Skip to main content

Purge Sampler: Arrests of Kliewer brothers, Schönsee, Molotschna, 1937

Schönsee is a small but typical Molotschna village; see map (note 1). This story is of four Kliewer brothers arrested in the 1937 Stalin purge: Aron, Johann, Gerhard and Cornelius Kliewer.

Their mother Elisabeth’s 1960 obituary in the Mennonitische Rundschau (GRanDMA #477382) notes that she had “four sons who were exiled and lost without trace in northern Russia. Two of these sons were married” (note 2). These were my grandmother’s cousins.

With the opening of the NKVD-KGB archives in Ukraine a few years ago, files of thousands Mennonite men and a few women arrested in the 1930s have been identified, summarized and catalogued. It is now possible say more about the Kliewer brothers and events in Schönsee, 1937-38.

In brief, Aron, Johann and Gerhard were not “sent to the north” as assumed, but like so many others (including my grandfather and his brother) were shot shortly after their arrest. Brother Kornelius, however, was sentenced to 10 years forced labour.

On October 29, 1937 Kornelius was the first Kliewer brother to be arrested. Six men from the village had already been arrested that months (Oct. 10: Abram Vasyl. Neufeld and Gerhard Gerh. Born; Oct. 22: Johann Franz Goerz [minister] and Jakob Erd. Brauer; Oct. 24: Jakob Joh. Becker; Oct. 27, Johann Joh. Bartel). The pattern of singular arrests continued, except that on October 29 dozens of men were arrested from a variety of Molotschna villages. It was a night of terror—extreme even for the Molotschna at this time.

The charges against fifteen of these Mennonite men (listed below) were trumped up to fit the indictable offence of espionage. All were charged with conducting counter-revolutionary nationalist propaganda and agitating in favour of fascist Germany among the population.

Those arrested included: Pankratz (Tiegenhagen), Balzer (Marienthal), Wiebe (Tiegenhagen), Harms (Friedensruh), Hooge (Friedensruh), Dueck (Elisabeththal), Koop (Elisabeththal), Friesen (Lichtfelde), Friesen (Grossweide), Hildebrandt (Grossweide), Epp (Friedensruh) Nickel (Prangenau), Peters (Rudnerweide), Peters (Rudnerweide), Hildebrandt (Grossweide), Thiessen (Fuerstenwerder). Their median age was 38; the oldest was 54 and the youngest: 27.

On November 16 Kornelius Kliewer sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. Others were tried on November 27, and the fifteen above were shot on December 5, 6 and 7 in Melitopol. Other Mennonites from Molotschna (including my grandfather) were executed the same week in Dnepropetrovsk. Women were not told why their husbands or sons were being arrested, nor did they know their fate. Most assumed that the men were exiled to correctional labour camps (Gulags) in Kazakhstan or Siberia.

Another two Kliewer brothers were arrested on November 12, 1937: Johann and Gerhard. If in October arrests in the village were singular on a given night, on this evening in Schönsee nine men were arrested, including: Jakob Jak. Neufeld [Nov. 14] and his son Johann; brothers: Abram Anton Schellenberg and Johann; Johann Peter Wiens [Nov. 14]; Jakob Abram Martens, and Nicholas Gerhard Born.

On December 9 brothers Johann and Gerhard Kliewer were found guilty and sentenced to be shot; together with J. P. Wiens, J. J. Neufeld and others. They sat imprisoned until January 14, 1938 when Kliewer brothers Johann and Gerhard were shot, together with Martens, Neufeld (father), Neufeld (son), and brothers Abram and Johann Schellenberg,

On December 13 Aron, the fourth Kliewer brother, was also arrested. It was another night of mass arrests in Schönsee, which included: Jakob Franz Dyck, brothers David and Gerhard Gerh. Schellenberg; Anton Anton Schellenberg; Heinrich Jakob Franz; Willi [Boris] Abram Rempenning; and Johann Andreas Peters (Peter Peter Wiens was arrested Dec. 9).

