get to the village one-room hospital. Then, they performed surgery on her with just local freezing and six men held her down. The villagers were peering through the windows during her surgery.

Christa was predeceased by her parents Gerhard and Maria, infant brother Peter, brother George, sister Anna, sister Erna, sister Maria, and brother Jakob. Christa’s mother passed away in Paraguay at the age of 49 in April, 1951. She was one in a million who did everything she could to ensure her children survived.

Christa’s brother George immigrated to Canada and then managed to get his siblings from Paraguay to Canada, one at a time. We are forever grateful to him.

Enduring personal hardship, she raised her children, Ruth and Peter, in Chilliwack, on her own after 1969. She canned food for others, taking half of it for payment, did laundry, babysat and later attended school to become a hairstylist. From her own home, she built a business Christa’s Cut ‘N Curl and many people would have their hair styled by nobody else.

Her life was a story of overcoming—perhaps most notably after a devastating car accident on October 20, 1972 that left her with life-threatening injuries. Despite being told she would never walk again, she endured over a year in the hospital, underwent intensive surgery, overcame a difficult recovery, and eventually learned to walk again at GF Strong Rehab Centre. Her perseverance left a lasting example of grit and grace.

Christa was also a cancer survivor; in 2007, she was diagnosed with lymphoma and underwent chemotherapy, enduring much vomiting and feeling very ill from the drugs. But she again recovered with God’s help.

Christa had a deep passion for gardening and was a fabulous cook and baker. Her hands were never idle – always creating, always giving. She tended a large garden filled with fruit and nut trees, including her cherished Granny Smith apple tree and fig trees. She was wise with her finances, generous with her heart, and firm in her convictions. She loved canning and pickling. Her smoked salmon was the best. She loved to share her wonderful cooking, baking, vegetables, fruit and flowers. She shared many, many of the orchids she grew with friends and neighbours. She loved crocheting – especially doilies, and gifted many people with her handiwork.

Christa loved getting long, newsy letters from Bonnie, her cherished niece, who lives in Alberta. Bonnie was very faithful, sending many beautiful letters and cards.

Christa suffered a major stroke on January 7, 2024. She was not expected to survive, but had an amazing will to live and pulled through. Unfortunately, this stroke left her without the ability to speak or walk, which was very difficult for her since her mind was still sharp. She did her best to remain optimistic and cheerful but she longed to see Jesus.

Christa spent her days looking out the window to the patio which had many flowers, doing puzzles, playing games, listening to hymns being sung by her family in her ear, listening to scripture and prayers, and enjoying many visits with her family, faithful friends and neighbours. Her sense of humour remained. She was proud of her still strong grip.

Christa’s faith in God was unwavering. She embraced the truth of God’s Word, was baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and found joy in the message of the hour. Through every trial, she remained cheerful and thankful, recognizing that God had brought her through all things.

She was a deeply positive woman, always ready with loving advice and a smile, and always health-conscious and active well into her later years. We mourn her passing, but more than that, we celebrate a life lived fully, faithfully, and with remarkable strength from God. She will be dearly missed and forever remembered.

While she appreciated all of the visits immensely, she yearned for heaven and her prayers were finally answered.

Christa passed peacefully into the presence of Jesus, her Lord and Saviour on Monday, September 22, 2025 at 3:00 pm at the Bradley Centre, the long-term care facility where she had resided since January 30, 2024. Christa is survived by her children Ruth (Greg) Haggerty and Peter (Anna) Bonde, eight grandchildren (Lauren, Jordan, Janelle, Micaiah, Jeremiah, Shekinah, Zephaniah and Peter) and two great grandchildren (Joshua and Weston). She is lovingly remembered by her family and friends and leaves behind a legacy of love, faith, and resilience to all who were blessed to know her.

The family would like to send their heartfelt thanks to all medical professionals and friends – Dr. Basson, Dr. Hamilton, Arron Docksteader, all of the excellent staff members at the Bradley Centre, and especially her faithful friends Ruth, Billie, Todd, Sandra, Helen, Maria, Gerlinda, Elke, Calista and Eleanor for their kindness and compassion towards Christa.

Christa will be deeply missed by all of us but we celebrate because we know that she accepted God’s gift of a ticket to heaven, not based on her merit but because of His suffering, loving kindness, grace and mercy.