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Blessed are the Shoe-Makers: Brief History of Lost Soles

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 Chortitza Colony census, however, we see that Isaac Kasdorf in Rosenthal is a shoe-maker. The 1810 Chortitza Colony census also gives the following note to four landholders: “ist ein Schuh macher,” i.e., is a shoe-maker (pic). The 1811 lists six shoe-makers; the 1816 has only two (note 2).

For the next 100 years there was no lack of footwear in the Russian Mennonite colonies, and it is hard to find mention of shoes and boots at all.

This changes with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath. During the years of upheaval footwear was a regularly stolen commodity. A few diary entries from Jacob P. Janzen of Rudnerweide offer a fuller picture (note 3):

"December 2, 1917: Stealing is rampant … One evening at 8 in Fürstenwald a couple of nationals invaded their house screaming, “Hands up!,” and Loewen had to give 800 rubles, the clock, shoes, and cap and ordered to keep quiet.

March 14, 1919: It is said the Bolsheviks took a great deal in Franzthal, including all flour, clothing, shoes, emptying all the drawers without even looking at it.

April 7, 1919: Received a letter from Richerts. They had to give up 400–500 ruble, his shoes, pants and smaller items.

June 9, Second Day of Pentecost, 1919: Nine Reds, including two women came at night. They behaved miserably. They insisted on more money and threatened to shoot me by pointing the revolver in my face and hit me with it, but not seriously. They searched around in the dark and took various items including shoes and other things we don’t know. 

November 1919: As I turned in at our gate, I met two Reds riding out. Among other things they had taken my last shoes. Now I had only the old felt boots I had worn on my trip. They were soaked through and the soles completely worn off. The peasants where I had stayed overnight with my wounded, had helped me to tie thin pieces of wood to the soles so that I would not have to completely walk in the mud with my sockless feet. So I got out an old pair of shoes, already thrown out, sat down with my tools and put patch on patch, so as to have something clean and dry to put on my feet.

December 5, 1919: [Peter Janzen and] I cut down a poplar out of the windbreak to use for wooden shoes."

Janzen’s diary from 1916 to 1925 mentions the making, resoling, patching and repairing of shoes 150 times—something he did as a sideline.

1920s: In October 1920 an American Mennonite relief worker visiting Halbstadt, Molotschna estimated that only “one child out of ten has anything looking like shoes” (note 4).

During the famine of 1921-22, Mennonites in North America gave generously. Holdeman Mennonites in Swalwell, Alberta and Mennonites from Drake, Saskatchewan, for example, joined Manitoba Mennonites to send 680 pounds of shoes, 150 pounds of soap, plus another 6,000 pounds of clothing for the relief effort in July 1922. Janzen wrote in his diary: “Susi received a nice blue dress from the Americans which she says is the best in Gnadenfeld. Tinke got an overcoat and good shoes although they are too tight. The others did not get much that was good.” (Note 5).

A report on refugees from Molotschna and Crimea stranded in the Black Sea port of Batum (Caucasus, 1922) states that “in the past three to six months during which most were out of work, one item of clothing or underwear after the next had to be sold. Some already have no shirt. Almost everyone has very bad shoes” (note 6).

1930s: At the height of Stalinist repression the need for footwear was just as real but the context was different. One memoir recalls women working on the collective farms arriving together with hoes over their shoulders, usually barefoot—though some had wooden shoes—each in a dress covered in patches (note 7; pic).


“After father's arrest, mother worked on the collective farm, and we children grazed cows, calves and pigs in summer. Since we had no proper shoes, we had to walk barefoot in the stubble fields and came home in the evening with bleeding feet and legs. In autumn these wounds would stick to the woolen socks and had to be torn loose. This was often painful, but there was no medicine and ointments in those days.” (Note 8)

A mid-level worker on the collective farm earned between 200 and 250 rubles per years; a work outfit cost between 80 and 100 rubles, and a pair of shoes between 30 and 50 rubles (note 9).

My uncle Walter Bräul told me how he got a pair of shoes in 1938 when he was ten: "After father had been arrested in 1937, mother qualified for a one-time payment of 2,000 rubles for having seven children, with one under the age of five. ... She bought extra wheat and flour for her family, and then travelled with her cousin to the port city of Berdjansk where she bought coats and shoes for the children. At that point we were so poor that the children had no footwear."

1940s: With Nazi German military occupation, observers noted how poor, dull and unsightly children and youth were clothed for school with felted wool or straw shoes only (note 10). In a family photo in this time, one of Walter’s sisters had shoes, though they were too large, and the other two had none (pic).

Almost all ethnic Germans appear to have received supplies of linen, shoes, and clothing from Jews executed by the German military. On October 6, 1942, Reichsführer Heinirch Himmler sent a memo ordering depot items from the recently liquidated Jewish ghetto in Lublin and the concentration camp at Auschwitz be distributed for Christmas to all the major Volksdeutsche settlements; this included the Halbstadt district, which Himmler was scheduled to visit at the end of the month (note 11). On November 25, 1942, SS Oberführer Hoffmeyer confirmed the arrival of twenty-seven box cars of clothing items had arrived for the ethnic Germans for whom he had responsibility in South Ukraine (note 12). It was more than the Volksdeutsche could believe, even a decade later: “We were in dire need of clothing, yet even with that we were helped. The Germans in the Reich gathered many old clothes and sent them to us in Ukraine” (note 13).

