Skip to main content

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” (note 1). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived (note 2). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million (note 3).

In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” (note 4). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence (note 5). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”).

Various causes combined to bring on widespread famine and hunger in the countryside, including:

  • forced collectivization and dekulakization after 1930;
  • lack of machines, good work horses and cattle to meet quotas;
  • administrative chaos;
  • unrealistic grain collection campaigns to be fulfilled unconditionally (or heavy fines);
  • deprivation of consumer goods to any village that failed to deliver grain;
  • government denial of a looming crisis (blamed on “hoarders”);
  • demoralization of workers;
  • imposition of the death penalty in 1932 for those who ‘steal’ grain from the kolkhoz (note 6);
  • introduction of internal passports to restrict rural workers from moving to towns (where there was more food).

Unfavourable weather conditions from 1931 to 1934 were also part of the story. But there is broad scholarly agreement that Stalin and his officials “magnified significant harvest shortages into a famine as an exercise in state terrorism. The famine sent a blunt message to rural areas that the government intended to control agriculture in the Soviet Union regardless of the human or economic cost” (note 7). Mennonites co-witnessed each step of the Holodomor’s implementation in Ukraine and were crushed together with their ethnic Ukrainian neighbours (note 8).

Already in April 1930 Benjamin Unruh, a pivotal Mennonite relief and immigration leader stationed in Germany, warned that “disaster threatens the entire Mennonite population … there is a serious threat of famine in all Russia [sic] within a year according to reliable estimates” (note 9). Nine months later, Molotschna farmers were shooting stray dogs for food; many had already lived “a whole year without a cow, without fat, without potatoes.” The response from co-religionists in the west was immediate and generous with anonymous gifts of cash, rice, flour, semolina, palm oil and bacon (note 10).

Susanna Toews of Gnadenfeld, Molotschna recalled that in Summer 1931 they “harvested a tremendous crop, the largest in living memory,” but after fulfilling unreasonable quotas they were without bread by January 1932 (note 11). The crisis only worsened and Unruh’s sources suggested that the great famine of 1921–22 “was nothing” in comparison to the current situation. One letter to Unruh stated: “If God does not do a miracle then, as humanly foreseeable, in a short time we will all be dead, simply starved to death” (note 12).

Thousands of Mennonites in Ukraine began to write letters to the west petitioning for food (in a previous vignette we examined 146 such famine letters written in January or February 1933; note 13). The requests indicate that larger numbers of children were already suffering from malnutrition, listless, pale, anemic with swollen bellies, and consequent illnesses, including long fevers and typhus. The handicapped, ill, elderly, and disenfranchised could not work, were not paid and did not eat, according to the letters: “Since we have been without bread for a few months, we are now eating fodder beets and are already starving” (note 14). We know that in some Mennonite villages people were “coerced” to refuse aid packages or money sent from abroad in 1933—and some who did accept them were arrested the next year (note 15).

The GPU (secret police) report in March 1933 recorded some twenty-eight incidents of cannibalism, and there are indications that this may have occurred in Mennonite areas as well (note 16).

There are many stories. Anecdotally a friend’s father recalled how he as a six-year-old boy ate tulip bulbs as well as the sap and buds from their fruit trees (note 17). My mother’s aunt by marriage Agatha Klassen Bräul wrote about the February 7, 1933 double funeral of her parents in Paulsheim: “At the burial we wanted to give lunch to the few relatives who came from outside the village, but we had nothing to offer except a few beets and some onions. We cooked a Borscht soup, and it was eaten to the last spoonful” (note 18). District party executive committees encouraged communist activists to recruit children, Young Pioneers and even the handicapped for special permanent committees to help locate hidden reserves of grain or food in the homes and yards of kolkhoz members (see sample pic). The mother of one friend, Katharina Heinrich Esau born in Franzthal, Molotschna, remembered how “a group was chosen to go from house to house, look through everything, and take whatever food stuffs were found. Consequently, people starved. There was already poverty prior to the famine. … I don’t recall where they [father and mother] hid the food. It was especially difficult for families with more children. I remember how some women came and begged or offered items in exchange in order to survive” (note 19). In Mennonitische Rundschau I was stunned to find a letter from my grandmother’s sister, pleading for aid:

“Schardau, Russia, October 1932. Since we are living in such a difficult time and the up-coming Winter looks so dark, and since we have been without bread for several weeks now, I want to be so bold and ask for a little help from abroad. Our need is driving me to do so. I am a widow with 3 children. The oldest is 7 years old, the second is 5 and the youngest girl is 3 years old. We are part of a collective. I must go to work every day because the food products we receive are only available on workdays, and even then, we receive so little. In a day we may only receive half a day’s portion [check translation]. There is nothing for the children. It is almost 3 years since my husband died. Our clothing situation is also pitiful. If someone can assist us, I thank you in advance. May the Lord reward you all. With greetings, Sarah Rehan, Schardau.” (Note 20)

These sisters were lived in close proximity to each other (Marienthal and Schardau). My grandmother gave birth to a daughter at the height of the famine (born June 1933), who died shortly before her first birthday in 1934 (see pic). We do not know what she died of, but illness, malnutrition and death were widespread. A 1934 letter sent to the Mennonite press in North America reported that in the Molotschna “755 families ate horse meat, 469 families ate crows, 344 families ate cats and 184 families ate dogs from the spring of 1932 to the summer of 1933” (note 21).

These stories represent only a few of the many Mennonite memories of the Holodomor. While Mennonites in Ukraine were not always in synch with their Ukrainian neighbours, in this event they were one, and Mennonites can stand “as Ukrainians” and remember their own people who suffered together with all Ukrainians under a brutal regime.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast 

---Notes---

Note 1: For the text of the Act of Parliament, see: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/u-0.4/page-1.html.

