Skip to main content

Repression thwarts flight from Ukraine to Moscow, Fall 1929

Adina (Neufeld) Bräul has an early childhood memory of the flight to Moscow in Fall 1929 and her first train ride; she was only three years old. Her family started the journey from Sparrau, Molotschna to Moscow in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to emigrate. The family however was turned back with hopes dashed (note 1). Memoirs from nearby Marienthal also note that they had departed for Moscow only to be turned back en route. The cost was high; they returned “not only poor but couldn’t get work and were punished for trying to leave the country” (note 2). A relative from Paulsheim told me that they were preparing to leave for Moscow as well, but told by returning families that no exit visas were being granted (note 3).

Most of the Mennonites who successfully fled the USSR in 1929 via Moscow with the assistance of the German embassy came from western Siberia, the settlements near the Ural Mountains, and also from Crimea (note 4). Noticeably only few were from the largest Mennonite settlements in Ukraine. Why? Evidence suggests that policies and practices of state repression were more intense and severe in Ukraine than elsewhere in 1929.

Already in 1928 high taxes and unrealistic grain requisitions with threats of heavy punishments had made another famine imminent in Ukraine and elsewhere. In July 1929 Mennonite Central Committee in North America was informed that some Mennonites in Ukraine were already starving (note 5). According to a 1928 letter from Halbstadt Elder Abram Klassen, conditions are “very critical in every respect, and … totally without any prospect of improvement” (note 6). In the historic Molotschna Settlement area, for example, as many as twenty farms per village had been sold off because people simply “could not pay the disbursements and are tossed with their families on the straw heap.” In the village of Rudnerweide one family “handed-over the entire harvest and was still required to deliver another 500 Pud (8,191 kilograms); because this was impossible, all of their possessions were sold” (note 7).

In September and October 1929, as many Mennonites were fleeing to Moscow, authorities in Ukraine moved quickly to take out emigration agitators and to make examples of certain villages (note 8).

In the Molotschna village of Münsterberg on October 17, Jakob D. Neumann was arrested for “campaigning among Germans for emigration to Canada and America;” in the next weeks his neighbours Peter A. Nickel, Abram K. Reimer, Peter P. Janzen, and Wilhelm W. Löwen were arrested under similar charges (note 9). The pattern of intimidation and arrest was repeated in the larger Chortitza region. On October 29, 1929, twelve men from the village of Nikolaipol (Jasykowo Colony) were arrested and each charged with “resistance to grain procurement and collectivization” (note 10). The men were sentenced and eventually deported to the “northern territories;” four received a three-year sentence; one a five-year sentence; three an eight-year sentence; and five a ten-year sentence. Their families were dispossessed and, in the longer Russian penal tradition, spouses and children were typically banished with the male head. Those sentenced to a correctional labour camp were normally transported in unheated freight cars; many died en route or in the first year of their sentence (note 11). “Agitation” for mass emigration, “campaigning against sowing” (note 12), non-compliance with the state’s grain procurement policies and collectivization plans, and the on-going preaching and teaching ministry of Mennonite ministers and elders were among the charges laid (note 13). The arrests fell under the elastic terms of Article 54-10 (1927) of the Ukrainian Criminal Code: “propaganda or agitation involving a call for the overthrow, subversion, or weakening of Soviet authority or for the carrying out of other counter-revolutionary crimes” (note 14). It provided punishments of deprivation of liberty, including execution, as “measures of social defence” against “socially harmful elements” (note 15).

The wave of Molotschna-area applications for visas was triggered in part by the April 8, 1929 Decree on Religious Associations and its new restrictions on religious life and expression, including the prohibition on ministers from speaking outside of their own congregations—“a widespread custom among Mennonites” (note 16). In one case a church elder known to do “much to counteract the revolutionary work of the communists” through choir and song-leading refused an order to cease—because choirs were not illegal. Soon after the church was attacked for giving aid to the congregation’s poor—something which was illegal—and the church was ordered closed (note 17). In another district disenfranchised farmers with no means left to earn a living could join the village commune only “if they publish a denial of faith and church in a newspaper” (note 18).

