History of the Russian Mennonites

No one developed and promoted the Frisian thesis more effectively than Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh’s one-time Halbstadt student, Heinrich “Hajo” Schröder—born in Molotschna, teacher in Germany, visitor to Paraguay, Nazi Party promoter, author and frequent letter writer to the Mennonite press across the Atlantic ( note 1 ). Schröder was a popular writer with a large influence in Germany, Paraguay and Canada. Schröder’s 1936 book on “Russian-German Frisians” places the Russian Mennonite sojourn into an essentially “Frisian” ethno-German narrative. He seeks to identify those innate characteristics of “true Frisians” in order to clarify their “racial ( völkische ) responsibility in the present,” and to connect kinship ( Stamm ) and nationality ( note 2 ). With pride and astonishment, he points back to Bruges in 1568 which had 7,000 [sic] distinctly self-confident Frisian Anabaptist members despite heavy persecution—misquoting his source tenfold ( note 3 ). Later migration to the “colonizatio...

In January 2020 I received information from the German Federal Archives on the fate of my father's oldest brother, Jakob Fast, 1918-1944 -- a WW2 German soldier and Mennonite from Paraguay. Jakob was among the first group of young men from Friesland, Paraguay who "returned" to Germany in May 1939. Their families had all arrived in Paraguay in 1930 via Germany and Moscow from the Soviet countryside. These young men were promised an apprenticeship in Germany with the hope their families might be able to follow.   Only a few months later the war started. There would be no return to Paraguay for 11 of the 28 Friesländer , including my uncle. The three little file cards from his record indicate that Jakob Fast, Jr. was first conscripted in Oldenburg in April 1942. Some of the 28 young men from Friesland had volunteered earlier. Fast's unit reached the Dnieper River in south Ukraine according to a letter an aunt received--the area their grandparents left in the 1890s in sea...