In nearby Tokmak dozens of Jews were executed and buried in anti-tank trenches or ravine outside the town between 1941 and 1943. “With a few exceptions the bodies in the trenches were without clothing or shoes” (note 14). It is very likely that these shoes were redistributed to ethnic Germans. After a year of occupation, the regional official and chief administrator of the Molotschna Volksdeutsche Liaison Office (Mittelstelle) was not able to provide shoes and clothing: “[e]verything was lacking … We wanted to at least make wooden shoes. No wood to be had. Our German Red Cross nurses then wove some shoes out of corn straw” (note 15).

During the Trek out of the USSR in 1943 shoes continued to be thematic. Katie Peters in the Gnadenthal Trek group recalled how on the morning of November 10, 1943 everyone awoke to find that their world was covered in a blanket of ice and snow: “Still we moved forward, filled with fear of the Russians. Our clothes were wet, we had little, if anything, on our feet and we were always hungry” (note 16; pic).


“The roadways were a sea of mud. It is impossible to describe them and the hardships they caused to the trekkers. Often up to the axles in mud. The horses would slip and fall. ... We would push the wagon, walking deep in mud ourselves. Faces, hands, clothing, shoes—everything full of mud and wet. We were cold and wet, hungry and had little strength left. No men to help us ...” (Note 17)

Once in German annexed Poland the refugees again received clothing and shoes:

“During a stay in the camp of several days, the personal registration, the creation of an identity card, a more detailed health examination, the settlement of money and foreign exchange issues are carried out and the most essential need for clothes and shoes is covered.” (Note 18)

The word Schuhe (shoes) is found 1,411 in the Mennonitische Rundschau, 1880 to 2006 (note 19). Those references to “shoes” as well as those above convince me that a Mennonite shoe display in Winnipeg or Abbotsford would open a world of stories.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cited in Peter M. Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978) 112, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/; (German original, p. 93, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pmfries1.pdf).

Note 2: Glenn H. Penner, trans., “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for October 1802.” State Archives of Dnipro Region (DADO), Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 55. Notes by Richard D. Thiessen, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_October_1802.pdf; Richard D. Thiessen, trans., “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for October 1810.” State Archives of Dnipro Region (DADO), Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 269, https://mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_October_1810.pdf; Richard D. Thiessen, trans., “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for May 1811.” Archives of Dnipropetrovsk Region (SADR), Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 299. http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_May_1811.pdf; Richard D. Thiessen, trans., “Chortitza Mennonite Settlement Census for May 1816,” State Archives of Dnipro Region (DADO), Fond 134, Opis 1, Delo 498, http://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/Chortitza_Mennonite_Settlement_Census_May_1816.pdf.

Note 3: Orie O. Miller, The Orie O. Miller Diary, 1920–1921 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2018), 53.

Note 4: Jacob P. Janzen, “Diary 1916–1925,” translated by Edward Enns; entry for November 1919 from Jacob P. Janzen, “Diary 1911–1919 monthly summaries,” edited and translated by Katharina Wall Janzen. From Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg, MB, Jacob P. Janzen fonds, 1911–1946, vol. 5136 and 2341.

Note 5: "Kleider nach Rußland," Mennonitische Rundschau (September 6, 1922), 13. https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/lfrs189.pdf; Jacob P. Janzen, March 8, 1923, “Diary 1916-1925.”

Note 6: D. P. Neufeld (Reedley, CA) and J. P. Janzen (Sevastapol), “Die Mennonitische Flüchtlinge in Batum,” https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/076%20Colonization%20materials%201919-1925/pages/127.html.

Note 7: Cf. Eduard Allert (pseudonym for Eduard Reimer), “The Lost Generation,” in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz, 9–128 (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982), 32.

Note 8: Helene Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 29, https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/mode/2up.

Note 9: Cf. “Schönau (Zagradovka) Dorfbericht,” 268, and “Tiege (Zagradovka) Dorfbericht,” 290b, in “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” Prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, 1942. In Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BArch R6_GSK, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709. State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/. A. A. Töws, Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 1 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian Press, 1949), 293.

Note 10: Karl Götz, in Gerhard Winter, ed., Die volksdeutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt (LBA) zur Zeit der deutschen Besatzung Rußland (Wolfsburg: Self-published, 1988), 142.

Note 11: For details of memo by Himmler to S.S. Senior Group Leader Werner Lorenz and to Oswald Pohl, cf. Wendy Lower, Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2005), 267f., n.65.

Note 12: Cf. Peter Witte et al., eds., Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42 (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1999), 603 n.100.

Note 13: Käthe Becker, in A. A. Töws, ed. Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 2: Der große Leidensweg (North Clearbrook, BC: Self-published, 1954), 378.

Note 14: Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, “Bolshoy Tokmak,” May 7, 1944. State Extraordinary Commission for the Determination and Investigation of Nazi and their Collaborators’ Atrocities in the USSR (ChGK); Yad Vashem Archives, JM/19707; GARF 7021-61-29, https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/chgkSovietReports.asp?cid=563&site_id=705; “Soviet Report about the mass murder of Jews in Molochansk,” Yad Vashem Archives, M.37/293; TsGAOOu 57-4-14, https://www.yadvashem.org/untoldstories/database/index.asp?cid=568.

Note 15: Hermann Roßner, in Horst Gerlach, “Mennonites, the Molotschna, and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in the Second World War,” translated by John D. Thiesen, Mennonite Life 41, no. 3 (1986), 6, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1986sep.pdf.

Note 16: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 66.

Note 17: Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not, 65.

Note 18: SS Standartenführer Herbert Hübner, “Schwarzmeerdeutsche kehren heim,” Ostdeutscher Beobachter 6, no. 34 (February 4, 1944), 3, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125675/edition/134951/content.

Note 19: Search results in the Mennonitische Rundschau for “Schuhe,” https://archive.org/details/pub_die-mennonitische-rundschau?query=schuhe&sin=TXT&sort=date.

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