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

The Executioner of Dnepropetrovsk, 1937-38

Naum Turbovsky likely killed more Mennonites than anyone in the longer history of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement. This is an emotionally difficult post to write because one of those men was my grandfather, Franz Bräul, born 1896. In 2019, I received the translation of his 30-page arrest, trial and execution file. To this point my mother never knew her father's fate. Naum Turbovsky's signature is on Bräul's execution order. Bräul was shot on December 11, 1937. Together with my grandfather's NKVD/ KGB file, I have the files of eight others arrested with him. Turbovsky's file is available online. Days before he signed the execution papers for those in this group, Turbovsky was given an award for the security of his prison and for his method of isolating and transferring prisoners to their interrogation—all of which “greatly contributed to the success of the investigations over the enemies of the people,” namely “military-fascist conspirators, spies and saboteurs.” T

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans

Prof. Benjamin Unruh as a Public Figure in the Nazi Era

Professor Benjamin H. Unruh (1881-1959) was a relief and immigration leader, educator, leading churchman, and official representative of Russian Mennonites outside of the Soviet Union throughout the National Socialism era in Germany. Unruh’s biography is connected to the very beginnings of Mennonite Central Committee in 1920-1922 when he served as a key spokesperson in Germany for the famine-stricken Mennonites in South Russia. Some years later he again played the central role in the rescue of thousands of Mennonites from Moscow in 1929 and, along with MCC, their resettlement in Paraguay, Brazil, and Canada. Because of Unruh’s influence and deep connections with key German government agencies in Berlin, his home office in Karlsruhe, Germany, became a relief hub for Mennonites internationally. Unruh facilitated large-scale debt forgiveness for Mennonites in Paraguay and Brazil, and negotiated preferential consideration for Mennonite relief work to the Soviet Union during the Great Famin

"Women Talking" -- and Canadian Mennonites

In March 2023 the film "Women Talking" won an Oscar for "Best adapted Screenplay." It was based on the novel of the same name by Mennonite Miriam Toews. The conservative Mennonites portrayed in the film are from the "Manitoba Colony" in Bolivia--with obvious Canadian connections. Now that many Canadians have seen the the film, Mennonites like me are being asked, "So how are you [in Markham-Stouffville, Waterloo or in St. Catharines] connected to that group?" Most would say, "We're not that type of Mennonite." And mostly that is a true answer, though unnuanced. Others will say, "Well, it is complex," but they can't quite unfold the complexity. Below is my attempt to do just that. At the heart of the story are things that happened in Ukraine (at the time "New" or "South" Russia) over 200 years ago. It is not easy to rebuild the influence and contribution of "Russian Mennonite" women and th

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences

“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

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog