Skip to main content

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 Heubuden Mennonite Church, West Prussia, together with Mennonite Prof. Benjamin Unruh drafted articles of incorporation for the new “Conference of Mennonite Congregations of German Nationality in the Province of Wartheland,” March 1944 (note 1). It limited church membership to "citizens only" in German-annexed Poland (e.g., no Poles). At the time Germany too was in the midst of the "largest deportation operation in [its] history.” However, only about 1 million non-citizens were deported by Feb. 1944; Pres. Trump has spoken of 12 to 20 million, which sounds very ambitious; but even if it is only a few million he would benefit from cooperation from the churches. Your by-law changes should also clearly indicate that the congregation will not offer sanctuary.

Second, an alert

There will be congregations in the conference led by or welcoming of (e.g., offering sanctuary) undocumented immigrants. They will want to dominate denominational gatherings in the next year, determine invited speakers, publications and educational materials—and maybe even the Mennonite World Conference in the summer. This kind of backroom planning happened for the Mennonite World Conference in 1936 in Amsterdam/Elspeet (also the 400th anniversary of Menno’s identification as an Anabaptist). Planners of the conference were extremely sensitive to the developing political situation in Europe. Dutch organizer Fritz Kuiper in a letter to Christian Neff (June 8, 1935) noted his fear that any advance notice of those themes with current relevance could “torpedo” the conference from the start. Organizers colluded to keep Benjamin Unruh off the speakers’ list, but later gave him a “safe” theme to talk on (note 2). Unruh was a supporter of new laws limiting citizenship in Germany. Interestingly these same Dutch organizers a decade later created bogus identifications/passports (Menno-Pass; see below) to allow illegals from the Soviet Union to enter The Netherlands in 1946 (note 3). Prepare for such tricks.

Third, yes, you are still an Anabaptist! 

You will be criticized by left-leaning, woke Mennonites saying that your support of President Trump is at odds with your faith. However, in the 1930s and 1940s Mennonite scholars like Prof. Unruh and Dr. Horst Quiring pointed to the work 16th century Anabaptist Dr. Balthasar Hubmaier for whom bearing arms and holding high government offices was permissible (note 4). Unruh published his own astute “Anabaptist Vision” the next year after the conference (note 5). So you're ok.

Fourth, an appropriate attitude is important

When 35,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union were evacuated and resettled in German-annexed Poland (with other ethnic Germans from the east), an equivalent number of Poles had to be deported—some to the “General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region,” and some sent to German occupied France as farm labourers. Only those ineligible for citizenship were designated for deportation, of course. The deportation machinery operated very efficiently; the attitude of most Mennonites (and other Germans from the east) while deportations took place was completely passive, as one Pole recalled some years later (note 6). That was helpful for the effort—a strategy you may wish to consider as the deportations begin.

Fifth, identify a Mennonite leader who is well-connected to the Trump organization 

He or she could be of special assistance for the Trump-Mennonites in agricultural areas (not unlike Prof. Unruh). Undocumented people do 25% of the agricultural work in the USA today; you can recommend that your local deportations happen in a staged manner which will not disrupt agricultural production. Again, our tradition has witnessed a roll out and can help with a tried example in Wartheland. All illegal immigrants must first be registered; you could help with that effort to ensure no one is overlooked. Next, prioritize (as in Germany, 1944) which non-citizens are most needed for farming to ensure no agricultural disruption. This would only be an interim measure, of course. Logistics: all "to-be-deported" families should be required to live in one nearby area together (doubling up families worked best in 1944). A central local office could keep an ordered list. When Pres. Trump’s representatives ask for, e.g., 5 families this month from your district to fill quota, then military assets should be employed for quick, efficient removal (within one half day ideally).

Sixth, an example 

See attached Deportation Completion Forms from Storchnest, Warthegau. One Mennonite boy whose family received a house in Storchnest—taken from a family identified for deportation—recalled years later in Canada that those were “not happy people” probably because they were “subservient”—and of course they were; they no longer had a right to be there long term! He also noticed that “through corruption and sly methods these people managed to retain enough goods and food so that they could survive” (note 7). That is a reminder that you will need to be on guard; perhaps a local militia can help, and Mennonites from your congregation should be free to volunteer if they feel called by conscience. Your congregational by-laws should be amended to state this clearly (contact me for good examples from Prof. Unruh).

There are many of precedents in our rich Mennonite story! However the Wartheland example was only for a million or so people. President Trump will need even greater support for the numbers he has promised American voters. It will be messy work and not easy; those involved in the 1944 deportations required at least two generations to process their feelings of guilt. Thank God though that America can have full confidence in President Trump; God has called (and saved!) him for a moment like this.

PS Reminder: Don’t forget about that congregational AGM in January! Set up your agenda early and prepare well for these changes coming to America.

                                                ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast





---Notes---

Attached Deportation Completion Forms, Storchnest, Wartheland District of Lissa. From Polish State Archives at Poznan, 53/1009/0/2/9. https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1261501.

Note 1: “Satzung der Mennonitischen Gemeindekirche im Wartheland” (March 1944 Submission), from Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof, Vereinigung Collection, folder 1944.

