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:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...
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

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15...
Post a Comment
Read more

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle...
1 comment
Read more

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Motherhood of the People": Halbstadt Midwife Helene Berg and the SS

Recently Benjamin Goossen posted an important piece on the “well-known” Halbstadt midwife Helene Berg. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had taken a special interest in “old Mrs. Berg” and had publicly recognized her for helping birth some 8,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) babies ( note 1 ). Goossen and I have shared archival materials in the past years. Below I would like to continue the exploration of Taunte Bojsche (or "Aunt Berg") and the surprisingly broad interest in her by Nazi officials as icon. I begin with a family story as a window onto the times. Some 35,000 Mennonites were evacuated out of German-occupied Ukraine in Fall 1943. After a grueling trek west the survivors landed in German-annexed Wartheland (previously Poland) where they were naturalized as German citizens. My grandmother Helene Bräul had eight children, and Helene Berg may very well have been her midwife for one or more of them. Like many Mennonite mothers in Wartheland, my grandmother was ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.” Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork ( note 1 ; pic ). This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...
Post a Comment
Read more

Polish-Prussia? Royal Prussia? West Prussia? Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Notes for Clarification

The historical jurisdictions, names and political powers under which Mennonites lived since their arrival in lands that are today Poland are difficult to keep straight. However they are important for telling the story right. This post simply provides some notes for orientation with reference to the late sixteenth-century map below. Polish- or Royal Prussia comes into being with the defeat of Teutonic Knights by the Polish Crown in 1466. See the pink-shaded area of the map below. Ducal Prussia is a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Poland after 1525 (see stiped on map). In 1618, this duchy (voivodeship) is inherited by Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, who separated it from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1657. After 1701, the Elector of Brandenburg is the “King of Prussia” when in that territory. With the First Partition of Poland in 1772, it becomes East Prussia . By 1569 Polish- or Royal Prussia was fully integrated into Kingdom of Poland and part of the larger Polish-Lithuanian...
Post a Comment
Read more