History of the Russian Mennonites

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...

After 35,000 Mennonite were evacuated from Ukraine in 1943-44, they were all brought to German-annexed Poland where after a few months they were naturalized as German citizens. This process included racial and genetic-biological assessment by so-called race experts of the Immigration Central Office (EWZ). Nazi Germany was especially interested in their “Nordic blood purity,” absence of mixed marriages, racial fecundity and their long commitment to German language and culture while living in the east ( note 1 ). The naturalization process for Mennonites was almost always unobjectionable, even hundreds with “Jewish names” like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Sarah were “strongly encouraged” to officially adopt Germanic names ( note 2 ). In 1956 Gerhard J. Klassen wrote to the Canadian Mennonitische Rundschau recalling his close call with death at a Nazi-SS run resettler camp in April 1944 at Hermannsbad, Warthegau ( note 3 , today Ciechocinek, Poland). And he also noted the experienc...