In addition to concerns about religious freedom and some control over their local schools, Mennonites in Ukraine had renewed economic fears in 1929: “bread is limited and expensive … . Sugar has become a big luxury item as well… and thread too has become very hard to find” (note 19). The motto in Mennonite and other German settlements was, according to one letter writer, “‘Better to die than to lose our freedom,’ … and as a result whole families, whole villages leave house and farm behind and travel to Moscow to force the central government to issue exit passes, which they have not done for years” (note 20). In early November 1929 arrests occurred in the Molotschna villages of Alexanderkrone, Alexandertal, Blumstein, Fabrikerweise, Fischau, Gnadenheim, Landskrone, Lichtfelde, Liebenau, Neukirch, Ohrloff, Schönau, Sparrau, Tiege, and Tiegerweide (note 21).

With thousands already in Moscow, a brutal turn of events triggered more arrests of Mennonites in Ukraine in order to stop the flight. On November 19, Dietrich J. Pauls, a 43-year-old minister from Hochfeld (Yazykovo Settlement) was charged with “leading counter-revolutionary agitation” and sentenced to three years in prison. With him 21-year-old Bernhard B. Dyck was arrested for “conducting anti-Soviet agitation” and sentenced to three years (note 22). In Molotschna, 63-year-old Cornelius H. Wiens of Muntau was arrested on November 21 for “attempting to leave the USSR for Canada,” and sentenced to a three-year deportation to Kazakhstan (note 23). The next day, 29- year old Jacob D. Penner of Lindenau was arrested for “conducting anti-Soviet agitation” (note 24). On November 23, 31-year-old Franz F. Ediger of Franztal was arrested under the same charge (note 25). The next day in Lichtenau, preacher Johann A. Koop was arrested for “engaging in anti-Soviet agitation and attempting to emigrate from the USSR” (note 26). Peter C. Heidebrecht of Gnadental was arrested on November 29 on the charge of anti-Soviet propaganda and was exiled to Archangelsk where he landed five months later (note 27). In the Donetsk Settlement on November 23, three Mennonites were arrested including the minister Johann J. Driedger with similar charges (note 28). Another letter from early 1930 details the severe repression and dispossession and deportation in multiple Molotschna villages in 1929: Waldheim, Lichtenau, Friedensdorf, Hierschau, Rückenau, Neukirch, Alexandertal, Pordenau, Rudnerweide, Großweide, Pastwa, Franztal, Gnadenfeld, Mariawohl, Landskrone, Schönsee, Liebenau, Wernersdorf, Muntau, Gnadental, Marienthal, and Elisabethtal. The letter writer notes: “They were treated worse than the way murderers were handled under the previous regime” (note 29).

Why were so few of those who gathered in Moscow in Fall 1929 from Mennonite communities in Ukraine? The vast majority would have left if the real and threatened repression at the local level had not been so severe. This vignette attempts to confirm this thesis with a reconstruction of the context and a documentation of the levels and types of threat and repression they faced as they attempted to flee.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast


---Notes---

Photo source: http://old.memorialholodomor.org.ua/eng/holodomor/archive/foto-arkhiv/golodomor-na-donnechini-foto-m-zheliznyaka/.

Note 1: Adina Neufeld Bräul, Interview with author, 2019.

Note 2: Selma Kornelsen Hooge and Anna Goossen Kornelsen, Life Before Canada (Abbotsford, BC: Self-published, 2018), 40; reference to Heinrich and Agatha (Goossen) Rempel and family.

Note 3: Nellie Bräul Epp, Interview with author (2017); also A. Bräul, Interview (2019).

Note 4: See previous posts on the flight:

Note 5: David Toews to Maxwell Kratz, July 13, 1928, letter, from Mennonite Central Committee-Akron, IX-3, box 7, file 2, 0003.

Note 6: Abram Klassen, letter July 1, 1928, translated in David Toews to Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, August 15, 1928, from MCC-Akron, IX, box 3, file 7.

Note 7: Mennonitische Rundschau 53, no. 46 (November 19, 1930), 5, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1930-11-19_53_47/page/n3/mode/2up.

Note 8: Otto Auhagen, Die Schicksalswende des Russlanddeutschen Bauerntum in den Jahren 1927–1930 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1942), 58, https://chortitza.org/Pis/Auhag.pdf.

Note 9: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia Region, Books I–VI (Zaporizhia: Dniprovskij Metalurg, 2004–2013) [РЕАБІЛІТОВАНІ ІСТОРІЄЮ: Запорізька область], http://www.reabit.org.ua/books/zp/. Book II, 471; 480; 560; 764; 390f.

