History of the Russian Mennonites

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps ( Umsiedler-Lager ) around Exin ( Kcynia ) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt ( Żnin ), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode ( Słupowiec ), Schwarzerde ( Malice ), Schmiedebach, etc. ( note 1) . Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig ( Gdańsk ) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin. Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” ( note 2) . Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily. Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec) , near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for ...

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...

It is a largely unwritten story—the massive Mennonite food aid sent to the USSR from Canada and the United States during the great famine in Ukraine, 1933 ( note 1 ). The the following materials were photographed at the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg  In a previous post, I examined a selection of thousands of petition letters sent to Mennonite offices from Ukraine (mostly), begging family, friends and co-religionists generally to help with food, lest they perish  ( note 2 ). Between January and April 1933, for example, the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) received over 7,000 letters such letters. It was stunning for me to find a letter by my grandmother’s sister in the mix; if she and her family were starving in Schardau, I know my grandparents and their children would have been at the edge in Marienthal as well. But the real alarm bells went off on February 15, 1933 with a telegram to David Toews (CMBC chair) in Rosthern from Benjamin Unruh...

 Around 1800 the Chortitza Flemish ministerial ordered Russian Mennonite former land scout/ deputy Johann Bartsch to destroy several family musical instruments including his violin.  Playing an instrument was feared by leaders to be flirtation with the demonic. Bartsch apparently broke his violin in two and threw the pieces at the feet of “the guardians of the purity of faith” ( note 1 ). The Mennonite Historical Archives in Winnipeg has a painting of this dramatic incident created by descendent Henry Pauls, as well as a family document written about the event some generations later. Here is a little more background. Bartsch had a more refined or sensitive side than many of the first settlers, including his fellow deputy Jacob Höppner. The letters he wrote to his wife while he and Höppner were scouting land in Russia, 1786-87 have survived; they are eloquent, beautifully written, and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Not long after settlement, Chortitza’s fir...

In early July 1914, Mennonites knew war with Germany was imminent. Jacob Janzen’s diary (Rudnerweide) captures the feeling. “Rumour has it that we will soon have war with Germany! On the 18th everybody had to take their horses to a farmyard at the end of the village, where they were registered and examined. Some were led aside right there and then. … The next day all available teams and wagons from Rudnerweide, Großweide, Konteniusfeld and Sparrau had to take 700 men of draft age, Russians, to the station, where they boarded a train for Melitopol. Our hired man went too.” ( Note 1 ) Suspicious about Mennonite loyalties, 2,350 guns were seized from 1,850 Russian Mennonite households—including 600 handguns or revolvers—in 1914 ( note 2 ). A. A. Khvostov, Chair of the Russian Council of Ministers, surmised that “such large quantities of revolvers [seized] suggest that Mennonites intend to use their weapons for purposes other than hunting … ” ( note 3 ). Russia declared war on Germany...

In 1938 Mennonite Central Committee took the decision to significantly reduce their support of Benjamin Unruh’s work in Germany as of August 1, and Dutch Mennonites announced the same effective January 1, 1939. What to do? Ask the Nazi Party and government agencies to make up the difference ( note 1 )! On December 3, 1938, Unruh made the following pitch: “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our [Mennonite] organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a large movement of people [beginning 1923] in such critical times. ... The fact that finally all Mennonite synodal and national associations formally appointed me as their representative in the field of Russian-German welfare (Fürsorge), had its deeper reason especially in the success of my activity in Germany. … You see that I stand in the center of the global Mennonite [relief] work. However, I have always done this as a German man and not only as a representative of my denominat...