Skip to main content

Anti-Jewish Pogroms and Mennonite responses in Einlage (1905) and Sagradovka (1899)

Below are stories of two pogroms and of the responses in two Mennonite communities in Ukraine/Russia.

The first location is Einlage (Chortitza) in 1905, with two episodes.

The rage of peasants and the working class exploded with strikes, bloody revolts, chaos and plundering across the land, especially on the estates early in 1905. The Greater Zaporozhzhia-Alexandrovsk economic zone, with larger Mennonite manufacturers of agricultural machinery in Einlage as well, was a centre for some of that labour unrest (note 1).

In the shadows of the larger March 1905 Russian Revolution, there were so-called provocateurs named the "Black Hundred" (note 2) who organized pogroms across Russia, but especially in ethnic Ukrainian and Polish areas.

“Jewish stores, shops, and homes were broken into, robbed, and plundered; Jewish women and girls were raped and brutally murdered. Many Jews lost not only their belongings in Russia, but also their lives. And all with impunity. The police could not be relied upon, most of them were members of the "Black Hundred," and took part in the looting. Others stood by and watched.” (Note 3)

This spilled over into the predominantly Mennonite village of Einlage, where there were about 30 to 40 Jewish families in 1905, according to contemporary villager Heinrich Bergen. The Black Hundred extremists “directed the discontent of the less educated workers and villagers against the Jews”—many hoping simply to enrich themselves in the process (note 4).

“In several villages where there were factories, steam mills—such as Chortitza an Osterwick—there are several cases where the ‘Black Hundred’ with the help of the rabble from the Russian villages, tried to harass the Jews, but immediately the ethnic Germans intervened and doused the pogroms before they spread.” (Note 5)

But Bergen noted that the many Jewish families in the Mennonite villages were not harmed; “they were under the protection of the Germans,” i.e., the Mennonites.

Bergen tells of two incidents in Einlage.

"On the farm of Abram Dyck near the Martens-mill stood a wooden shop where the Jew Reichenstein had his store. In 1905 Abram Dyck was still a very strong man and was on the yard when two pogrom-instigators approached the door of the store to break it open. On his own, Abram Dyck approached them and beat them thoroughly, claiming that the store belonged to him, a German and not to the Jew Reichenstein. The pogrom instigators chose not to wait around until Abram Dyck's sons could step in, and retreated.” (Note 6)

The second case in Einlage was with the Jewish cobbler Sljudikow.

“For some 30 years he lived on the farm of Johann Joh. Reimer, where Sljudikow’s twelve sons and one daughter were born … Two of his sons were factory workers, the eldest of them Roman, was an active revolutionary; Abram, Volodya, and Naum were hairdressers in Einlage. Abram was injured in his foot during the war.

The Sljudikows were quiet, peaceful people who never hurt anyone in Einlage. However, old Slyudikov was very strong, and when I was seven years old in 1905 I watched how with a "ped" (used for carrying water) Sljudikow thoroughly thrashed a bandit who wanted to loot him during the Jewish pogrom. He beat the bandit so badly that he most likely lost the habit of looting for a long time. Slyudikov could get away with this, because he knew that the Einlagers [mostly Mennonite] would have his back.” (Note 7)

The two episodes complement each other and tell us something of the relationship between Jews and Mennonites in Einlage. The relationships were by no means perfect, but in crisis this Jewish man knew his Mennonite neighbours would support and protect him.

In a second location—six years earlier in 1899—another pogrom happened not far from the Mennonite colony of Sagradovka.

“There was some commotion among the Russian peasantry. Agrarian issues were causing distress, and an old grievance was looking for an outlet. Suddenly, in the large Jewish village of Nagartav (=Bereznegovatoje), a pogrom against the Jews arose. The Russian police often showed up a little too late for such cases, or perhaps they just did not want to see or help. For Jews in particular they did not have much mercy. The slogan of the blind masses was: "Beat the Jews and save Russia!” People took out their anger on the poor Jews. Terribly the whole [Jewish] village was completely destroyed.

