It’s always pleasant when family legends find confirmation in newspaper publications. That’s exactly what happened today. I wrote on Facebook about my grandfather and great-grandfather from the Rempel line. In the 1910s, they owned an agricultural machinery factory at the Arkadak station in Balashovsky Uyezd. Before the revolution, they had to close the factory because customers who bought equipment on installment plans were unable to pay.

My mother recorded in her memoirs: "Grandfather's factory went bankrupt even before the revolution due to its charitable practices—both father and grandfather couldn’t collect debts from the impoverished local residents and refused to repossess the agricultural tools they had distributed: the peasants had been drafted into the army, leaving only women and children in the villages, and grandfather’s machinery was a lifeline for them. And according to Mennonite principles, one shouldn’t demand repayment of a debt—if someone is able, they will return it voluntarily. This worked in a small community where everyone was accountable to each other, but the world follows different rules, and they went bankrupt." (Natalia Ermakova, My Life, Haifa-Moscow, 2024, p. 65)

Today, however, I came across a report in the newspaper Kommersant dated November 2, 1912, which stated:

"Station Arkadak, Saratov Governorate. The owner of an agricultural machinery and tools factory, Pyotr Petrovich Rempel, has ceased payments... The reasons for non-payment are a trade slowdown and non-payment by his customers. He wishes to pay in full with an extension. The Alexandrovsky plants were partially affected."

It’s fascinating that the words in the newspaper article are almost verbatim echoed in the memoirs recorded over a century after the event.