Note 2: Frits Kuiper to Christian Neff, letter, April 29, 1935, from Mennonite Library and Archives (Bethel College), V 6, box 15, folder 8, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/V_6/box%2015/folder%208/316.jpg; re: “torpedo,” Frits Kuiper to Christian Neff, June 1935, idem, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/V_6/box%2015/folder%208/293.jpg; Harold Bender to Frits Kuiper, Dec. 22, 1935, with recommendations of who to keep off list of speakers at World Conference; https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/V_6/box%2015/folder%208/292.jpg. Unruh was given a safe topic, from the organizer’s perspective: “Die Mennoniten in Rußland in Geschichte und Gegenwart,” in Der Allgemeine Kongreß der Mennoniten gehalten in Amsterdam, Elspeet, Witmarsum (Holland) 29. Juni bis 3. Juli 1936, ed. by Christian Neff (Karslruhe: Schneider, 1936), 60-64, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1936,%20MWC,%20Der%20Allgemeine%20Konferenz%20der%20Mennoniten/Better%20Copy/DSCF1220.JPG.

Note 3: See Gerlof D. Homan, “‘We Have Come to Love Them’: Russian Mennonite Refugees in the Netherlands, 1945–1947,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 25 (2007), 39–59; 42; 40f., https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/1223/1215; also P. Dyck and E. Dyck, Up from the Rubble, 102f

Note 4: See Horst Quiring, “The Anthropology of Pilgram Marbeck,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 9, no. 4 (October 1935), 155–164 (German online: https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Geschichtsblaetter/1936-1940/DSCF4453.JPG).

Note 5: Benjamin Unruh, “Das Wesen des evangelischen Täufertums und Mennonitentums,” Mennonitische Jugendwarte 17, no. 1 (February 1937), 6–15, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Mennonitische%20Jugendwarte/DSCF9305.JPG.

Note 6: Czesław Łuczak, “Chronicle: Records on the Situation of Poles in the Warte Land,” Instytut Zachodni (Poznań), Western Affairs 8, no. 1 (1967), 170. Łuczak’s reference is to all “ethnic Germans” who arrived in Wartheland and simply stood by and were quiet.

Note 7: “Michaelsburg,” private family correspondence to author, August 1, 2024.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 24, 2024. https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2024/11/what-is-church-to-say-letter-4-of-4-to.html




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Jewish Colony (Judenplan) and its Mennonite Agriculturalists

Both Jews and Mennonites in Russia were dependent on separation, distinct external appearance, unique dialect, inner group cohesion, international familial networks, self-governing institutions, a sojourner mentality, sense of divine mission, and a view of the other as unclean or dangerous. Each had its distinct legal privileges, restrictions, and duties under the Tsar, and each looked out for their own. For both, moderation, spiritual values, family, learning and success were important, and their related dialects made communication possible. But the traditional occupation of eastern European Jews was as “middlemen” between the “overwhelmingly agricultural Christian population and various urban markets,” as peddlers, shopkeepers and suppliers of goods ( note 1 ). Jews were forbidden to stay for longer periods in German colonies or to erect houses or shops there. “If they try to stay, they are to be reported immediately. If they are not, the German mayor will be held responsible” ( no...
Post a Comment
Read more

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, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Flight to Moscow 1929

In 1926, my grandfather’s sister Justina Fast (b. 1896) and her husband Peter Görzen moved from Krassikow, Neu Samara (Soviet Union) to village no. 5 Dejewka, Orenburg. “We thought we would live our lives here with our children secure in the hands of God. But the times were becoming turbulent,” Justina recalled. In May 1929 they travelled back to Krassikow for Pentecost to visit with her mother, brothers and their families. But when they returned to their home, she writes, “… a large quota of grain was demanded of us. But we had nothing, and the harvest was not yet in. Then we heard that many were planning to move to Canada, including my three siblings with my mother, and my husband's three sisters too. My husband decided to go to Moscow first to see if it was possible and what was required for emigration. We made the decision to leave when the harvest was complete. At that time so many people were leaving [for Moscow], and early in September we sold everything we had. Only the b...
Post a Comment
Read more

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...
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

"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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1873: First Russian Mennonites leave for North America

On February 4, 1873, ministers and elders held a special meeting in Elder Isaak Peters’ Pordenau Molotschna church ( note 1 ). It was a larger building with balcony, constructed in 1860 after the original 1828 stone church building had been torn down. They had put down deep roots in Russia; nonetheless Peters spoke strongly in favour of emigration and supported a decision to send land scouts to America. The team was given a mandate to negotiate for the possibility of some 50 to 60,000 Mennonite immigrants ( note 2 ). Eager to compete with the United States for settlers, the Canadian government passed an Order-in-Council on March 3, 1873 to create a Mennonite reservation of nine-and-one-third townships ( note 3 ). The twelve-member deputation—including two Molotschna elders—which had been sent to North America returned in September with a favourable report ( note 4 ). Despite divergent opinions on the ground, the first hundred Russian Mennonite agriculturalists arrived in the United...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more