Note 2: Cf. Stalin, “Resolution on Grain Procurement in Ukraine, 19 December 1932;” “Memorandum on Progress in preparing Spring Sowing,” in Bohdan Klid and Alexander J. Motyl, eds., The Holodomor Reader: A Sourcebook on the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine (Edmonton, AB: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2012), 5:25, 37, https://holodomor.ca/the-holodomor-reader-a-sourcebook-on-the-famine-of-1932-1933-in-ukraine/.

Note 3: Cf. R. W. Davies and Stephen Wheatcroft, The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933. The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia, vol. 5 (New York: Macmillan, 2009).

Note 4: Stalin, “Seventeenth Party Congress, 26 January 1934,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader 5:32f.; Stalin, “Telegram of 28 December 1932,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:27.

Note 5: “On the Need to Liquidate the Insurgent Underground, February 13, 1932,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:32f.

Note 6: Cf. “On Safekeeping Property of State Enterprises [and] Collective Farms, 7 August 1932,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:17.

Note 7: Jenny Leigh Smith, Works in Progress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930–1963 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 22.

Note 8: On the Mennonite experience, see esp. Colin Neufeldt, “The Fate of Mennonites in Ukraine and the Crimea during Soviet Collectivization and the Famine (1930–33),” PhD dissertation, University of Alberta (1999), ch. 4, https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk3/ftp04/nq39574.pdf. See also previous post on Mennonite deaths due to starvation, as well as aid received (forthcoming).

Note 9: Benjamin H. Unruh to Levi Mumaw, MCC, and David Toews, Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, April 1, 1930, p. 2. Letter. From MCC-A, IX-03-02, box 2, file 1.

Note 10: Abraham Dueck, “Our Village: Hierschau,” in The Silence Echoes: Memoirs of Trauma and Tears, translated and edited by Sarah Dyck, 34–46 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 1997), 41; Mennonitische Rundschau (April 22, 1931), 7, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1931-04-22_54_16/page/n5/mode/2up; sample thank-you letters in Mennonitische Rundschau (November 18, 1931), 6f., https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1931-11-18_54_46/page/6/mode/2up.

Note 11: Susanna Toews, Trek to Freedom: The Escape of Two Sisters from South Russia during World War II, translated by Helen Megli (Winkler, MB: Heritage Valley, 1976), 15f.

Note 12: Letter to Benjamin H. Unruh, cited in Henrich B. Unruh, Fügungen und Führungen: Benjamin Heinrich Unruh, 1881–1959: Ein Leben im Geiste christlicher Humanität und im Dienste der Nächstenliebe (Detmold: Verein zur Erforschung und Pflege des Russlanddeutschen Mennonitentums, 2009), 368.

Note 13: See previous post (forthcoming).

Note 14: Peter Joh. Martens, Schönau February 4, 1933, in Hermann R. Schirmacher, ed., "Bittbriefe aus Russland bzw. Ukraine Anfang der 30er Jahre aus dem Archiv von Professor Benjamin Unruh Karlsruhe," Chortitza: Mennonitische Geschichte und Ahnenforschung, https://chortitza.org/FB/BUBBriefe_Karlsruhe.php. From Stadtarchiv Karlsruhe, 7/Nl Unruh.

Note 15: Cf. “Neu-Halbstadt (Zagradovka) Dorfbericht,” 207, in “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,“ in Bundesarchiv Koblenz, R6, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709.— https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de; or https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/.

Note 16: Cf. “Report from the GPU Ukrainian SSR on problems with food supplies and raions of Ukraine affected by famine, March 12, 1933,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 7:36; and O.V. Grytsina and T. V. Marchenko, “The Holodomor in Southern Ukraine in 1932–1933” [Голодомор на Півдні України у 1932–1933], in Holodomor 1932–1933: Zaporizhzhya Dimension [Голодомор 1932–1933: запорізький вимір], 65–80 (Zaporizhia: Prosvita, 2008), 72, http://history.org.ua/LiberUA/978-966-653-209-4/978-966-653-209-4.pdf. See also previous post (forthcoming). Archivist Conrad Stoesz notes that Aganetha Wiebe letters at the Mennonite Heritage Archives also hint at cannibalism.

Note 17: Jakob Esau in Erich Schmidt-Schell, Trotzdem macht Gott keine Fehler: Jakob Esau. Wegen des Glaubens in Russland verfolgt und geächtet (Meinerzhagen: Friedensbote, 2010), 8.

Note 18: Agatha Klassen Bräul, Diary (copy in author’s possession).

Note 19: Katharina Heinrichs Esau, “So bleibt es nicht. Erinnerungen aus meiner Kindheit [bis 1945],” 2002. In author’s possession, pp. 5-6. On the initiative, cf. “Conditions in Northern Caucasus in Spring of 1933; Report by Otto Schiller, German Agricultural Attaché in Moscow, 23 May 1933,” in Klid and Motyl, eds., Holodomor Reader, 5:47. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.m.wikimedia.org.

Note 20: Sarah Rehan, Schardau, Mennonitische Rundschau 55, no, 38 (Nov. 1932), https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1932-11-30_55_48/page/6/mode/2up.

Note 21: Cited in Colin P. Neufeldt, “Fate of Mennonites in Ukraine and Crimea,” 249; “The Public and Private Lives of Mennonite Kolkhoz Chairmen in the Khortytsia and Molochansk German National Raĭony in Ukraine (1928–1934),” 58, in The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, no. 2305 (2015), DOI: https://doi.org/10.5195/cbp.2015.199.





Print Friendly and PDF
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...
Post a Comment
Read more

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2  is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...
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

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...
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