Grouw, Friesland, Netherlands, 1946-47

My grandmother Helene Bräul (age 42) with my mother and her sister crossed into The Netherlands on February 21, 1946. My uncle Walter and his friends—seventeen-year-old decommissioned German soldiers at war's end—crossed a few days later. Peter J. Dyck, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Europe Director offered a first assessment of the Mennonite tragedy under Stalin to his Canadian counterparts.

“They are truly like sheep in a wilderness and the women of 36 years look much more like 50 years. They told me that if I thought that I and my parents had witnessed terrible times in Russia during the revolution and the subsequent years of famine they could assure me that that was mild in comparison to what followed since 1927 when we left Russia. They told me one tragedy after another and it appears, if what they say is to be taken as representing the whole of the country and our people there and not only a section, that most of our Mennonites have perished.” (Note 1)

Dutch Mennonite leader T. Hylkema painted a similar picture of these “bedraggled” refugees and co-religionists in his book Fredesheim (note 2).

The refugees entered The Netherlands with little more than a "Menno Pass." Only 437 of these had been issued before the Soviet Union exerted enough pressure on the Dutch government to close this door (note 3). Nonetheless the Dutch “adamantly refused to return to the Soviet Union those Mennonites that had already been admitted” until the Soviets could offer proof of identity, citizenship, and of voluntary collaboration with the Germans (note 4).

MCC first brought the refugees to Amsterdam by bus where they were greeted by American MCC workers who by-and-large did not speak German. MCC had arranged for a large hotel and some schools to house everyone.

In Amsterdam they could rest and enjoy good food until permanent lodging could be found. On one of days the refugees were taken on a sight-seeing trip in Amsterdam. Käthe (my mother) remembers that she and other children were able to visit a zoo for the first time in their lives. And at the MCC depot they were all allowed to take one item of clothing.

The stay in Amsterdam lasted only one week. Käthe remembers Russian agents coming to their house in Amsterdam twice. The refugee strategy, however, was to be unresponsive to the Soviet Repatriation Commission members’ questions. “Yet, the interviews caused significant fear among the refugees, who kept their children indoors on the days of the Russians’ presence” (note 5). Fundamentally, however, the Dutch government was committed to their security and well-being. Many Dutch Mennonites had been moved by the plight of Russian Mennonites since the communist terror of 1918, had supported the famine and refugee efforts in the 1920s and in 1930 (note 6). Yet most Dutch Mennonite ministers had spoken out clearly and early against National Socialism as an ideology of race and Volk over worship of God, and as a form of “modern paganism” that gave priority to duty, obedience, and discipline over love (note 7).

On February 28, 1946 a group of the refugees was delivered by truck from Amsterdam to the northern Dutch province of Friesland. Helene and daughters were designated to live in Grouw, together with fourteen other refugees, each housed by Dutch Mennonite families. Grouw is a small, picturesque town of about 3,000 people situated on a lake southeast of Leeuwarden. Helene was billeted with H. A. J. van Straalen, who owned a cigar and photo shop on Hoofdstraat 313.

Käthe stayed with the neighbours, the Willem Leistra family and their children Jan and Sjoerdtje. Here they called her “Tini,” for “Käthe” sounded “too German.”

Sara stayed with the family of Frans H. Pasma, who had been pastor of the Mennonite congregation in Grouw since 1921. He was a participant at the Mennonite World Conference in The Netherlands in 1936 where the suffering of Mennonites in Russia was presented (note 8). During the war years, Pasma chaired the executive committee of the Dutch General Mennonite Conference (Algemene Doopsgezinde Societeit) and advised Dutch congregations regarding policies and regulations under German occupation (note 9).

The Dutch had been under German rule since May 10, 1940, and that September the executive “issued a strong call to all congregations to remain faithful to the example of their illustrious Reformation ancestors” (note 10). At least seven Dutch ministers were imprisoned during German occupation, and a hundred or more Dutch Mennonites died in a German concentration camp (note 11). The Nazi SD (Sicherheitsdienst) retreated from Grouw on the night of Thursday, April 12, 1945, blowing up two bridges as they left. That Sunday Pasma preached a “liberation” text:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. … He who rescued us from so deadly a peril will continue to rescue us; on him we have set our hope that he will rescue us again (2 Corinthians 1: 3, 4; 10).”

Ninety minutes after the service ended, Canadian troops entered the town and were greeted with “indescribable shouts of joy” (note 12). Six Jews emerged from hiding; five of them lived for a few years on the “top floor of the milk barn of Mr. Blaauw … only the medical doctor and two ministers were aware of that secret” (note 13).

The Bräuls now lived in the area from which some of their “Matthies” and “Thiessen” ancestors fled in the sixteenth century, and less than twenty-five kilometres from the birthplace of Menno Simons. The Mennonite congregation in Grouw was founded about 1570 and had a membership of about 310 in 1940.

