Skip to main content

Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada and the Russländer Centenary (2023)

In 2019, the Canadian Parliament declared the second week in September as “Mennonite Heritage Week.” The bill and statements of support recognized the contributions of Mennonites to Canadian society (note 1).

2019 also marked the centenary of a Canadian Order in Council which, at their time of greatest need, classified Mennonites as an “undesirable” immigrant group:

“… because, owing to their peculiar customs, habits, modes of living and methods of holding property, they are not likely to become readily assimilated or to assume the duties and responsibilities of Canadian citizenship within a reasonable time.” (Pic)
With a change of government, this order was rescinded in 1922 and the doors opened for some 23,000 Mennonites to immigrate from the Soviet Union to Canada. The attached archival image of the Order in Council hangs on the office wall of Canadian Senator Peter Harder—a Russländer descendant.

2023 marks the centennial of the arrival of the first Russländer immigrant groups to Canada. Thousands of Mennonite families from the USSR were the recipients of massive relief aid from co-religionists through 1930, and the beneficiaries of an open, generous immigration policy. These immigrants brought skills that would benefit Canada—and with many children as well who would indeed adapt quickly and contribute in many fields.

In this light, it is also sobering to read (August 2023) of the downsizing plans for the flagship Russländer congregation in Ontario—the Waterloo-Kitchener United Mennonite Church (note 2). The “majority” of members are “in their 70s” and “most newly retired members prefer to spend their Sunday mornings elsewhere.” The church building will be torn down, property sold, affordable housing built, with a small meeting space for the congregation and for Community Justice Initiatives. That is a good vision for the asset, inspired by the tradition.
The building has an expansive Sunday School wing which once housed over 200 children. Those baby-boom kids and their children are also doing many good things—but elsewhere. As typical Canadian children of immigrants, most of my generation married outside more narrow ethnic Russian Mennonite lines. But like so many other urban immigrant Canadian church groups, the gift and/or baggage of language and culture, including church culture were hard to transplant in a cohesive and inviting manner that would last two or more generations. This congregation had some highly educated, progressive leaders, but insularity in some aspects is inevitable for an immigrant church group—Mennonite or otherwise. Perhaps Mennonites did not come with a strong inter-cultural skill set, though their mono-ethnic colonies in Russia/Ukraine were surrounded and by so many other cultural groups—Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Tatars, Bulgarians, other Russian Germans, Swedes, Greeks, etc. (who also lived in closed, cultural communities)—ultimately making them a good fit for Canadian multiculturalism.

In this centenary year, many younger Russländer descendants are looking to rediscover their roots. Their baby-boomer parents who stepped away for a time, perhaps “with baggage to sort through,” now find that they are the “story keepers” and elders and are looking for something informed, wise, inspiring and hopeful to say ... “when they [the next gen] shall ask.”

Here are just two of many possible starting points.
 
First, gratitude. Whatever complaints Mennonites may have about Canadian politics and politicians, this kind of historical or “genealogical work” strongly recommends that those complaints be couched in gratefulness, at the beginning and the end. Where would any of us rather be? This is the country our parents desperately wanted their children to enjoy. Minimally, the week is an opportunity to celebrate and show gratitude for those ancestors who risked the journey, the larger Mennonite faith community in Canada and the U.S.A. that oversaw their well-being through famine to immigration, and to a country that welcomed them despite many reservations of accepting more “Germans speakers” and war resisters after WW1. Mennonite historical work teaches us gratitude.

Second, Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada can celebrate the fact that Mennonites brought and bring the kind of memory and historical perspective and commitment to civil life that builds-up people who want to be good and honourable, and who want to build a just, truthful, honest community and strong political fabric.

It was unfortunate to hear some Mennonites respond to recent pandemic lockdowns or health measures in the following manner: "This government is like the communism our parents fled!” That statement falls far wide of any historical truth, and worse: it inflames and tears at the social fabric of the country that welcomed our parents—that's the kind of thing we learn from genealogical work.

Here the memory of those families “left behind” and unable to emigrate in the 1920s can help sharpen Mennonite gratitude. Allow me to offer some examples:

What Mennonites experienced in the Soviet Union was a context and system designed to break them: break their ability to be good to their neighbour; their ability to be truthful and honest towards officials; their ability to participate honourably in civic life; their ability to grow in godliness; their ability to live in peace instead of constant fear.

Today some Mennonites in Canada love to complain about taxes. Just like the communism we left behind? Soviet taxes were designed to crush, impoverish, starve and break our people and their memory in order to create a new Soviet people. That’s something different than collecting taxes for schools, roads, hospitals, policing, fire, child welfare, care for the weak, and the common good as determined by a democratically elected government. Mennonites developed their own form of internal tax for alternative service and schools, as well as mutual aid where government support was absent.

Many Mennonites love to debate what is true and false, right and wrong and today some fear government ideological intervention in education, for example. Just like the communism we left behind? At some point Soviet communism made the debate as such impossible. There was one official organ of truth. All lived in fear. Those who dissented were arrested, disenfranchised imprisoned, banished, tortured and killed. Books were censored. That’s something completely different.

Canadian Mennonites connected to the church respect the importance and power of faith, and in recent years some felt the government infringed upon their right to gather during the pandemic. Just like the communism we left behind? By the late 1920s the Soviet Union banned churches from teaching children; ministers were heavily repressed; church buildings were expropriated and closed; private scripture reading, family prayer and hymn-singing at funerals or weddings was heavily punished—including heavy fines, arrest, and sometimes torture. That’s something completely different.
Vaccines became a faith issue for some Canadian Mennonites who refused to be vaccinated and then complained about religious persecution. Just like the communism we left behind? What recent archival work shows clearly is that all Mennonite ancestors in Russia—even the most conservative with roots in Chortitza—were freely desiring and benefiting from vaccines (especially cow pox) from the early 1800s and on. Any argument against vaccines based on Mennonite experience or faith is simply made-up. In fact, Mennonite ancestors would judge such a complaint against the state as ungodly.

When a Russian Mennonite critiques any Canadian (or American) political party or government policy today as somehow “just like the communism we left behind,” it is nothing but poor memory, bad genealogy and ungrateful and dangerous opinionating not anchored by history. And it tears at the social-political fabric of the country that so generously opened its doors to us.

Without pontificating, Mennonite descendants can do worse than to dust off the Confession of Faith which every Mennonite ancestor memorized and used as their lens to view the world, including the state, the Tsar, the head of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Settlers, and all others with authority over them.

We know they prayed for the Tsar, celebrated royal feasts—even in church—and had an almost pious love for the "Father of the Nation" (at least until the twentieth century).

This was also completely consistent with the various Mennonite confessions of faith which implored them to pray for the king and government with supplications, intercessions and thanksgiving.

“For there is no government except of God, … therefore all believers … are commanded by the word of God to fear their authority, to honor and to be obedient to it in all things which are not contrary to the word of God. Government must be given tribute, duties, and taxes in accordance with the teaching of the Lord … who says we must be obedient” (1853 Rudnerweide Confession, note 3).

Like it or not, that is how they thought. Their criteria for good and bad governance—whether from the Tsar indirectly or more directly from junior government authorities, or even later with the Bolshevik Revolution—was quite simple. Every government was judged by the church asking these questions: “Can we lead a good, honourable civil life?” Can we “lead a peaceful and quiet life, in all godliness and honesty”? (from the 1853 Confession). And where this was ultimately not possible, they tried to emigrate. And Canada—after strong lobbying by fellow Mennonites already in Canada, leveraging their reputation with the Canadian government—opened its doors.

Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada can help us recall and celebrate the fact that Mennonites brought and bring the kind of memory and historical perspective and commitment to civil life that builds-up people who want to be good and honourable, and who want to build a just, truthful, honest community and strong political fabric.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photos
  • Waterloo-Kitchener Mennonite Church their first elder, Jacob H. Janzen and wife. From GAMEO. Jacob H. Janzen, received an honorary doctorate from Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas; https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Janzen,_Jacob_H._(1878-1950).
  • A copy of the Mennonite "Privilegium" (Charter of Privileges, 1800) signed by the Tsar with the Mennonite commitment to the state to be a "model community."
  • 1919 Order in Council, posted on Twitter by Senator Peter Harder, 1918.

Note 1: Ed Fast, Member of Parliament for Abbotsford, BC, Private Members’ Business, February 27, 2019, https://openparliament.ca/debates/2019/2/27/ed-fast-2/.

Note 2: Madalene Arias, “The facility of faith: Fading churches and growing ones both face big decisions about buildings,” Canadian Mennonite 27, no. 17 (August 24, 2023), https://web.archive.org/web/20230829102947/https://canadianmennonite.org/stories/facility-faith]. On the congregation, see GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Waterloo-Kitchener_United_Mennonite_Church_(Waterloo,_Ontario,_Canada).

Note 3: 1853 Rudnerweide Mennonite Confession; consistent with 1632 Dordrecht, 1660 Frisian-Flemish, 1766 Ris, and 1902 Russian Mennonite Brethren Confessions. Cf. Howard John Loewen, One Lord, One Church, One Hope, One God: Mennonite Confessions of Faith (Elkhart, IN: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 1985), https://archive.org/details/onelordonechurch02loew/page/122/mode/2up?q=1853.

---
To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mennonite Heritage Week in Canada and the Russländer Centenary, 2023," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), August 31, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonite-heritage-week-in-canada-and.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
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

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement!  In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 2 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 In a few short months the American government will start to fulfill its campaign promises to round up and deport undocumented immigrants. The responsible cabinet members have already been appointed. By early Spring 2025, Mennonite pastors/leaders who supported Trump will need to speak to and address the matter in their congregations. It will be difficult to find words. How might they prepare? Sometimes a template from the past is helpful. To that end, I offer my summary of a text by retired Mennonite pastor and conference leader Gustav Kraemer. (There is a nice entry on him in the Mennonite Encyclopedia,  GAMEO ). My summary is faithful to the German original, 1938. With only a few minor changes, it could be useful for the coming year. Adaptations are mostly in square brackets, with the key at the bottom of the post. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Mennonite Murders, Infanticide, Rapes and more

To outsiders, the Mennonite reality in South Russia appeared almost utopian—with their “mild and peaceful ethos.” While it is easy to find examples of all the "holy virtues" of the Mennonite community, only when we are honest about both good deeds and misdemeanors does the Russian Mennonite tradition have something authentic to offer—or not. Rudnerweide was one of a few Molotschna villages with a Mennonite brewery and tavern , which in turn brought with it life-style lapses that would burden the local elder. For example, on January 21, 1835, the Rudnerweide Village Office reported that Johann Cornies’s sheep farm manager Heinrich Reimer, as well as Peter Friesen and an employed Russian shepherd, came into the village “under the influence of brandy,” and: "…at the tavern kept by Aron Wiens, they ordered half a quart of brandy and shouted loudly as they drank, banged their glasses on the table. The tavern keeper objected asking them to settle down, but they refused and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simple Refugee Wedding: My grandparents (1931)

My father was born less than a year after these 1931 wedding photos. Jacob Fast and Helen Janzen had been in Paraguay less than 8 months—see the MCC telegram—and tragedy had already struck both refugees families. Jacob’s first wife and a daughter became victims of the epidemic that ravaged the new colony of Fernheim in those first months. He was now a widower at age 39—with an infant and other children without a mother. Helene was single and 29 years old. Her mother too had died from the same epidemic; her father was partially crippled. They had come from southern Ukrainian community of Spat, Crimea; Fast was from Ural Mountains area in Russia where South Russian Mennonites had created a “daughter colony” a generation earlier.   Each had siblings who fled to Moscow in 1929 with them and who were accepted by Canada in 1930. My grandparents however were rejected—she was a single woman with frail parents; he was a man with an ill child. Perhaps in contexts like these the falli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Land Scout Johann Bartsch and "the Smashed Violin," 1800

 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...
Post a Comment
Read more

“Operation Chortitza” – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44 (Part I)

In October 1943, some 3,900 Mennonite resettlers from “Operation Chortitza” entered the Gau of Danzig-West Prussia. They were transported by train via Litzmannstadt and brought to temporary camps in Neustadt (Danzig), Preußisch Stargard (Konradstein), Konitz, Kulm on the Vistula, Thorn and some smaller localities ( note 1 ). The Gau received over 11,000 resettlers from the German-occupied east zones in 1943. Before October some 3,000 were transferred from these temporary camps for permanent resettlement in order to make room for "Operation Chortitza" ( note 2 ). By January 1, 1944 there were 5,473 resettlers in the Danzig-West Prussian camps (majority Mennonite); one month later that number had almost doubled ( note 3 ). "Operation Chortitza" as it was dubbed was part of a much larger movement “welcoming” hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans “back home” after generations in the east. Hitler’s larger plan was to reorganize peoples in Europe by race, to separate ...
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

Russian and Prussian Mennonite Participants in “Racial-Science,” 1930

I n December 1929, some 3,885 Soviet Mennonites plus 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists and seven Adventists were assisted by Germany to flee the Soviet Union. They entered German transit camps before resettlement in Canada, Brazil and Paraguay ( note 1 ) In the camps Russian Mennonites participated in a racial-biological study to measure their hereditary characteristics and “racial” composition and “blood purity” in comparison to Danzig-West Prussian, genetic cousins. In Germany in the last century, anthropological and medical research was horribly misused for the pseudo-scientific work referred to as “racial studies” (Rassenkunde). The discipline pre-dated Nazi Germany to describe apparent human differences and ultimately “to justify political, social and cultural inequality” ( note 2 ). But by 1935 a program of “racial hygiene” and eugenics was implemented with an “understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more