On January 27, 1938 Aron Kliewer and the others in the group were sentenced and a month later on February 28 Aron was shot in Melitopol, together with Peters, Franz, Schellenberg; brothers Gerhard and David Schellenberg.

Further individual arrests continued in Schönsee until the end of the purge in Fall 1938: December 20, 1937 (Becker); January 28, 1938 (Wiens), February 18 (Neufeld), May 12 (Regier), June 17 (Schellenberg); June 21 (Peters), July 10 (Born, Brauer [son of Brauer above], Neufeld). All were shot.

The attached map graphically illustrates the Schönsee families (marked in yellow) that were directly impacted by the purge. This pattern is comparable to other Mennonite villages.

Three years later, immediately prior to German occupation, a new wave of arrests occurred in Schönsee. Gerhard Aron Kliewer, b. 1925. son of Aron Kliewer above, was arrested on September 6, 1941. Charge: “socially dangerous element.” After removal from Ukraine he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.

The full 30-plus page arrest, trial and execution files typically include standard forms for the charges, a search warrant, a health certificate ("healthy enough to be sent to the north"), a summary of the trial by a three-member "Troika" in Melitopol (or Dnepropetrovsk) and a verdict with confirmation of date when it was carried out. The file always contains a multipage confession with other alleged crimes, supported by the confession. In all cases the confessions are handwritten by a secretary but signed by the accused. Three testimonies against the accused are also included, normally written or signed by other Mennonites in the village.

These files are very difficult for the children of victims to look at and examine. For most, the summary facts are sufficient for closure—but even this can be traumatic. The larger file requires more emotional investment, and that can be too much for the now-elderly children of victims. The signature at the bottom of each page of the confession is the last sign of life from the individual, and something the children and grandchildren have never seen.

The confessions may contain a new piece of information—a previous arrest, possible activity in the White Army or Deniken’s army during the revolution. They may indicate that a sibling had sent letters from North America, or note that another family member was a minister or deacon—all of which supported the charge against the individual. The greatest part of each confession is wholly fabricated: repeated claims about Hitler (in 1937!) and the overthrow of the communist regime, typically with a statement “overheard” that the accused was intent on shooting all communists, etc. when Hitler would arrive. These or similar confessions are found in each file and are needed for the charge. The confession is always in question-and-answer format written by a recording secretary. The truthfulness of any claim or statement or accusation in the confession is highly questionable.

As a grandson of someone executed in December 1937, I cannot help but connect the Easter promise of resurrection with the archival rediscoveries of long-lost loved ones. Their names are called again, signatures seen for the first time by children and grandchildren, their profiles brought to light from the silencing, brutal executions eight decades ago. The executioner does not have the last word—a small foretaste of even fuller participation in the resurrection to come.

One of the Molotschna survivors of interrogation and torture in 1933 was Jacob A. Neufeld. His translated memoirs /diaries include his prayers during those experiences. I have taken the liberty to make a composite prayer/ psalm of lament, based on his Path of Thorns (pp. 57; 59; 60; 61; 65; 67; 69; 74f.; 80; see note 1). It helps me to think that the Kliewer brothers, my grandfather and his brother, together with thousands of other Mennonite men may have prayed like this as well.

"Dear God have you deserted me? With frayed nerves and crushed hopes, my soul grows faint and everything around me turns dark and empty. Merciful God, be gracious to me. Why do my captors condemn me? I have done no wrong. My soul, tortured, flayed, and buried in dust, is in pain and outrage and on the verge of fading away. My heart is empty, on the edge of despair. Dear God, speak to my despairing soul. Let me hear your voice and feel your strong arm. Have we all been delivered into the hands of monsters from Satan’s underworld? Yet I remain convinced that you, my God, will not abandon me to such iniquity, though the noose around me seems to tighten. Almighty God, keep me from betraying anyone and from plunging others into grief. Is there no deliverance, above all for my loved ones? A shadowy void seems to draw me down into a bottomless pit. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? … Then in stillness and in your mercy I hear your voice. I feel a hymn of utter surrender rising up in within me: 'Take Thou my hand [So nimm denn meine Hände …], O Father, and lead Thou me, Until my journey endeth, eternally.' I submit myself to you afresh as the Lord and Shepherd of my soul and the immovable pole of my existence.” (Note 3)

For broader background and analysis, see my published essay on Stalin's Great Terror (note 4).

