Skip to main content

“Politically backwards but clean and high level of care”: Bethania Mental Hospital as Icon

The Bethania Mental Hospital was established by Mennonites in 1910 and remembered as their greatest cultural achievement. After the Bolshevik Revolution it was taken over by the province of Ekaterinoslav and nationalized in 1925, but supported in large part by the Mennonite community. A 1925 "political" assessment of the institution provides a window onto government concerns about "German" Mennonites more generally. 

The leadership and staffing (ca. 65) as well as a large number of patients (120 beds) continued to be Mennonites or Germans (note 1; pic). The following 1925 newspaper article gives us a hint of how authorities viewed the hospital and its Mennonite staff seven years after expropriation, and the connection to nearby church community more generally.

“In exemplary order, but political work needs to be improved. Located between Kitchkas (Einlage) and Chortitza; three buildings, one of which houses a kitchen, living room for visitors, the “red corner” [communist reading room] and the staff, and in the other two the women's and men's wards of the hospital, … a cattle barn and a farm, as well as houses for staff.

Nowhere will you see even any trace of garbage. The patients who have lost the appearance of a conscious are placed on … pure white linen.

To care for the mentally ill, half of whom are violent, requires a measure of tact, self-control, endurance. The hospital personnel is entirely composed of Germans - Mennonites - all with a strong work ethic, discipline and dedication.

This is facilitated by the fact that the German colonists treat the hospital and its whole population as their own offspring. The clinic was organized in 1911 by Mennonite communities and until 1919 existed exclusively on funds by the latter.

And now, when the hospitals are on the budget of the provincial health department, funds from various German communities continue to support its maintenance.

During the years of the Civil War, the sanatorium was raided many times by gangs and the property was looted. Nevertheless, the head of the community and the staff succeeded to save much.

The situation with the cult of political education among the staff is very bad. Political education needs to be delivered and conducted in a planned manner. Then one can be sure that Bethania will turn into a cultured place in all aspects." (Note 2)

This very public assessment of Bethania reflects a high level of official concern about Mennonites in 1925.

The following 1925 secret “Agitation and Propaganda Department Report” provides a fuller context:

“During the last six months [ca. November 1924 to April 1925] the work of Mennonite missionaries and ministers has increased. They agitate for strengthening Mennonite religion and at the same time agitate for emigration. Religious activity in Mennonite colonies is developing without restraint because no proper attention was given to its study.” (Note 3)

Also in May 1925 the Head of the Secret Operative Department of the GPU [Soviet secret police] and the Head of the Counter-Intelligence Office of the GPU cited what they called a “very classified report to the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin” from the German consul in Kharkiv which they had intercepted: despite “the prohibition to have any religious organizations,” Mennonites are able “to arrange their life in spite of communist pressure”—they simply “exist under the name of the Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage” [Mennonite cultural, social and economic union]. The same classified report deemed Mennonites to be “the best German elements” in Ukraine. This reinforced deep Soviet suspicions that the German government considered “Mennonites as a base on which it can rely in the USSR” (notes 4).

The Central Bureau of the German Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Ukraine agreed in November 1925 to implement more “intensive and systematic” work and political education among “rank-and-file” Mennonites at the village level, in hopes that peasants “from the plow” would gradually be drawn into the party, who would then “carry out the reorganization and thereby liberate themselves from the harmful influence of the Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage” (note 5).

This background report by the Central Bureau of the German Section to the Central Committee flagged the key problems of their Mennonite population: they are uniquely “characterized by a narrow-national [German-Mennonite] outlook, lack of class stratification, [and a] passive attitude … toward Soviet social life”—which makes party and Soviet work among them “more difficult.”

In another report of the same year: “It is extremely difficult to conduct party work in Mennonite colonies because it is carried out among a population saturated with religious fanaticism and caste isolation” (note 6).

“Extraordinary difficulties” were reported specifically in the former Mennonite colony of Chortitza (where Bethania was located), where authorities had little success in drawing the Mennonites “to active participation in the construction of the Soviet order” and into “the public life of village clubs and reading rooms.” The committee concluded that the youth were both “restrained by parents” and “by preachers in meeting houses” (note 7). In general, “[t]he political condition of colonies populated by German Mennonites until the present time is not good,” and given their peculiarities it would require “a specially careful and tactful approach,” according to the September 1925 report of the Central Bureau.

The proposed strategy would include more open peasant sessions and conferences, more German press attention with the newspaper “The New Village” (Das Neue Dorf) with rural correspondents to strengthen supervision of abuses; more funds for the purchase of “libraries, radio sets, sports equipment, moving pictures apparatus and lanterns;” the immediate dismissal of all local committee members “who discredit the party;” a new “permanent party school” with “a German as an agitation and propaganda worker;” regular reporting on work among Mennonites to the “Agitation and Propaganda Collegium,” and regional committee bureaus for further action; and, importantly, plots of land for the large number of landless in Molotschna.

