This fonds consists of two groups of letters. The first group of letters were written by Jakob Peters (1908-1944) to his sister Anna Peters (1919-) between 1942 and 1944, after he had accompanied her from the Ukraine to Berlin where she remained to work in a German household. Anna had had little schooling in German, with her father exiled to Siberia when she was 11 and her mother dying when she was 13, and the family being classified as kulaks (tight-fisted landowners). As her German was so poor, Jakob would correct her letters and return them to her so that she would improve her German. There are 24 letters in this group and they have all been transcribed and translated into English.

The second group of letters were written to relatives in Canada, specifically his sister and brother-in-law, Maria (Peters) and Jakob Bergen and her son John Bergen (1922- ). The letters begin from when Jakob Peters escaped Russia in 1928 across the Caucausus to Persia, his years in Brazil and his years studying in Berlin. In his letters to John Bergen, who was studying at Mennonite Collegiate Institute in Gretna during the late 1930s, Jakob Peters often writes about how wonderful it would be for him to come and get an education in Germany after completing his high school in Gretna.