History of the Russian Mennonites

Recently Benjamin Goossen posted an important piece on the “well-known” Halbstadt midwife Helene Berg. Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler had taken a special interest in “old Mrs. Berg” and had publicly recognized her for helping birth some 8,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) babies ( note 1 ). Goossen and I have shared archival materials in the past years. Below I would like to continue the exploration of Taunte Bojsche (or "Aunt Berg") and the surprisingly broad interest in her by Nazi officials as icon. I begin with a family story as a window onto the times. Some 35,000 Mennonites were evacuated out of German-occupied Ukraine in Fall 1943. After a grueling trek west the survivors landed in German-annexed Wartheland (previously Poland) where they were naturalized as German citizens. My grandmother Helene Bräul had eight children, and Helene Berg may very well have been her midwife for one or more of them. Like many Mennonite mothers in Wartheland, my grandmother was ...

A deadly epidemic broke out in MCC’s new settlement in Fernheim, Paraguay in 1930. Settlers had been present for less than a year, and had recorded 20 births and 88 deaths by December 31 ( note 1 ). Health care remained a significant concern in Fernheim even after the epidemic was halted with the emergency medical intervention of Paraguayan military doctors. Mennonites were wholly responsible for their own health care. In 1933 and 1934 there was a malaria outbreak with 31 deaths and 30 deaths respectively, compared to 11 deaths in 1932 ( note 2 ). My father born in 1932 almost did not survive 1933: "He is very thin. It often seems to me that we will not be able to keep him by our side. He was such a happy and lively boy, but the illness has gone so far," my grandmother wrote family in Canada ( note 3 ). Early in 1934 the Fernheim Colony reported in the Germany Mennonite denominational paper that “the state of health leaves much to be desired. Malaria still hits the villages b...

By March 1944, some 35,000 Mennonites in Ukraine had been evacuated by Nazi Germany and resettled mostly in German-annexed Poland. Here they came under the spiritual oversight of the Mennonite churches in the German Reich, and granted its same racial and religious privileges. This vignette gives a glimpse of the pro-Nazi orientation and commitments of Mennonites in Germany ( note 1 ).   Praise for Germany’s territorial expansion and the unity of German people—with the triumphant entry of the Führer Adolf Hitler into Austria—topped even the Easter message in the April 1938 issue of the denominational paper, Mennonitische Blätter ( note 2 ). “To the throne of the Most High we raise our hearts and hands for our Führer and for our whole people (Volk) with the petition: ‘May the Lord our God be with us as he was with our ancestors; may he never leave us nor forsake us. May he turn our hearts to him, to walk in obedience to him and keep the commands, decrees and laws he gave our ance...