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

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
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

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state.  Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...
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

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval .  The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...
Post a Comment
Read more

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...
Post a Comment
Read more