Ida (Marquardt) Bosch (1912 - 1997)

Written by Anton Bosch, son, Nürnberg, Germany
Translation from German to English by Brigitte von Budde

She continues to live in the memory of her family, relatives and friends!

We mourn
IDA BOSCH (nee Marquardt)
Born on August 19, 1912 in Kandel, Kutschurgan Enclave, Odessa District, South Russia
Died on August 21, 1997, Nürnberg, Germany

With love and thankfulness: Anton, Irma, Aida, Linda and Liana Bosch

The funeral was on Monday, August 25, 1997, at 12:30 p.m. at the Reichelsdorf cemetery in Nürnberg.

Her life

Mrs. Ida Bosch was born on August 19, 1912, in Kandel/Odessa (today Rybalskoje) to the farming family of Rosina and Valentin Marquardt as the seventh of eight children. Her ancestors went from the area of the Rhine (Marquardt from Hördt/Straßburg; Stroh, her mother's name, from Mundelsheim/Neckar) to South Russia and made their living there.

Her childhood fell into the turmoil of the Russian civil war. She still remembered in detail the army units of the white and red opponents moving through Kandel as well as the Austrian occupational forces and the massacre which, in 1919, was inflicted by the Bolsheviks on the peace loving farmers of Kandel, Selz, Baden and Straßburg.

As an eight year old girl she attended elementary school and sang in the church choir where her beautiful voice was discovered as a gift from God. She was active in the church choir for eight voices as soprano and was allowed to sing at times as soloist works by Händel, Bach and Schubert (her favorite song from Ave Maria.)

As a result of anti-religious politics by the Bolshevik government she was not permitted to sing in the church choir; the church of Kandel was closed in the spring of 1935, the steeple taken off and the house of God was converted into a club. Pastor Johannes Albert who had baptized her son two weeks earlier was arrested, shot and killed innocently in the prison of Odessa in 1937.

Due to her ancestry her parents as well-to-do farmers were expropriated by the new governing powers and deported from Kandel. When she was 16, she and the Marquardt family were deported from the Black Sea to the far north and settled 300 km from the town of Archangelsk in the virgin forest. As she later said, during the first winter of 1928/29 all children under the age of 12 died in the camp.

Thanks to ordinary Russian people the Marquardts managed after two years of detention in the camp to return by night. They were accepted by the recently founded colchos and were allowed to take up a permanent residence in Kandel.

On November 23, 1933, she married Georg Bosch whose parents had earlier starved to death (in that year as a result of the expropriation more than 300 residents of Kandel died.)

In Kandel Mrs. Bosch gave birth to two children: Anton (1934), and Rosa (1938).

From 1941 until 1944, Kandel was under Romanian wartime administration. The Bosch family managed the farm privately and gained moderate prosperity that did not last long. On March 19, 1944, Ida Bosch and her family were resettled by the German administration to Poland/Warthegau where her daughter Rosa died at the end of June of larynx diphtheria and her husband was drafted into the SS ("as cannon fodder") on September 1, 1944. From now on she had to be mother and father because even though Georg Bosch survived the war, he was captured in the West by the Americans and died in 1964 in Wolfratshausen.

On April 28, 1945, the day when the US-army invaded Pettstädt/Weißenfels a.d. Saale (Sachsen-Anhalt), Mrs. Bosch gave birth to twins (Georg and Rosina.) After the retreat of the Americans and the invasion by the Red Army she and her three children were taken forcefully by the Russians to an assembly camp near the town of Halle and were deported to the northern Ural Mountains in cattle wagons. The twins died two days before their arrival on October 28, 1945. At the end of her physical strength and close to bewilderment she buried both at a grave side that could not be found later on.

From 1945 until 1956, she was kept there in political custody with 65 German families and had to do hard labor (fell trees and build a railroad.) Hardly able to speak Russian (she spoke only a few words Russian, neither able to read nor write because she had attended the German elementary school in Kandel), she climbed to the top to become forewoman of a working brigade building a light railway and could soon move from a barracks and into a self-made log house.

After the camps were dissolved, she settled with her relatives in Karaganda/Kazakhstan in 1961 because as before it was not permitted to return to Kandel/Odessa (today Rybalskoje). There she bought a house and worked in a cake factory until her retirement in 1968. Tied to her house and yard, she did not want to move to Germany under any circumstance but was brought along by her son Anton anyway.

On May 1, 1974, she arrived in Nürnberg and moved into a rental apartment in Langwasser; as of spring 1977, she had moved into her own granny annex in the house of Anton and Irma Bosch, Schwimbacherstraße 9, Reichelsdorf, where she shared in caring for her three grandchildren Aida, Linda and Liana, and grew tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables in her yard. She went to church regularly and for a while sang in the church choir of Reichelsdorf.

Mrs. Bosch ran her own household until her first illness in 1989, when she suffered a stroke leaving her unable to speak and paralyzed on the left side. Thanks to her strong willpower, she recuperated almost completely; the only thing she couldn't do anymore was to sing.

