I am at a loss of what to say in the face of such terrifying video coming from Ukraine (March 4, 2022).
The Ukrainian people are the historic friends, hosts and
neighbours of the Mennonites since our arrival in 1789.
It is a rich, unique relationship. For the first eight
decades, relationships between Mennonites and their neighbours in Ukraine (or
earlier South or New Russia) were largely prescribed by the colonial policies
of Greater Russia. Each “foreign” people group was regulated by their unique
privileges negotiated with the crown, each with mandated expectations and
responsibilities (e.g., model farming), and required to live in closed,
culturally specific colonies in order to “keep the peace.” It was a larger
police state in which movement outside the colony was strictly regulated.
That was the historic context of our neighbourliness, our
mutual learnings, respect, love, but also inequalities, suspicions, prejudices,
negotiations, barriers to language learning or intermarriage, and at times
anger and acts of reprisals too. Being neighbours was complicated for our
ancestors. Our inherited memories too are complicated three or more generations
later.
Our desire to love the neighbour however is real; the desire
to rebuild past, broken cultural bridges strong. Many Canadian Mennonites have travelled
to Ukraine. All who have done so have rekindled a deep love and connection to
that land and to the Ukrainian people.
What clouded and hurt our relationship most was German
occupation. At this point all our people and communities had been severely
broken by Stalin—though that is no excuse. Mennonites were ethnic German, of
course, a favourite target of Stalin and now one of favour and privilege and
designated for new responsibilities under Nazi Germany. To escape their
hardships, almost all Mennonites sided with the German occupiers, whose plans
for oppression of Slavic peoples to a slave existence--and extermination of
Jews in Ukraine was shocking for Mennonites as well. But we were complicit. And
in retreat behind German lines we feared and then also protected ourselves with
arms against "Ukrainian partisans”.
We are working through that complicated history in discussion
groups, for example, with a strong commitment to rebuild friendship. In war
now, the desire to help and love this “historic neighbour” is authentic.
We are all saddened by current events; MCC is the historic
Mennonite relief agency that was in Ukraine in 1921-2 and is ramping up to help
today. For most Mennonites in Canada, that will be our trusted partner to get
the aid out, and our way to walk with this "old friend" in their time
of need.
I want to point in closing to Germany. Their border is open
to Ukrainians today. Train travel is free. Doors in homes are open to refugees.
This makes me proud too (many of us have a complicated connection to Germany as
well).
This blog represents in part the desire of many to piece
together our Mennonite stories, but more: we have the opportunity to re-narrate
events in such a way as to "heal memories.” History can be leveraged to
help us walk better, and more authentically with our old friends and neighbours
of Ukraine. And to this end, it can help us to be/ become a better people of
peace –which of course was our original rationale for arriving in Ukraine en
masse so many years ago.
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
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