This woven fabric belonged to Maria Neumann (Lieske/Regehr) 1919-2014. She left Leipzig in the fall of 1940, and eventually ended up in Lodz, Poland. She did manage to make it to Germany, and was being sheltered on the farm of a Lutheran pastor near Grossmachnow when the Soviets entered. Maria was in a section which fell into Soviet hands, and thus she was promptly expelled. Maria, now a widow, her 2 year old son, 2 of her sisters, a 10 year old niece and their 59 year old mother were sent to Kazakhstan, (in where they worked for free for 10 years on a collective farm. Her son died there in 1952.the Maria remarried in Russia. In 1955 they all received permission to go to Germany, and fall in 1961 Maria, her husband, their two children and her 69 year old mother-in-law emigrated to Canada. The fabric miraculously survived.
