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

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

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

"Anti-Menno" Communist: David J. Penner (1904-1993)

The most outspoken early “Mennonite communist”—or better, “Anti-Menno” communist—was David Johann Penner, b. 1904. Penner was the son of a Chortitza teacher and had grown up Mennonite Brethren in Millerovo, with five religious services per week ( note 1 )! In 1930 with Stalin firmly in power, Penner pseudonymously penned the booklet entitled Anti-Menno ( note 2 ). While his attack was bitter, his criticisms offer a well-informed, plausible window on Mennonite life—albeit biased and with no intention for reform. He is a ethnic Mennonite writing to other Mennonites. Penner offers multiple examples of how the Mennonite clergy in particular—but also deacons, choir conductors, Sunday School teachers, leaders of youth or women’s circles—aligned themselves with the exploitative interests of industry and wealth. Extreme prosperity for Mennonite industrialists and large landowners was achieved with low wages and the poverty of their Russian /Ukrainian workers, according to Penner. Though t...
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

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

Anti-Jewish Pogroms and Mennonite responses in Einlage (1905) and Sagradovka (1899)

Below are stories of two pogroms and of the responses in two Mennonite communities in Ukraine/Russia. The first location is Einlage (Chortitza) in 1905, with two episodes. The rage of peasants and the working class exploded with strikes, bloody revolts, chaos and plundering across the land, especially on the estates early in 1905. The Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone, with larger Mennonite manufacturers of agricultural machinery in Einlage as well, was a centre for some of that labour unrest ( note 1 ). In the shadows of the larger March 1905 Russian Revolution, there were so-called provocateurs named the "Black Hundred" ( note 2 ) who organized pogroms across Russia, but especially in ethnic Ukrainian and Polish areas. “Jewish stores, shops, and homes were broken into, robbed, and plundered; Jewish women and girls were raped and brutally murdered. Many Jews lost not only their belongings in Russia, but also their lives. And all with impunity. The police ...
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

1873: First Russian Mennonites leave for North America

On February 4, 1873, ministers and elders held a special meeting in Elder Isaak Peters’ Pordenau Molotschna church ( note 1 ). It was a larger building with balcony, constructed in 1860 after the original 1828 stone church building had been torn down. They had put down deep roots in Russia; nonetheless Peters spoke strongly in favour of emigration and supported a decision to send land scouts to America. The team was given a mandate to negotiate for the possibility of some 50 to 60,000 Mennonite immigrants ( note 2 ). Eager to compete with the United States for settlers, the Canadian government passed an Order-in-Council on March 3, 1873 to create a Mennonite reservation of nine-and-one-third townships ( note 3 ). The twelve-member deputation—including two Molotschna elders—which had been sent to North America returned in September with a favourable report ( note 4 ). Despite divergent opinions on the ground, the first hundred Russian Mennonite agriculturalists arrived in the United...
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

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