Other Jewish villages were then also threatened and told that they would be next. Nagartav was 25 versts away from Sagradovka. Closer to the Mennonites, at a distance of 10 versts at most, were the two Jewish villages of Gross-Romanovka and Klein-Romanovka. The news of the pogrom in Nagartav had not yet reached our villages, when one Saturday morning the three villages of Alexanderfeld, Neu Schönsee and Friedensfeld were struck by a terrifying arrival. Like an avalanche, the inhabitants of Romanovka suddenly poured into these Mennonite villages in a great flight. Their wagons were loaded to the hilt with old men, women and children, as well as beds and various things.

None of us Germans suspected what was going on.

The women screamed, children cried, and shouts rang out: "Help! Save! Have mercy! Pogrom!" It was a panic parallel. But instincts of mercy and compassion knew what to do. In a few minutes the streets were empty: yards and houses and barns had opened their doors, and soon the frightened fugitives were under cover together with their wagons.

“Ask the Lord that your flight may not take place on the Sabbath day” [Matthew 24:20]. But it was Sabbath. In great anxiety they waited for the awful things that might come, but nothing happened. Outwardly everything remained silent. Only reconnaissance teams went through the streets from time to time and brought back reports to the mayoral offices. The day of terror slowly came to an end as nightfall arrived.

It was said that an order had been received that the Orloffer District Office should send out a guard of 500 men to Romanovka; however, the Oberschulze [Mennonite district mayor] refused, citing the Mennonite doctrine of non-resistance. Judgments and opinions differed.

By this point the Jews had heard that nothing disturbing had occurred in Romanovka thus far; it was still quiet. The next day—on Sunday—news came that the governor had arrived from Kherson with a detachment of Cossacks ... And the poor, frightened refugees returned to their abandoned homes that same day, comforted and rejoicing. This time they had escaped the worse with only a fright." (Note 8)

The Jewish community in this context knew that if its people had to flee for safety, then flee to the Mennonites.

Was this the norm or the exception? Here is another example from the Mennonitische Rundschau in 1882, suggesting that this was somewhat "natural" for Mennonites to do when pogroms arose, and that it came with a cost.

“Until now it appeared that in Russia Jews could find protection with German colonists from the raw persecution of Russians. This came naturally to us [Mennonites], for in our view it is not impossible that hatred could be stirred up against Germans as well. … 'Do unto others what you would have them do to you.' But now it is clear that this type of sympathy with Jews incites the hatred of the country’s population against Germans as well.” (Note 9)

To say that the relationship between Mennonites and Jews was "close" in Russia/Ukraine would be an exaggeration. And sadly there are other, less complimentary stories where—because of context—Mennonites were less able to be themselves. But these stories above and the instincts of the Mennonite community on behalf of their Jewish neighbours were not isolated or one-off. There are more such stories and they ring true to me—whether in urban contexts like Einlage or in the rural context of Sagradovka.


            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Pics: Hermann Roskoschny, Rußland Land und Leute (Leipzig: Greßner und Schramm, 1883), vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/russland-land-und-leute-bd-1-1883/page/n7/mode/2up. Pics 2 and 3: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-were-pogroms/, and https://eesiag.com/history/jewish-pogroms-in-the-south-of-ukraine-in-the-first-russian-revolution.html.

Note 1: See previous posts (forthcoming)

Note 2: On the “Black Hundred,” cf. http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CB%5CL%5CBlackHundreds.htm.

Note 3: Heinrich Bergen, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943: Ein Denkmal (Regina, SK: Self-published, 2008), 103; 93. See also idem, Einlage: Chronik des Dorfes Kitschkas, 1789–1943 (Saskatoon, SK: Self-published, 2010).

Note 4: Bergen, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943, 103.

Note 5: Bergen, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943, 103.

Note 6: Bergen, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943, 103.

Note 7: Bergen, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943, 93.

Note 8: Franz W. Martens, “Johann Köhn, Schulrat und Oberschulze: Biographisch-geschichtliche Mitteilungen aus der Nikolaifelder Mennonitengemeinde auf Sagradowka für das Mennonitische Archiv in Canada,” Mennonitische Rundschau 61, no. 25 (June 22, 1938), 9, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1938-06-22_61_25/page/8/.

Note 9: Mennonitische Rundschau 3, no. 6 (March 15, 1882), 3, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1882-03-15_3_6/page/n1/mode/2up. The unnamed Mennonite correspondent continues the column with his own hateful language against these “lost sheep from the House of Israel”—which underlines again that the relationship was "complex."