In The Netherlands Helene found employment cleaning the homes of wealthier Dutch families, as well as doing laundry for the Leistras outside in the back courtyard with a washboard. She did this even in very cold temperatures, and her hands would later suffer. Ninety percent of all the money earned by the refugees went back to the Mennonite Central Committee to pay for their costs, including for those unable to work.

Käthe was put into grade two in the Dutch school system. Not only did she learn Dutch fluently, she also learnt to read the local Frisian dialect from her host family. Dutch adults who all understood German refused to speak German after enduring Nazi occupation. Mennonite Low German was close to the Frisian dialect, and Helene, Walter, Sara and Käthe gave up speaking High German, to the point that Käthe forgot it altogether and apparently spoke Dutch without accent.

The year in The Netherlands was the first peaceful period in many years for these refugees. “Anti-German sentiment was very intense at the time,” and it appears that little was said about the war-time experiences (note 14). Though everyone worked hard, there was also time for leisure—something completely foreign to Helene’s children. Here Walter had the opportunity to skate for the first time, and he also enjoyed going to the movies. Even from the perspective of their Dutch Mennonite hosts, the year went well with “no serious problems with the guests” (note 15).

Decades later the one piece of popular religious art that hung in our children’s bedroom in Canada was that of a guardian angel watching over two small children as they cross an unsafe bridge in the darkness of night. I think the image was a projection of mother's own childhood experience, and her sense of God’s protection and guidance in turbulent times.

Even today when my mother recalls the year in The Netherlands, she speaks of it with gratitude, almost as if she had been delivered by some holy angel to that place of safety and joy.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Peter J. Dyck, “Memorandum on Mennonite Refugees in Germany as on July 25, 1946,” cited in Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus (Altona, MB: Friesen, 1962), 528.

Note 2: T. Hylkema, Fredeshiem, cited in Peter J. Dyck and Efrieda Dyck, Up from the Rubble (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1991), 106, https://archive.org/details/upfromrubble0000dyck. Cf. also Gerlof D. Homan, “‘We Have Come to Love Them’: Russian Mennonite Refugees in the Netherlands, 1945–1947,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 25 (2007), 45, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/1223/1215.

Note 3: C. F. Klassen, “Mennonite Refugees—Our Challenge,” Fourth Mennonite World Conference Proceedings, August 3–10, 1948, edited by P. C. Hiebert (Akron, PA: Mennonite Central Committee, 1950), 183, https://archive.org/details/FourthMWCProceedings1948/page/n31/mode/2up.

Note 4: Peter J. Dyck, “Refugees,” GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Refugees. For a fuller account, cf. Dyck and Dyck, Up from the Rubble.

Note 5: Homan, “We have come to love them,” 47.

Note 6: Gerlof D. Homan, “‘We must ... and can stand firmly’: Dutch Mennonites in World War II,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 69, no. 1 (January 1995), 10.

Note 7: Cited in Homan, “We must … and can stand firmly,” 11.

Note 8: See the 1936 Mennonite World Conference registration list, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/V_6/box%2015/folder%208/110.jpg.

Note 9: Homan, “We must … and can stand firmly,” 15.

Note 10: Homan, “We must … and can stand firmly,” 15.

Note 11: Homan, “We must … and can stand firmly,” 27; 31.

Note 12: F. H. Pasma, De Doopsgezinden te Grouw (Grouw, NL: Doopsgezinde Gemeente to Grouw, 1968), 72.

Note 13: Pasma, De Doopsgezinden te Grouw, 72.

Note 14: Homan, “We have come to love them,” 50f.; cf. Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 104.

Note 15: Homan, “‘We hebben ze lief gekregen,’ Het verblijf van Russische mennonieten in Nederland van 1945 tot 1947,” Doopsgezinde Bijtragen 32 (2006), 246.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Grouw, Friesland, Netherlands, 1947-47,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 14, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/grouw-friesland-netherlands-1946-47.html.

Comments

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...

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 ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 2 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 In a few short months the American government will start to fulfill its campaign promises to round up and deport undocumented immigrants. The responsible cabinet members have already been appointed. By early Spring 2025, Mennonite pastors/leaders who supported Trump will need to speak to and address the matter in their congregations. It will be difficult to find words. How might they prepare? Sometimes a template from the past is helpful. To that end, I offer my summary of a text by retired Mennonite pastor and conference leader Gustav Kraemer. (There is a nice entry on him in the Mennonite Encyclopedia, GAMEO ). My summary is faithful to the German original, 1938. With only a few minor changes, it could be useful for the coming year. Adaptations are mostly in square brackets, with the key at the bottom of the post. ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement! In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Mennonite Murders, Infanticide, Rapes and more

To outsiders, the Mennonite reality in South Russia appeared almost utopian—with their “mild and peaceful ethos.” While it is easy to find examples of all the "holy virtues" of the Mennonite community, only when we are honest about both good deeds and misdemeanors does the Russian Mennonite tradition have something authentic to offer—or not. Rudnerweide was one of a few Molotschna villages with a Mennonite brewery and tavern , which in turn brought with it life-style lapses that would burden the local elder. For example, on January 21, 1835, the Rudnerweide Village Office reported that Johann Cornies’s sheep farm manager Heinrich Reimer, as well as Peter Friesen and an employed Russian shepherd, came into the village “under the influence of brandy,” and: "…at the tavern kept by Aron Wiens, they ordered half a quart of brandy and shouted loudly as they drank, banged their glasses on the table. The tavern keeper objected asking them to settle down, but they refused and...

