Imagine being a Mennonite woman in the 1920's, living in the Soviet Union. Imagine losing your husband and your father in war and still having young mouths to feed. Now imagine being that woman, uprooting your family and migrating to Canada.

That was the reality for many Mennonite women in the 1920's and 1940's. It is was inspired a temporary exhibit, now on display at Mennonite Heritage Village in Steinbach, called "Along The Road To Freedom."

"Along The Road To Freedom" comes from the Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery in Winnipeg. It consists of 26 paintings by Ray Dirks, Curator at Mennonite Heritage Centre Gallery. The exhibit will be on display in Steinbach until October 10th.

MHV Curator Andrea Dyck says each painting tells the story of one Mennonite woman who came to Canada in the 1920's and 1940's. Dyck explains that was a very difficult time for anybody living in the Soviet Union, including Mennonites. Prior to the World Wars, many Mennonites

enjoyed prosperity and freedom. But when the Soviets went to war against Germany, that anti-German backlash hit ethnically German Mennonites.

Dyck explains by the early 1930's, individual estates were confiscated and by the time World War II hit, approximately half of Mennonite men had been taken away; either executed, exiled or conscripted. Many of the women highlighted in the exhibit's paintings lost their husbands and fathers in war. Sometimes after only one year of marriage, a husband was conscripted and never heard from again.

"These women led their families, most of which weren't whole at that point out of the Soviet Union," explains Dyck. "Either in the 1920's when they were able to make some kind of orderly immigration out of the Soviet Union or in the 1940's when they were refugees."

The theme for 2016 at MHV is "Beyond Tradition: The Lives of Mennonite Women." Dyck says this temporary exhibit falls in line with that theme. In the 1920's and 1940's, men were head of the house in Mennonite communities, they were leaders in the Church and community. But when the men died, it was the women who took on those roles.

"Along The Road To Freedom," is what is referred to as a memory mosaic. There are bits and pieces of each woman's story told through images. This might include photographs, objects that are important to them, Bible verses and song lyrics all put together in a collage.

"If you do go through and read them all, you do get the sense of the very difficult circumstances these women went through," says Dyck. "But also the hope that they had, the faith that they carried with them in those circumstances and the way that they are talked about and remembered by their families is not people of despair or people who were bitter."

The exhibit also includes artifacts brought by Mennonites during those decades including a dress and a child's metal bed.