                              ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

The names of those above arrested in Schönsee and elsewhere come from Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia Region, Books II and III (Zaporizhia: Dniprovskij Metalurg, 2006) [РЕАБІЛІТОВАНІ ІСТОРІЄЮ: Запорізька область], Bk. II, www.reabit.org.ua/files/store/Zaporozh-2.pdf; Bk III: http://www.reabit.org.ua/files/store/Zaporozh-3.pdf. See the Mennonite extraction list: "Verbannte Mennoniten im Gebiet Saporoshje," https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Sapor.pdf.

  • KLIEWER, Aron Petrovych, born in 1902, vol. 2, p. 326. 
  • KLIEWER, Ivan [Johann] Petrovych, born in 1904, vol. 3, p. 434. 
  • KLIEWER, Gerhard Petrovych, born in 1907, vol. 3, p. 433.
  • KLIEWER, Kornelius Petrovych, born in 1898, vol. 3, p. 434.
  • KLIEWER, Gerhard Aronovych, born in 1925, vol. 2, p. 326.

Note 1: For the map and more information on Schönsee, see: https://chortitza.org/FB/D0701.html.

Note 2: See Elisabeth Dueck Kliewer's obituary, Mennonitische Rundschau, 1960, https://archive.org/.../die-mennonitische.../page/8/mode/2up. One Kliewer brother successfully immigrated to Canada in the 1920s. See Abram Kliewer's obituary, Mennonitische Rundschau, 1967, https://archive.org/.../sim_die.../page/11/mode/2up.

Note 3: Jacob A. Neufeld, Path of Thorns: Soviet Mennonite Life Under Communist and Nazi Rule, edited by H. L. Dyck, translated by H. L. Dyck and S. Dyck (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). https://books.google.ca/books?id=sD6WAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=Neufeld%2C%20Path%20of%20Thorns%3A%20Soviet%20Mennonite%20Life%20Under%20Communist%20and%20Nazi%20Rule&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false Original: Tiefenwege. Erfahrungen und Erlebnisse von Russland-Mennoniten in zwei Jahrzehnten bis 1949 (Virgil, ON: Niagara, 1958).

Note 4: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "A new examination of the 'Great Terror' in Molotschna, 1937-38," Mennonite Quarterly Review 95, no. 4 (2021), 415-458, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/bitstream/handle/20.500.12730/1571/Neufeldt-Fast_Arnold_2022a.pdf.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Purge Sampler: Arrests of Kliewer brothers, Schönsee, Molotschna, 1937," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 11, 2023, 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
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

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 ...
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

Volendam and the Arrival in South America, 1947

The Volendam arrived at the port in Buenos Aires, Argentina on February 22, 1947, at 5 PM, exactly three weeks after leaving from Bremerhaven. They would be followed by three more refugee ships in 1948. The harassing experiences of refugee life were now truly far behind them. Curiously a few months later the American Embassy in Moscow received a formal note of protest claiming that Mennonites, who were Soviet citizens, had been cleared by the American military in Germany for emigration to Paraguay even though the Soviet occupation forces “did not (repeat not) give any sanction whatever for the dispatch of Soviet citizens to Paraguay” ( note 1 ). But the refugees knew that they were beyond even Stalin’s reach and, despite many misgivings about the Chaco, believed they were the hands of good people and a sovereign God. In Buenos Aires the Volendam was anticipated by North American Mennonite Central Committee workers responsible for the next leg of the resettlement journey. Elisabeth ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...
Post a Comment
Read more