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

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
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

Stalin’s Purge (1937-38) and Mennonite Suffering: 8 theses

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...
Post a 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

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1923 Mennonite immigrants "kept behind": Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp

An important part of the larger 1923 immigration story includes the chapter of the hundreds who were held back at Riga and Southampton and taken to the Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp for medical care. “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a ( Volksbewegung ) movement of people in such critical times,” Benjamin H. Unruh wrote some years later ( note 1 ). Just as the first group of Russländer Mennonites set foot in Canada 100 years ago this month, the North American relief effort in the USSR was also winding down (August 1923). The famine relief work in 1921 and 1922 had found broad support in the North American Mennonite community. However excitement about a larger immigration of Russian Mennonites to North America was muted, and a new call to action could not forge the same level of cooperation across Mennonite groups. The plan required huge money guarantees. In USSR B.B. Janz h...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more