Note 10: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia IV, 40, 144; 198; 221; 241; 459; 495; 607; 609.

Note 11: Peter Letkemann, “Mennonites in the Soviet Inferno, 1917–1956,” Preservings 13 (1998), 11, https://www.plettfoundation.org/files/preservings/Preservings13.pdf. Cf. also Alexander Rempel, Alexander, and Amalie Enns, eds., Hope is our Deliverance: Aeltester Jakob Aaron Rempel (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2005), ch. 6. Cf. 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), 15.

Note 12: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia, V, 277.

Note 13: Cf. the well-researched and narrated story of Neu Chortitza Elder Jakob Rempel’s ministry, arrest and deportation in 1929, in Hermann Heidebrecht, Auf dem Gipfel des Lebens. Das Leben des Ältesten Jakob Rempel (Bielefeld: Christlicher Missions-Verlag, 2004), 179-200.

Note 14: Article 54 is almost identical to the Russian SSR Criminal Code Article 58; for a history of its application, cf. Sarah Davies, “The Crime of Anti-Soviet Agitation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s,” Cahiers du monde russe 9, 1–2 (1998), 149–167.

Note 15: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia, V, 337, 498.

Note 16: Der Auslanddeutsche 12, no. 12 (1929), 410.

Note 17: David Toews to Maxwell Kratz, April 23, 1929, from MCC-Akron, IX-2, box 3, file 10, 0002. Name of congregation and elder anonymous.

Note 18: Benjamin H. Unruh, “Bericht über meine Verhandlungen in Sachen der Flüchtlinge bei Moskau, vom 24.10 to 23.11,” November 13, 1929, p. 1. Report to Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, from MCC-Akron, IX-01-01, box 10, file 21.

Note 19: “Wirtschaftslage in der Ukraine,” Der Auslanddeutsche 12, no. 13 (1929), 445, citing letter received.

Note 20: As reported by Benjamin Unruh to the American MCC executive: “Bericht über die katastrophale Lage der menn. Ansiedlungen in Russland und die Massenflucht der Kolonisten,” October 29, 1929, p. 1. From MCC-Akron, IX-02, box 4, file 4.

Note 21: Cf. Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia, IV, 286; II, 242; IV, 496; II, 391; II, 635; II, 761; II, 213; II, 520; II, 558; II, 765; II, 471; II, 763; IV, 589 and II, 41; II, 216, 115 and 429; II, 212; II, 453 and V, 277; II, 645.

Note 22: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia III, 541; 369. Both were later retried and not released from prison until 1956.

Note 23: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia II, 121.

Note 24: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia II, 513.

Note 25: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia II, 237

Note 26: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia II, 344.

Note 27: Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia II, 148; for his story, cf. Aron A. Toews, Mennonite Martyrs: People who suffered for their faith 1920–1940, translated by John B. Toews (Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 1990), 100-107, https://archive.org/details/MennoniteMartyrs19201940ocr1.

Note 28: Rehabilitated History: Donetsk Region, Book XI (Donetsk: KP Region, 2012), 526. [РЕАБІЛІТОВАНІ ІСТОРІЄЮ: Донецька область], http://www.reabit.org.ua/books/dn/, arrested with Driedger were Jakob J. Dyck (III, 402) and Abram J. Isaak (IX, 544).

Note 29: "Brief aus Süd-Rußland," Mennonitische Rundschau 43, no 24 (June 11, 1930), 7, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1930-06-11_53_24/page/n5/.

Print Friendly and PDF

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...
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

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

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

"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

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...
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

Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44

They walked in one end as Soviet citizens, proceeded through a few wagons, and emerged out the other end as naturalized citizens of the German Reich . Below is a newspaper article marking the completion of the registration and naturalization of some 35,000 Mennonite resettlers—plus other Black Sea Germans. By July 1944 all the treks or transports had arrived from the Black Sea region into Greater Germany [most in Warthegau], and almost all were now registered for a more permanent settlement situation in German-annexed Poland—or so they thought. The translation is important because it offers a clear account of the process of naturalization, application and assessment. While not all Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine 1943-44 were naturalized in one of the visiting mobile Immigration Central Office trains, most were. The article and photos fill a gap in our knowledge of that experience in Nazi Germany and how naturalization was approached and experienced by some 30,000-plus Mennonites....
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