Moreover, authorities were very concerned that Mennonite youth “are under a strong religious influence and take an active part in religious youth unions that act under the cover of sports organizations” and even attracting some transfer members from the Communist Party youth organization (note 8).

To counter these efforts, the plan called for “cultural and educational work among Mennonite youth by creating youth sections at village clubs and organizing sports clubs,” as well as more frequent youth conferences for Mennonites (note 9).

The Bethania Mental Hospital was located near the Dnjper River and was dismantled with the construction of the massive Dneprostroy power dam in 1927. The Mennonite community appealed to the government to keep staff and patients together in a Mennonite community, specifically at Halbstadt (Molotschna). “However, this did not materialize. On 9 May 1927 the patients, among them 33 Mennonites, were transferred to a mental hospital at Igren without the Mennonite personnel. That was the end of Bethania, one of the mot successful and generally supported projects among the Mennonites of Russia” (note 10).

For Mennonites Bethania was an icon representing the highest cultural expression of their faith community. Its dismantling was met with dismay and signaled with clarity the larger government agenda to dismantle and reconfigure the Mennonite community as such.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

 



---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. Jacob Wiebe, “Die letzte Nachricht aus Bethania,” Unser Blatt 2, no. 10 (July 1927), 304, https://chortitza.org/Pis/UB26_10.pdf; Erich Tavonius and Isaak Thiessen, "Bericht aus Molotchansk," Unser Blatt 2, no. 6 (March 1927),178-179, https://chortitza.org/Pis/UB26_06.pdf. Pic: staff posing on the adjacent Dnieper River; from personal collection by John VanDyck Jr.

Note 2 : “Колония для душевно-больных- Бетания,” Красное Запорожье no. 98 (May 2, 1925), in “Chortitza and Moltotschna Colonies in Ukrainian publications, 1913-15, edited by Alexander Panjko, 13f., https://chor.square7.ch/0v853.pdf. (Thanks to Google Translate!).

Note 3: “Report by the Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine regarding issues in German colonies, Late April-early May 1925,” in John B. Toews and Paul Toews, eds., Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine (1922–1927): Mennonite and Soviet Documents, translated by J. B. Toews, O. Shmakina, and W. Regehr (Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2011) 270, https://archive.org/details/unionofcitizenso0000unse.

Note 4: “Instructions of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine for registration and minimizing the influence of religious groups, including Mennonites, May 25, 1925,” in Toews and Toews, Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine, 271. It was well known that B. B. Janz had been using German diplomatic courier service to communicate with Benjamin Unruh in Germany since November 1921. Cf. John B. Toews, With Courage to Spare: The Life of B. B. Janz (1877–1964) (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978) 26, https://archive.org/details/WithCourageToSpareOCRopt/page/n37/mode/2up. On "Menno-Union" (Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine), see previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/1921-formation-of-union-of-citizens-of.html.

Note 5: “Minutes of a joint session of the Central Bureau of the German Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine with German sections of okrug committees about work with Mennonites November 10–12, 1925,” in Toews and Toews, Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine, 318–324.

Note 6: Cf. “Conclusions of the Commission of the Presidium Commission following inspection of the Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage, Late July 1925,” in ibid., 291–296; 294.

Note 7: “Report of the German Section of the Zaporozhye Okrug Committee, January 4, 1926,” in ibid., 324–329. Similarly, see the 1924 newspaper piece: "Коммунист № 263 Дата: 16.11.1924 В немецких колониях Запорожья (От нашего корреспондента)," in “Chortitza and Moltotschna Colonies in Ukrainian publications," 2f.

Note 8: Cited in Matthew D. Pauly, Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education, and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 181.

Note 9: “Minutes of a joint session of the Central Bureau of the German Section of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine with German sections of okrug committees about work with Mennonites November 10-12, 1925,” in Toews and Toews, Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine, 318–324.

Note 10: From “Bethania Mental Hospital (Chortitza Mennonite Settlement),” GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Bethania_Mental_Hospital_(Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement,_Zaporizhia_Oblast,_Ukraine). See note 1 for source. Cf. Helmut T. Huebert, “The Bethania Mental Hospital of Russia,1910-1927,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 29 (2011), 215-219, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/1414.


 Print Friendly and PDF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...
Post a Comment
Read more

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws.  It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
Post a Comment
Read more

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...
Post a Comment
Read more

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...
Post a Comment
Read more