History of the Russian Mennonites

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

The Molotschna Mennonite Colony was established in 1803; 140 years later its villages were evacuated by retreating German armies. A map of the larger German operation of 1943 and the various "Trecks" is attached. The tens of thousands of evacuees included some 35,000 Mennonites. Nazi Germany had utterly failed Ukrainians, but continued to have plans for their "ethnic Germans" in the east. On Sept. 8, 1943 , the Red Army successfully took Donetsk (Stalino), 230 km east of Molotschna. The next day, S.S. administrators gave orders that every Molotschna family should load one wagon with their possessions and prepare for an orderly evacuation. Hitler was intent on holding Crimea, and sought to set up a defensive line from Zaporizhzhia to Melitopol and south to the Sea of Azov. Evacuation plans east of this line were in place since late June—initially to be resettled “somewhere” west of the Dnieper; on Aug. 17 first steps were taken to move 8,000 hospital beds west o...

A collection of simple artefacts like shoes can open windows onto the life and story of a people. Below are a few observations about shoes and boots, or the lack thereof, and their connection to the social and cultural history of Russian Mennonites. Curiously Mennonites arrived in New Russia shoe poor in 1789, and were evacuated as shoe poor in 1943 as when their ancestors arrived--and there are many stories in between. The poverty of the first Flemish elder in Chortitza Bernhard Penner was so great that he had only his home-made Bastelschuhe in which to serve the Lord’s Supper. “[Consequently] four of the participating brethren banded together to buy him a pair of boots which one of the [Land] delegates, Bartsch, made for him. The poor community desired with all its heart to partake of the holy sacrament, but when they remembered the solemnity of these occasions in their former homeland, where they dressed in their Sunday best, there was loud sobbing.” ( Note 1 ) In the 1802 C...

Mennonite memoirs say little about the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. In the second half of that year Ukraine was dealing with a typhus epidemic, cholera epidemic and the Spanish Flu pandemic—all at the same time. Troubles were compounded by the withdrawal of protective German troops and increased but still sporadic attacks by anarchist bandits. In September and October 1918, the Mennonite newspaper Friedensstimme recorded outbreaks of the Spanish flu in the Molotschna, Sagradovka, Memrik, Fürstenland, and Naumenko Mennonite settlements. The Friedensstimme summarized that “the Spanish disease is running rampant everywhere in our colonies. Deaths are also resulting here and there” ( note 1 ). September 1918: In the Sagradovka Settlement, Katharina Unruh Thiessen died of the Spanish flu at the age of 69. She suffered 12 days ( note 2 ). Also in the Sagradovka Settlement, Gerhard Jakob Wiebe struggled with the Spanish flu for 10 days before dying at the age of 38 ( note 3 ). In the Memrik S...

Abraham Kröker (1863-1944) was the well-known editor of the Molotschna-based paper—variously named Volksfreund , Friedensstimme or Flugblatt , as well as the annual Familienkalender . He published through WW1 and the anarchy and early Bolshevist years, which included six months of friendly German occupation in 1918. His editorials from those times are all online and fascinating to read,  https://chortitza.org/FB/mennru.htm . Looking back on the collapse of Mennonite life in Ukraine, he pointed to the love of “mammon,” the “materialistic disposition” and “nationalistic arrogance” of Mennonites, and not least to the forgetfulness of the unique call of the community to “sacrifice, suffering and renunciation for the sake of others.” In 1918--a very dangerous context in which to publish news--Kröker reminded his readers that according to the example of the Apostle Paul who suffered under unjust authorities, the Christian is to pray and intercede “for kings and all those in authority, ...

In mid-August 1917--two months before the Bolshevik Revolution, but in preparation of national elections--the first “All-Mennonite Congress” met in Ohrloff, Molotschna to organize and strategize Mennonite civil affairs (i.e., as separate from the church) with 198 representatives from various regions and interest groups. Significant debate around Mennonite non-resistance and military service was on the agenda, but also questions around more equitable land distribution and the compatibility of Christianity and socialism. The minutes ( note 1 ) record that there was clearly a group of Mennonites at this meeting who were both convinced socialists and Christians, and that delegates had a longer, protracted debate on the compatibility of socialism and Christianity. First they discussed what was most critical: more equitable land distribution (this topic was "in the air") and the right to private land ownership. There was broad agreement (even with the socialist leaning Mennon...

Mennonite self-defence units  ( Selbstschutz ) did not simply arise through the encouragement and training of German military units leaving southern Ukraine in Fall 1918. This has sometimes been suggested to explain the unprecedented armed Mennonite response to the anarchy that followed. One Selbstschutz chaplain, and later elder in Waterloo, Canada ( Jacob H. Janzen )  turned blame away from 1918 Selbstschutz participants and pointed instead to the parents: they “were only what we had brought them up to be” ( note 1 ). A 1914 list of firearms confiscated from Mennonites by the state help s us to reconstruct the roots of one of the most problematic chapters in Mennonite history. Self-defence with a weapon was real option for some Mennonites long before the days of terror. Suspicious about Mennonite loyalties in an impending war with Germany, 2,350 firearms were seized from 1,850 Russian Mennonite households—including 600 handguns or revolvers—in 1914 ( note 2 ). T...