On August 19, 1992, she celebrated her 80th birthday surrounded by family and friends who after the [Berlin] wall had come down could emigrate to Germany in numbers.

Due to the long insidious illness (she suffered from diabetes mellitus), first her right leg was amputated in 1993, and in the fall of 1994, her other leg so that she then became permanently wheelchair-bound.

Hardened by her tough fate, she could and had to endure much inhumane suffering. In spite of all adversities she remained true to the Roman-Catholic faith; before her emigration to Germany she was one of the active founders of Catholic lay church service in the underground in Karaganda.

Mrs. Bosch died of kidney failure last Tuesday, two days after her 85th birthday as the last member of the Marquardt family in the retirement home in Reichelsdorf.

As she had the privilege while she was still alive to see her husband once more in Germany (he died on 14/10/1964), his bones will be brought here and buried in the Bosch family grave. While they were alive, they could not be together but now both of them will be.

Part II

And now, dear brothers and sisters, I am thinking of Ida Bosch who today we take to her last resting place. In her became reality that of which the Apostle Paul spoke. First of all, she is someone with a long journey.

Dear friends and relatives, when the family talked to me about the funeral they told me about their mother's life. The son, Mr. Bosch, has written about her life in detail. I remind you that he has already given you the text. And they have told me that in the former Soviet Union alone there were 12 residences that their mother has had. It can be said that such a life which consists of such unheard of wanderings is actually an odyssey.

Her body has become worthless in old age. She lost her eyesight gradually because of her illness and finally one leg and then the other leg.

Today when we carry her mortal remains to her grave the hope remains for us that also the 2nd part of Paul's's vision becomes reality: That she will now find a new home in heaven and that her body will be transformed into a glorified body.

And now let us remember her life at least briefly. Every single phase cannot be mentioned. It would take hours to tell all that what happened in her life. And I think many of you have experienced similar things. You know what it means when I now give a few sketches and phases of her life.

Her life began on August 19, 1912, in Kandel/Odessa (today Rybalskoje). She came from a large family, a farming family, and her ancestors had once emigrated from the area of the Rhine River. Her childhood, and here terrible things are already beginning to occur, falls into the time of the Russian civil war and, thus still a child she had to witness horror and atrocities. When she was going to school it became noticeable in her that she had a special talent for music. She liked to sing and she sang beautifully and that's why she was a member of the childrens' choir and her favorite song was Ave Maria which we will hear later and which preceded the funeral service.

An atheistic government had come to power in the meantime, a government that despised and hurt religion and human dignity, and thus even the children's choir was prohibited, the church was closed, partially destroyed, used for worldly purposes, the pastor was shot and killed later on. The expropriation of her parents' farm followed. Ida's family was deported, far away to the 'White Sea', up north. Then she was a young girl, 16 years old. Finally the family returned to Kandel after two years and worked in a colchos.

She married in 1933; it was a fateful year for the German country. Another misfortune was beginning. In 1933, she was united in marriage with Georg Bosch who was blessed with four children. However, misfortune, the war, joined the mother's happiness. Three children died; it can be said victims of circumstances.

In 1941, the area came under Romanian-German administration and the family was resettled to Poland and her husband had to join the military. Right afterwards he was taken captive and came to the West; he died in 1964 in Wolfratshausen (by Munich) and is also buried there. However, the Bosch family wants to re-bury the remains of the husband of their deceased mother so that the two of them can be united at least in death.

Mrs. Bosch had to move again with her children after the end of the war or towards the end of the war. Now the US-army had marched in and thus the next place was Sachsen-Anhalt. However, now the Red Army, which had the final say, won and now the deportation to the Ural Mountains followed. The twins, who were born only a few months earlier, died on this journey. They were buried along the way and now nobody knows the location anymore.

1961, Kazakhstan. She moved to relatives, finally found work and could get a house. That's how it was until her retirement.

Actually, she did not want to go to the West, to Germany, she wanted to stay but her son Anton took her along anyway in 1974, to the West, to us, to Germany. And thus the first place was at first Nürnberg-Langwasser and finally here, Nürnberg-Reichelsdorf. At last, she found rest, here in this place, in this town, in this parish. She could work in her yard, could care for her son's family and finally could attend church services freely. For the first few years she was also here in the church choir. I want to thank her now for her service.

Now, at the end of her life another difficulty arose: a serious illness, a painful suffering. But she had received enormous hope and great strength from her Christian faith.

She died on August 21, 1997, two days after her 85th birthday.

Mr. Bosch, you told me that when you were with her before her birthday you had told her, "Mother, what can we give you?" She replied, "I don't want anything but to get up one more time." By now she was very much confined to her bed. Well, now she has passed away and in agreement with you I want to ring out with the song Ave Maria that has given her so much comfort.

Now her favorite song Ave Maria by Schubert is heard in Latin, sung by Mr. Bimüller with a pleasant and strong tenor voice accompanied by an electrical piano.

Ave Maria
Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum.
Benedicta tu in mulieribus et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus.
Sancta Maria, mater dei, ora pro nobis pecatoribus nunc, et in hora mortis.