The Flight to Moscow 1929

In 1926, my grandfather’s sister Justina Fast (b. 1896) and her husband Peter Görzen moved from Krassikow, Neu Samara (Soviet Union) to village no. 5 Dejewka, Orenburg. “We thought we would live our lives here with our children secure in the hands of God. But the times were becoming turbulent,” Justina recalled. In May 1929 they travelled back to Krassikow for Pentecost to visit with her mother, brothers and their families. But when they returned to their home, she writes, “… a large quota of grain was demanded of us. But we had nothing, and the harvest was not yet in. Then we heard that many were planning to move to Canada, including my three siblings with my mother, and my husband's three sisters too. My husband decided to go to Moscow first to see if it was possible and what was required for emigration. We made the decision to leave when the harvest was complete. At that time so many people were leaving [for Moscow], and early in September we sold everything we had. Only the b...

Simple Refugee Wedding: My grandparents (1931)

My father was born less than a year after these 1931 wedding photos. Jacob Fast and Helen Janzen had been in Paraguay less than 8 months—see the MCC telegram—and tragedy had already struck both refugees families. Jacob’s first wife and a daughter became victims of the epidemic that ravaged the new colony of Fernheim in those first months. He was now a widower at age 39—with an infant and other children without a mother. Helene was single and 29 years old. Her mother too had died from the same epidemic; her father was partially crippled. They had come from southern Ukrainian community of Spat, Crimea; Fast was from Ural Mountains area in Russia where South Russian Mennonites had created a “daughter colony” a generation earlier. Each had siblings who fled to Moscow in 1929 with them and who were accepted by Canada in 1930. My grandparents however were rejected—she was a single woman with frail parents; he was a man with an ill child. Perhaps in contexts like these the falli...

What does it cost to settle a Refugee? Basic without Medical Care (1930)

In January 1930, the Mennonite Central Committee was scrambling to get 3,885 Mennonites out of Germany and settled somewhere fast. These refugees had fled via Moscow in December 1929, and Germany was willing only to serve as first transit stop ( note 1 ). Canada was very reluctant to take any German-speaking Mennonites—the Great Depression had begun and a negative memory of war resistance still lingered. In the end Canada took 1,344 Mennonites and the USA took none born in Russia. Paraguay was the next best option ( note 2 ). The German government preferred Brazil, but Brazil would not guarantee freedom from military service, which was a problem for American Mennonite financiers. There were already some conservative "cousins" from Manitoba in Paraguay who had negotiated with the government and learned through trial and error how to survive in the "Green Hell" of the Paraguayan Chaco. MCC with the assistance of a German aid organization purchased and distribute...

Russian and Prussian Mennonite Participants in “Racial-Science,” 1930

I n December 1929, some 3,885 Soviet Mennonites plus 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists and seven Adventists were assisted by Germany to flee the Soviet Union. They entered German transit camps before resettlement in Canada, Brazil and Paraguay ( note 1 ) In the camps Russian Mennonites participated in a racial-biological study to measure their hereditary characteristics and “racial” composition and “blood purity” in comparison to Danzig-West Prussian, genetic cousins. In Germany in the last century, anthropological and medical research was horribly misused for the pseudo-scientific work referred to as “racial studies” (Rassenkunde). The discipline pre-dated Nazi Germany to describe apparent human differences and ultimately “to justify political, social and cultural inequality” ( note 2 ). But by 1935 a program of “racial hygiene” and eugenics was implemented with an “understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the ...

Creating a Spiritual Tradition: Nine Core Texts

Just before Mennonite immigration to Russia, Prussian leaders were feverishly translating the tradition from Dutch to German. In addition to the translations, a few other key pieces were also written and together these texts shaped the Russian Mennonite tradition. 1. In 1765 certain core writings of Menno Simons were selected, edited for brevity and focus, and translated into a first German edition by Johannes Deknatel ( note 1 ). 2. Hymnals: In 1780, Danzig Flemish Elder Hans van Steen with supporting ministers published (translated): A Spiritual Hymnal for General Edification, in which, besides David’s Psalms, a collection of specially selected old and new songs can be found . The Flemish had “always” worshiped in Dutch and as late as 1752 they had ordered 3,000 Dutch hymnals from Amsterdam. Two-thirds of the hymns in the Danzig hymnal were adopted from the Lutheran and Reformed tradition This was the second unique Mennonite hymnal in “the language of the land”; in 1767 Elbing an...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog