“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible (note 1).

B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s (note 2).

But behind those final numbers were multiple problems.

In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA:

“The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” (Note 3)

Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to quit his leadership post later that same month. The letter is important, and I quote at length:

“I would like to share something personal, if you don't mind. ... My dealings with Russian authorities have left me terribly exhausted, physically and even morally. I don't think I can do it anymore, and therefore I am certain that I will submit my resignation at the autumn conference in August. I've rolled the boulder of Sisyphus long enough, there's too little purpose — at least for me. ... If I kill myself in the process, the family breadwinner is taken away. We are a family with 6 children, the oldest 15 years old etc., who are just now starting out in life. It is time for them to be transplanted into a new garden. ... Nonetheless, my position does not allow me to be the first to leave, so to this point I have always just sought to open the way for others. But now I want to do this for my family as well. Why am I telling you all this? To make a request. Please demonstrate good will and benevolence to this distressed worker from afar and his family, and offer him a resting place in the vast Canadian prairies in the form of a farmstead, which are now being acquired for the south Russian Mennonites! On general terms. Although not among the very first, I wanted, as God otherwise allows, to leave the arena here for good this autumn. Leaving aside the economic motives, it would be good for me - because of the government orientation - to leave. Maybe what I am saying makes sense. Should God possibly think differently, then he will certainly ‘do it well’ and help me to understand this as well. As far as I can see and judge, this is the way.” (Note 4)

To make matters worse, Toews’s for-profit plan to raise $10 million through the sale shares to finance transportation and land acquisitions was met not only with little enthusiasm but outright opposition in Canada and the USA. In August 1922, sidelined Manitoba leader H. H. Ewert of Gretna wrote his brother in Hillsboro, KS about the “overthrow” of the original committee: “The evil spirit behind the entire putsch is Gerhard Ens of Rosthern, and David Toews has let himself be completely hypnotized by him” (note 5). Ens had served provincially as member of the Saskatchewan legislature, federally as an immigration agent, and had left the Mennonite Church to join the Church of the New Jerusalem.

By Fall 1922, the ships had not yet sailed because of the cholera outbreak at Odessa and political instability in the Black Sea region. One more attempt was considered with persons who could finance their own rail fare and lodging from Ukraine north to the Latvian port at Riga on the Baltic Sea. This plan too failed because of Canadian health inspection requirements and the Soviet refusal to allow the inspectors to enter the USSR. In the end there was no mass Russian Mennonite immigration to Canada in 1922 (note 6).

And to make matters more complex, at least two American Mennonite relief directors in Russia were actively dissuading larger groups of Russian Mennonites from application for emigration (note 7).

Throughout these months, B. B. Janz was still trying to retire from his leadership role and sought an individual sponsorship to North America by the Kansas-based Mennonite Executive Committee for Colonization. The committee however rejected his request (note 8).

Early in 1923 Toews and the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization changed course. The controversial figure Gerhard Ens resigned from his position on the fundraising association. And in a letter to H. H. Ewert’s brother—secretary of the Mennonite Executive Committee for Colonization in Kansas—Toews outlined a new strategy as a charity, and only one-tenth of the original capital funds was required (note 9). But Toews refused to adopt the less visionary plan of individual, family and small group sponsorship, and to give up on the idea of a mass immigration.

In May 1923, Janz wrote to his North American partners that the Soviet government had given permission to allow up to 20,000 Mennonites emigrate that year. Janz added, that if they had difficulty acquiring land in Canada or US, the Russian Mennonites would be happy to be settled in Mexico (note 10).

In the end 2,759 Mennonites were able to immigrate to Canada in 1923—far short of what the Soviet regime was willing to allow that year—but much greater than could have been possible if Toews had relented and focused on individual sponsorships (note 11). The way was finally opened.

Janz remained in the USSR until Spring 1926. The doors for emigration were now beginning to close around quickly again. After his departing sermon in his home congregation in Tiege, Molotschna on May 24, 1926, Janz escaped in disguise, just a few hours before his scheduled arrest as a key “agitator” for emigration (note 12).

Passengers by year of immigration (note 13)

1923 - 2,759
1924 - 5,048
1925 - 3,772
1926 - 5,940
1927 - 847
1928 - 511
1929 [into 1930] - 1,019
1930 - 305

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: B.B. Janz and Ph. Cornies to Study Commissioners A. A. Friesen, Βenjamin Η. Unruh, C. H. Warkentin; (also) to the General Commission for Foreign Needs of Holland and the American Mennonite Relief, Scottdale, PA, early March 1922. Translated and edited by Harold Bender, “A Russian Mennonite Document of 1922,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 28, no. 2 (April 1954), 143–147; 144f.

Note 2: For brief biographies, cf. GAMEO, "Janz, Benjamin B. (1877-1964), https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Janz,_Benjamin_B._(1877-1964); and "Toews, David (1870-1947)," https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Toews,_David_(1870-1947). For longer studies, cf. John B. Toews, With Courage to Spare: The Life of B. B. Janz (1877–1964) (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978) https://archive.org/details/WithCourageToSpareOCRopt; and Helmut Harder, David Toews was here, 1870-1947 (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 2002).

Note 3: Memorandum, August 1922, “Um Kleider benötigt,” D. H. Bender, Mennonite Executive Committee for Colonization and David Toews, Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization. In Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College, North Newton, KS (MLA-B), https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/024%20General%20correspondence%201922%20May-September/201.jpg.

Note 4: Letter, September 1922, B. B. Janz to David Toews, Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization, in MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/024%20General%20correspondence%201922%20May-September/243.jpg.

Note 5: Letter, August 2, 1922, H. H. Ewert (Gretna, MB) to W. J. Ewert (Hillsboro, KS), in MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/024%20General%20correspondence%201922%20May-September/169.jpg. For a fulsome background, cf. Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus (Altona, MB: Friesen, 1962), ch. 9 and 10. Epp does not cite any H. H. Ewert letters.

Note 6: Letter, October 30, 1922, Col. J. S. Dennis (Montreal), to David Toews (Rosthern, SK), in MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/025%20General%20correspondence%201922%20October-December/22.jpg. Cf. Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 139f.

Note 7: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/immigration-to-canada-1923-background.html.

Note 8: Letter, March 1, 1923, D. H. Bender (Hesston, KS) to W. J. Ewert (Hillsboro, KS), MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/026%20General%20correspondence%201923%20January-June/064.jpg; AND Letter, March 1, 1923, D. H. Bender (Hesston, KS) to Levi Mumaw (Scottdale, PA), MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/026%20General%20correspondence%201923%20January-June/065.jpg AND Letter, March 17, 1923, D. H. Bender (Hesston, KS) to Levi Mumaw (Scottdale, PA), MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/026%20General%20correspondence%201923%20January-June/092.jpg.

Note 9: Letter, May 1, 1923, David Toews to W. J. Ewert (Kansas), MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/024%20General%20correspondence%201922%20May-September/183.jpg.

Note 10: Letter, May 2, 1923, B. B. Janz to D. H. Bender, via Alvin J. Miller, American Mennonite Relief (Russia), MLA-B, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/026%20General%20correspondence%201923%20January-June/134.jpg.

Note 11: Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 282.

Note 12: Cf. A. A. Töws, ed., Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 2: Der große Leidensweg (North Clearbrook, BC: Self-published, 1954) 487. For more detail, cf. J. Toews, With Courage to Spare, 55f.

Note 13: Epp, Mennonite Exodus, 282.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “'The way is finally open'—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), December 5, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-way-is-finally-openrussian.html.

Comments

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

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

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

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 ...

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...

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...

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 ...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

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...

Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 ( note 1 ). The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations. It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the mind...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog