Escaping Repatriation: Stalin’s Claw-Back, 1946

Like so many others, as Susanna Toews recalled in her little book Trek to Freedom that “[o]ur discussions always centred around the question, what the New Year had in store for us” (note 1).

The first Christmas after war’s end brought some early glimmers of normal life for those in the Western Military Zone of Germany. My Walter Bräul—a war-weary vet at age 17—attached wheels to the back of an old suitcase and made his “kid-sister” Käthe—my mother—a functional doll carriage. My grandmother found time and material to sew doll clothing. The joy was tempered by the fact that they had no word on the other boys: Franz Jr., Heinrich, or Peter. Though the war had ended seven months earlier, they did not know if and how long they would be able to stay in the village of Bonstorf (note 2), near Celle in the British Zone.

In February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met secretly in Yalta and agreed that after the war Germany would be divided into three zones of occupation. Moreover, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to Stalin’s demand that citizens of the Soviet Union in all parts of Germany were to be repatriated--without consent and by force if necessary.

Soviet agents moved freely to locate their former citizens—including Mennonites. British and Americans troops offered logistical support. A confidential German Mennonite (Vereinigung) report to MCC in August 1945 confirmed the dire situation, that Soviet commissaries were attempting to force Russian Mennonites to return to the USSR.

“In spite of the fact that the British commandants have not yet given their consent, they proceed very rigorously … But the Mennonites do not want to go at all and there is a distress of which the anxious women are not able to master. Some of them have been taken to camps against their will.”

After a meeting with the British Commandants, a report nine days later confirmed:

“There is a possibility that many will be taken back to Russia by force, especially those who cannot defend themselves of the tricky and inconsiderate measures of the Russians. [However, the local mayors were] lending willing help to the Russians. They are trying to get rid of extra mouths to feed.” (Note 3)

By the end of September 1945, some 2,034,000 Soviet citizens in the British, American or French zones in Germany had been repatriated, and 2,946,000 from the Soviet zone (note 4).

In October things changed, and Allied Commander-in-Chief, General Dwight D. Eisenhower “ordered the discontinuance of forcible repatriation of Russian national,” but as Frank H. Epp notes, “the US State Department, concerned about cementing or retaining Soviet friendship, overruled Eisenhower’s instructions” (note 5). As a result there was confusion on the ground well into the new year.

Katie Friesen gives a vivid summary of the experience of those in the British Zone:

“Even though we were [naturalized] German citizens now, the Russian soldiers and agents came to the German towns and villages to search for former Russians. Soviet commissars were busily travelling from place to place holding meetings and urging the people to be ready when the truck would come to pick them up. Already, earlier in the summer, when we returned from the fields, we feared that there would be a Russian army truck waiting at the farm. We lived with this nagging fear, although I am quite sure that the [German host family] would not have easily given us up into the hands of the soldiers. They needed us and appreciated us, and we were grateful that we could reside with them, even though we were paid very little. Money was quite useless at the time because there was so little to buy. We became alarmed when we heard ... that the Russians had come to nearby Garssen to pick up Russian refugees but had been unable to find any. That made them quite furious and they assured the local people that they would get their people yet.” (Note 6)

After one such meeting my 17-year-old uncle Walter Bräul told his employer he had to quit. When asked why, he said he had to go back to the Soviet Union. “Do you want to go?” “Of course not,” said Walter. “Then you don’t have to. You stay with us as long as you wish.” Ex-soldiers were in greatest danger of forced repatriation—as Peter J. Dyck reported—however even in such cases Dyck found that the US and British sides would intervene, that is, “if the man can conclusively prove that he was forced into the Wehrmacht and the SS against his will” (note 7). That of course would almost always require the truth to be stretched to the extreme!

Some Mennonite refugees were ready to collaborate with the Soviets, hoping to impress the commissars with the numbers they could gather. Soviet officials with translators promised Mennonites their old homes and more. Uncle Walter remembered one such meeting at a school in a neighbouring village in which young Hans Dahl was asked politely by the commissar, “Don’t you want to go?” Dahl replied: “Why should I go back to Russia? You took my father to Siberia and he’s probably dead by now. And you’ll do the same to us. Why should I want to go with you?” With this reply the Soviet commissar lost his temper and lashed out at Dahl.

In Bonstorf on the famous Lüneburg Heath, where Oma, mom and sister Sarah lived, there were regular meetings which all adults were required to attend, including Hans Hilmer—host family father--and the mayor, who hosted another Mennonite family. Before one of these meetings Hilmer helped Oma and the other two Mennonite mothers in the village hide their children in a shepherd’s hut on the heath, fearing that other Soviet agents could search the homes and snatch the children while the adults were at their meetings.

My then eight-year-old mother remembers how afraid she, her sister, her cousin and the Bergen boys were that evening; the little windows of the hut were closed tight and the five children seemed to hear every noise in the forest that night. The Hilmers were very protective of their refugees; more than once they offered to hide my grandmother and children in their attic during the visits of Soviet agents who claimed these as “their” people (note 8).

This mix of fear and hope shaped the start of the new year 1946.

In these months MCC's secret plans were also taking shape—a Menno Pass to Holland (note 9), and MCC’s larger (and questionable) so-called “Dutch-Strategy” (note 10).

Of the approximately 35,000 Soviet Mennonites who had been resettled in Germany during the war years, only 12,000 ultimately escaped Stalin’s claw-back (note 11).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: 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), 38.

Note 2: See previous post (forthcoming).

Note 3: Cf. Ernst Crous, co-chair, "Association (Vereinigung) of German Mennonite Congregations," Minutes translated for MCC, August 21, 1945, 4, from Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_108/36%20Correspondence%20Special%20service%20and%20trips%20MCC%20Europe%201946/007.jpg.

Note 4: Harry Loewen, Road to Freedom: Mennonites Escape the Land of Suffering (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2000), 34; for the broader tragedy, cf. Nikolai Tolstoy, Victims of Yalta: The Secret Betrayal of the Allies, 1944–1947 (New York: Pegasus, 1977).

Note 5: Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus (Altona, MB: Friesen, 1962), 366.

Note 6: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 101.

Note 7: Peter Dyck, “Memorandum on Mennonite Refugees in Germany as on July 25, 1946,” 3, MCC-Akron archives.

Note 8: Toews, Trek to Freedom, 36. On the Hilmer family and Bonstorf in the war, see an earlier post (forthcoming).

Note 9: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/in-case-of-extreme-danger-menno-pass.html.

Note 10: See previous post (forthcoming).

Note 11: Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart: Deutsches Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 242, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1524/9783486703344/html. Harry Loewen, “Of Suffering, Forgiveness, and Closure: Reflections on Russian Mennonite Experience,” Vision: A Journal for Church and Theology 8, no. 2 (2007), 48–54; 50, https://press.palni.org/ojs/index.php/vision/article/view/422/366.

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Escaping Repatriation: Stalin’s Claw-Back, 1946,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 10, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/escaping-repatriation-stalins-claw-back.html.

Comments

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

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 ...

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” ( note 1 ). In Berlin the secret was already out. Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service. “‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” ( Note 2 ) The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point. With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were c...

What were Molotschna Mennonites reading in the early 1840s?

Johann Cornies expanded his Agricultural Society School library in Ohrloff to become a lending library “for the instruction and better enlightenment of every adult resident.” The library was overseen by the Agricultural Society; in 1845, patrons across the colony paid 1 ruble annually to access its growing collection of 355 volumes (see note 1 ). The great majority of the volumes were in German, but the library included Russian and some French volumes, with a large selection of handbooks and periodicals on agronomy and agriculture—even a medical handbook ( note 2 ). Philosophical texts included a German translation of George Combe’s The Constitution of Man ( note 3 ) and its controversial theory of phrenology, and the political economist Johann H. G. Justi’s Ergetzungen der vernünftigen Seele —which give example of the high level of reading and reflection amongst some colonists. The library’s teaching and reference resources included a history of science and technology with an accomp...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog