# Peter and Elfrieda Dyck

Peter: 1914–2010; Elfrieda: 1917–2004 · Overview

Peter Dyck was born in 1914 in the Am Trakt settlement in Russia and moved to Canada with his family in 1927. Elfrieda Klassen was born in 1917 in the Neu Samara settlement. In 1925 she moved with her widowed mother and siblings to Winnipeg, Manitoba. Their childhood migrations preceded the relief work for which they would later be remembered.

Under Mennonite Central Committee, Peter went to war-damaged England in 1941 to assist relief efforts. Elfrieda arrived a year later. They married in 1944 and were subsequently asked to lead a relief program in the Netherlands, assisting Mennonites fleeing Russia and later German refugees.

The Dycks accompanied several transports of displaced Mennonites aboard the Volendam to South America. In that work, the broad history of postwar migration became a responsibility toward particular families who needed food, arrangements, guidance, and a place to settle. Their names connect the story of the ship with the people who carried the work forward.

Peter later served as MCC director for Europe and North Africa, and subsequently as an administrator and communicator. Elfrieda died in 2004 and Peter in 2010. The photographed account remembers their shared refugee service as a sustained expression of Christian care, reaching from wartime relief into the rebuilding of lives after the war.



- [Supplied timeline photograph IMG_9367, captions B, A](https://github.com/trueChristian/history.truechristian.church/blob/main/sources/church-history/photos/IMG_9367.jpg)

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Page: https://history.truechristian.church/en/people/peter-and-elfrieda-dyck/

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