My Three Countries

Born in Romania, Anna Untch grew up in a community where Saxons were privileged people. She worked on the family farm growing up, and she learned German in school. But after World War II, privation replaced privilege.  The reparations Germany owed the Soviets were paid in the form of hard labor. Thousands of Germanic people, including Anna, were sent to be slave laborers in the Soviet Bloc.  Her daring escape to West Germany changed Anna’s life.  She was able to contact an uncle, who arranged for her passage to the United States. In America, the young woman worked hard, married and thrived. The reader follows Anna from Romania to the Soviet Bloc, to marriage and raising a family and attaining the American Dream on a dairy farm in Washington state.

Born in Romania, Anna Untch grew up in a community that gave special privileges to Saxons. She spent her childhood working on the family farm and learned German in school. But after World War II, the reparations Germany owed the Soviets were paid in the form of hard labor. Anna, her sisters, and thousands of Germanic people were rounded up at gunpoint and marched to the nearest train station, where boxcars waited to take them to the Soviet Bloc. What followed were years of slave labor, starvation, illness and little hope—until a daring escape changed everything. Sick and emaciated, Anna was sent to East Germany to recuperate. There she found her sister, and together they escaped across the border into the American Zone in West Germany. Barred from returning to their home, they relied on an uncle in the United States to send for them—a bureaucratic process that took two years. But once in America, the young woman from Romania found her footing. All that remained was to tell her story: a story of privilege, slavery and freedom. A story of a woman who achieved the American Dream.

Anna Untch immigrated to the United States after barely living through very difficult circumstances.  She was a hard worker and married Alfred Melgaard in December 1953.  The union was blessed with three children, Alice, Fred and John.  Together, they operated Melgaard Dairy for decades.  They bought more land, raised corn for silage and alfalfa for hay, and sold fruit and produce when there was too much for their own use.  The dairy sold raw milk to people all over the lower Yakima Valley on the honor system.  Anna passed away August 30, 2016.  This book is the story of the events that brought Anna to Prosser WA and how she achieved her own American Dream.