The White Slip

On Sept. 29, 2024, Kauffman Museum opened its latest special exhibit, “Unlocking the Past: Immigrant Artifacts & the Stories They Tell.” It ran through June 1, 2025, with the purpose of exploring issues surrounding immigrants and immigration in North America, particularly Kansas, as seen through the lens of the 1874 migration of Mennonites from Imperial Russia to the Great Plains of North America.

The exhibit prompted a variety of new donations of immigrant artifacts to the museum, as well as additional information on artifacts in the existing collections. During the course of the exhibit, “Unlocking the Past” exhibit developer Dave Kreider met up with Justina Neufeld of North Newton, whose pillowcase-turned-slip was featured in the exhibit. Neufeld reminded Kreider that some years ago, she had written a story, “The White Slip Saga,” about the pillowcase that Neufeld’s mother turned into a slip as a parting gift before her daughter left the refugee camp. Kreider asked if Neufeld would be willing to see the story be published in Mennonite Life.

Justina Neufeld has written about her family history in A Family Torn Apart (Pandora Press, 2003) and Justa’s Escape (with Russell Binkley, Resource Publications, 2022). “The White Slip Saga” approaches the traumas of WWII refugee history from a different viewpoint.

**

I was a standard-size 26×26-inch white pillow slip. On washday, up to 13 of us were soaped with homemade soap, scrubbed by hand on the washboard, boiled, and then hung out on the line to flutter in the wind to dry. It was in 1935, in Ukraine, when I came into the Dietrich Neufeld family. The Neufeld family was large, consisting of Dietrich, the father, Anna, the mother, Tante, grandmother’s sister, eight boys and two girls. Justa (pronounced “Yusta”), the youngest girl, and I would become well acquainted.

As time went on, fewer and fewer slips appeared on the wash line. Some complained of getting weaker and weaker from all the scrubbing and boiling. They began to fray and one by one they fell apart. I was the newest and strongest one. After some years, I noticed I was the only one left of the thirteen. Mama Anna said to Tante, “Since we have only one slip, we’ll put it on Papa’s pillow.”

Papa Dietrich had short, soft gray hair, even though he was only 51 years old. He worked long hours and slept very little. He hardly had time to snore. When I cradled his head, his snoring was music to my ears. One evening I heard Papa Dietrich say, “Oh, how good it is to lay my head on this clean, soft pillow. It smells of sunshine.”

Then one night in June of 1941, he didn’t come home from work. I heard Mama Anna sobbing as she knelt beside the bed. “Please, God, hear my pleading. Protect Dietrich, wherever he is.” She did not get into bed that night. She sat in the kitchen all night at the table waiting for Papa.

In the morning, she sent Justa to Papa’s workplace at the collective dairy farm to tell him that breakfast was ready. When Justa returned, I heard her tell Mama the news, “The communists took him away. He’s not coming for breakfast.”

“Oh God, they arrested him!” Mama gasped. She covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

“That’s what Tante Peters told me,” Justa continued, averting her eyes from Mama’s face to hide her tears.

All day there was an eerie silence in the house. This family, usually boisterous and loud, did not talk to each other now. The children went to bed quietly.

Mama Anna came to bed late that night. She now took Papa’s pillow and I dried her tears and heard her struggles and fears. “How can we go on without him? How will I care for my five youngest children and for Tante?” Mama wept.

Two days after Papa’s arrest, war started between our country and Germany. In August, the German army occupied our village. The Neufeld family hoped the German army had liberated the prisoners where Papa was and that he would be home soon. Two of Justa’s older brothers went to the big city where Papa was in prison to search for him, but could not find out what happened to the prisoners. Mama Anna continued to pray each night and she dried her tears on me. She never gave up hope that her beloved Dietrich would return home.

Justa often heard Mama’s prayers. By the time Justa was 13, Papa had been gone for two long years and she missed him very much. Sometimes she couldn’t remember what he looked like. She couldn’t remember the sound of his voice.

The war took a turn and then one day I heard rumors that everyone in the whole village was going to flee from the approaching communist army. The ache in Justa’s heart grew bigger and bigger at the thought of leaving the village without Papa. At the same time, I felt her quiver with excitement when she lay next to Mama, for she was very curious about what lay beyond her village and she was eager to see and explore new places.

One day the village leader announced that they must flee before the communist army recaptured the village. So Mama Anna said, “We’ll take our blankets, pillows, and some food for us and fodder for our horses with us. We don’t know where we are going or how long we’ll be gone. Let’s hope this war is soon over so we can return home.”

The next day I was washed, and I fluttered with excitement on the wash line. I was going with the family on a journey! Late October 1943, they loaded the wagon. Mama’s sewing machine and the family Kruger clock were added to the bedding and food on the wagon. One early morning they left with all the rest of the families of their village. Mama rode on the wagon. She clutched me to her chest and, burying her face in me, she whispered softly, “God, what will become of us? Leaving with winter coming on, what will we eat? Where will we sleep? With Dietrich and the five older children scattered across the land, how can we just leave? And all because of this war!” I gladly soaked up her tears, and sensed a journey full of doom and uncertainty and adventure ahead.

And what an adventure it was! Within the first hour of leaving the village, the caravan of wagons was strafed from the air. Half a dozen airplanes overhead pumped bullets to the ground. It terrified the refugees. They jumped from their wagons and took cover in the ditches along the road. After the planes were gone and the panic and confusion settled they found that only some sheep nearby were hit. The people asked each other, “Was it a miracle that no people were killed? Did they not aim at us refugees? Did they only want to scare us? Or was it really a miracle that no one was killed?” But all their cows and sheep had been hopelessly scattered. They now had to leave them all behind.

After the refugees and frightened horses recovered, the trek moved on under continued threat of the fast approaching communist army from the east. Toward evening the caravan approached the city of Krivoy Rog. The people and the horses, thirsty and weary from the 35-kilometer walk, eventually found water. After daylight faded, they spread their bedding under their wagons for the night. But before they could fall asleep, they heard the roar of planes in the distance followed by the dropping of bombs. Explosion after explosion followed. The terrified refugees watched the city of Krivoy Rog light up in flames. Mama Anna panicked. She took me and covered Justa’s body to shield her from danger. As if I could? I guess she had to do something!

The journey west by wagon took three months. By day I was on the wagon and Mama Anna laid her head on me, or had me under her arm, or leaned against me. At night I went with Mama Anna to wherever she lay down to rest. Sometimes she slept under the wagon, sometimes in a field next to a haystack. After the weather turned cold and rainy, or with sleet and snow, she slept with me in smelly old barns. I was not washed or boiled for months, but I didn’t mind. We were all in this together. I did my best, when it got cold, to warm Mama Anna’s shoulders. After sleeping in smelly barns on straw where hundreds of other refugees had also slept, lice invaded every newcomer who came to sleep on the same straw. Soon all the refugees suffered terribly from lice.

The little creatures occupied every seam of every garment, every piece of bedding, and every head of hair. There they multiplied and sucked blood from the starved and weary, homeless people. The lice found hiding places in my seams too, because I had not been washed or boiled in a long time.

In January of 1944, I arrived with the family in Poland. Here they separated the families from their belongings. While the refugees had to take disinfecting showers in a large room, I was carried along with all the other bundles into a huge room and put on a shelf for disinfection. Then the men shut the door and it was pitch dark. It got warm in that room. Soon it was very hot. Then it cooled off again. When the men opened the door, an older man said in a gruff voice, “That should have killed all the vermin these filthy refugees bring with them.”

I was reunited with Mama Anna again. She and 350 other refugees found shelter in one large room in an old empty flour mill. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of sacks of flour had once been stored on the second floor of this mill. The room was long and narrow with windows on one side of the wall. Now there were tired, hungry, young, old, and middle-aged homeless refugees all over the room finding shelter from the harsh winter outdoors. Each family claimed a little space on both sides of the large room along the walls where they could stretch out at night on the floor. This left a path in the middle which had posts from floor to ceiling. Some families partitioned off their space by tying string from post to post and hanging blankets over the string to give them some privacy.

There were toilets downstairs in another building, but no showers or sinks to wash clothes. It smelled of stale sweaty clothes in this large room. In the daytime it was very noisy – children crying, people coughing, and loud talking. It was never very quiet –even at night. People sometimes gathered in the middle of the room at night. One night I heard the cry of a baby, and then the cheers of the people in the middle of the room, shouting, “May she soon have a real home, live long, and may she prosper!” A new baby had just been born!

One day I overheard Mama Anna tell Tante, “I’m going to send Justa to visit her brother Gerhard and his family in France. She is so thin and frail.”

Gerhard had fled from communism to Alsace Lorraine in France and worked there as an engineer. He was also a refugee, but now had plenty to eat. Mama Anna continued, “But I can’t send Justa in the rags she is wearing.”

Tante’s brow crinkled as she put her right forefinger to her mouth – a sign that she was thinking. “Well, how about making a dress from my old coat? We can turn it inside out. It still looks good on the inside,” she said.

Several days later, the new dress was finished. Then Mama Anna took me off my pillow. I did not know what she had in mind. But in no time she had made me into a girl’s slip – except I had no straps!

I saw Tante rummaging around in her bundle of clothes. “Here, I found it!” She exclaimed. “This lace is frayed in some places. I’ll unravel it and you can crochet straps for the slip. Maybe there’s even enough yarn for a narrow strip of lace for the bottom.”

“Yes, yes! That is just the right thickness to make straps!” Mama Anna exclaimed excitedly. “Justa adores lace. She has never in her first 13 years of life had anything beautiful to wear. Since she was born, she has always worn clothes I sewed from somebody else’s clothes.”

Mama Anna started crocheting lace from the old unraveled and knotted yarn. I knew with the adornment I would be happy to be changed from a pillow slip into a body slip. I quivered with excitement, not only because I would be close to Justa’s soft thin body, but also because I would travel to another country – to France no less!

When Justa first put me on her body, she shrieked, “Oh, how soft! What lovely lace all around the hem too! Now I never want to put on that old scratchy army blanket slip again! Never again!” She hugged herself and danced around the small blanket partitioned room the family called home. Ever since her Papa had been arrested, I could not remember when Justa had expressed such joy.

When we got to her brother’s home in France, Justa had all the food she wanted. She was never hungry. And her body changed. Her chest became bigger and hips appeared. Soon she no longer felt comfortable wearing me, so Gerhard’s wife, Anya, sewed Justa a new slip from a white curtain, and I was put away into a dresser drawer.

Because of the war, the letters from Justa’s Mama stopped coming. Justa was very homesick for Mama. She often took me in her hands and held me to her heart when she thought about Mama. She often cried and dried her tears on me just like her Mama had done when I was a pillowslip. Justa always folded me carefully as I was the only link to her Mama she had left.

A year later, in 1945, the war was over. But Justa and Gerhard and his family had to flee because communist officers wanted to take them back to Russia to a forced labor camp in Siberia. I was packed into a small black suitcase and taken along into hiding in a small town not far away.

One day a man knocked on our door. Peter Dyck, a Canadian refugee worker, had found our apartment and offered to take Justa and Gerhard and his family to a refugee camp in Holland. There they would be safe from being sent back to the Soviet Union. In Holland, I stayed at the bottom of the black suitcase for almost two years.

Justa had not paid any attention to me for a long time, so I was relieved when she put me into a new homemade green suitcase for another journey. On top of me were lots of clothes, which Justa had received from an American and Canadian relief organization to help refugees. Justa and her brother’s family boarded the ship SS Marine Marlin and we were off to sea. Our destination now was America, the land of opportunity and promise. I did not know what would become of me. I felt useless. No one needed me.

No one hugged me or dried their tears on me now. Although Justa shed many tears when she left because she had just learned that her Mama was alive – in a labor camp in Siberia. But now Justa wiped her tears with a colorful handkerchief. I felt forgotten.

After arriving in New York, we went by train to Mountain Lake, Minnesota. What a long journey! Here Justa lived on a farm. She had a room all to herself. Again I was placed in the bottom dresser drawer. After finishing high school, she went away to live in Kansas, then Chicago, and Toronto. She always left me behind. I thought she had forgotten about me for sure!

But one day Justa came back to Mountain Lake to visit. She was now a nurse. Justa came to her room to pack her belongings to take them with her to Kansas. She saw me in the bottom dresser drawer – and she remembered. She lifted me gently out of the drawer and held me close. Her face turned somber. She closed her eyes, and her words were barely audible as she whispered, “Mama.” A torrent of tears forced themselves out of her closed eyes. I was happy she remembered. Gently she put me into her suitcase as if I were a treasure. She took me along to Kansas.

Years passed. She lived in big and beautiful houses and I always moved with her. She never forgot to take me along, though at times it seemed she had forgotten about me. A few times I remember helping her give talks on “recycling.” I was one of her examples of “recycling.”

Many years later, Justa and her husband, Floyd, built a new house. Her friend Betty came to help her pack for the move. Betty packed the clothes from the dresser I was in. There she discovered me in the bottom drawer. She picked me up with her two fingers, her arms outstretched as if I were poison. “What is this old rag? Justa, why do you keep old rags in your dresser drawer? Torn lace and a yellow rag!” Betty laughed hilariously.

I was stunned. No one had ever touched me in this manner. I was crushed and devastated.

But Justa reached out and cradled me protectively. She said, “I will never part with this slip. It will always remind me of Mama and her gift of life to me. When she made this slip and sent me away at the age of 13, she had no way of knowing she would never see me again. And she did not realize how much she would suffer later – longing to see me again.”

Then Justa added, “And Mama did not know then that by sending me away she would literally save my life.”

I was so happy to hear Justa say that. I am so pleased to be a reminder of Justa’s strong bond with her past and her Mama. Had Justa not been separated from her Mama she no doubt would have starved and died of hunger like her Tante and her Mama in the forced-labor camp in Siberia.