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Anti-Jewish Pogroms and Mennonite responses in Einlage (1905) and Sagradovka (1899)," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 9, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/anti-jewish-pogroms-and-mennonite.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

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 ...
1 comment
Read more

The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Mennonite Pandemic Spirituality, 1830-1831

Asiatic Cholera broke out across Russia in 1829 and ‘30, and further into Europe in 1831. It began with an infected battalion in Orenburg ( note 1 ), and by early Fall 1830 the disease had reached Moscow and the capital. Russia imposed drastic quarantine measures. Much like today, infected regions were cut off and domestic trade was restricted. The disease reached the Molotschna River district in Fall 1830, and by mid-December hundreds of Nogai deaths were recorded in the villages adjacent to the Mennonite colony, leading state authorities to impose a strict quarantine. When the Mennonite Johann Cornies—a state-appointed agricultural supervisor and civic leader—first became aware of the nearby cholera-related deaths, he recommended to the Mennonite District Office on December 6, 1830 to stop traffic and prevent random contacts with Nogai. For Cornies it was important that the Mennonite community do all it can keep from carrying the disease into the community, though “only God knows...
Post a Comment
Read more

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days

If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde. In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life ( note 1; pic 3 ). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran ( note 2 ). For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

“We have no poor among us”: From "Blue Bag" to e-Transfer

Through not unique or original to Menno Simons, the idea of watching and caring for fellow travellers on the journey of faith “where no one is allowed to beg” ( note 1 ) was a pillar of his teaching, and forms one of the most consistent threads in the Anabaptist–Mennonite story. In the decades before Mennonites settled in Russia they used the “Blue-Bag” to collect for the poor in Prussia. In 1723 Abraham Hartwich—an otherwise unsympathetic observer of Mennonites—noted that Mennonites in Prussia “do not allow their co-religionists to suffer want, but rather help them in their poverty from the so-called blue-bag, their fund for the poor” ( note 2 ). It is unclear when the “blue-bag tradition” changed? Similarly, in the early 1800s, two Lutheran observers—Georg Reiswitz and Friedrich Wadzeck—noted that the Mennonite care for their poor through annual free-will contributions was “exemplary” ( note 3 ). Moreover Reiswitz and Wadzeck describe a community stubbornly committed to each ot...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget! In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School ( Zentralschule ). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member ( note 1 ). Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations. Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite ed...
Post a Comment
Read more

Shaky Beginings as a Faith Community

With basic physical needs addressed, in 1805 Chortitza pioneers were ready to recover their religious roots and to pass on a faith identity. They requested a copy of Menno Simons’ writings from the Danzig mother-church especially for the young adults, “who know only what they hear,” and because “occasionally we are asked about the founder whose name our religion bears” ( note 1 ). The Anabaptist identity of this generation—despite the strong Mennonite publications in Prussia in the late eighteenth century—was uninformed and very thin. Settlers first arrived in Russia 1788-89 without ministers or elders. Settlers had to be content with sharing Bible reflections in Low German dialect or a “service that consisted of singing one song and a sermon that was read from a book of sermons” written by the recently deceased East Prussian Mennonite elder Isaac Kroeker ( note 2 ). In the first months of settlement, Chortitza Mennonites wrote church leaders in Prussia:  “We cordially plead ...
Post a Comment
Read more

"In the Case of Extreme Danger" - Menno Pass and Refugee crisis, 1945-46

"In the Case of Extreme Danger 1. We are Russian-Mennonite refugees who are returning to Holland, the place of origin. The language is Low German. 2. The Dutch Mennonites there, Doopsgezinde , will take in all fellow-believing Mennonites from Russia who are in danger of compulsory repatriation. 3. The first stage of the journey is to Gronau in Westphalia. 4. As a precaution, purchase a ticket to an intermediate stop first. The last connecting station is Rheine. 5. Opposite Gronau is the Dutch city of Enschede, where you will cross the border. 6. On the border ask for Peter Dyck (Piter Daik), Mennonite Central Committee, Amsterdam, Singel 452. Peter Dyck (or his people) will distribute the relevant papers—“Menno Passes”--and provide further information. 7. Any other border points may also be crossed, with the necessary explanations (who, where to, Mennonites from Russia, Peter Dyck, M.C.C., etc.). The Dutch border Patrol is informed. 8. Here the whole matter must be h...
Post a Comment
Read more