History of the Russian Mennonites

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...

At the conclusion of the war Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was fully aware that “their” 13,000-plus Russian Mennonite refugees in Germany did not qualify as displaced persons and for support from the International Refugee Organization. They were refused IRO “care and maintenance” as Soviet citizens, i.e., they were free to return home. MCC sought to convince the IRO that the Mennonite refugees were not “Soviet Germans” and--if they had became German citizens in Warthegau (also a disqualifier), it was done under duress ( note 1 ). Astonishingly MCC’s Europe Director Peter J. Dyck—later seen as the Moses of the Mennonites—proposed to top military personnel at US military headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany (USFET) in July 1946, that Mennonites be granted the same status as Jews as a persecuted people. “By a recent decree all Jews, regardless of their nationality, are automatically given the status of 'D.P.' [displaced person] on the grounds that they are victims of persecu...

Post-war Mennonite refugees from the Soviet Union feared repatriation to the USSR—for some, more than death itself. Soviet officers had full access to refugee camps throughout all of Germany. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) was collecting its “lost sheep” as well. Peter J. Dyck, MCC director, offered this first assessment of the Mennonite tragedy under Stalin to his Canadian counterparts: “They are truly like sheep in a wilderness and the women of 36 years look much more like 50 years. They told me that if I thought that I and my parents had witnessed terrible times in Russia during the revolution and the subsequent years of famine they could assure me that that was mild in comparison to what followed since 1927 when we left Russia. They told me one tragedy after another and it appears, if what they say is to be taken as representing the whole of the country and our people there and not only a section, that most of our Mennonites have perished.”  ( Note 1 ) To quickly remov...

Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) had hoped to get their refugees into The Netherlands for months. With the support of the Dutch Mennonites in 1946, MCC officials worked to convince the new post-war Dutch government and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) that these refugees were not technically Soviet Germans or Volksdeutsche (ethnic naturalized Germans), but of Dutch origin. MCC's C.F. Klassen argued, not without stretching the facts, that these Mennonites only became German citizens during the war under duress, and that “naturalization had been conducted in a coercive environment” ( note 1 ). MCC’s “Dutch strategy” was shorthand for a complex story. As one refugee remembered: “We were [naturalized] German citizens, but … MCC claimed that we were refugees and that German citizenship papers had been forced on us, and on that basis they considered us ‘ Staatenlos ’, without a country. We all came in under that” ( note 2 ). This was the narrative that was used later i...

My mother’s older, 6-year-old sister Lenchen received a porcelain doll during the first Christmas of German occupation of Ukraine ( note 1 ). Though there were no gifts to be bought in 1941, their older cousin Marga Bräul who was studying in Odessa was able to get this doll. Apparently the Nazis made some "plundered" gifts available to the ethnic Germans in Ukraine ( note 2 ). The horrible reality is that only two months earlier, Germany's Romanian allies slaughtered about 20,000 Jews in Odessa over three days. Did this porcelain doll come from a Jewish home? That's my current theory. On the grueling trek out of Ukraine in Fall 1943, sister Lenchen was ill and died at age 8. The doll then became my mother's. When they reached the refugee camps in German-annexed Poland (Warthegau) in March 1944, the children dealt with their grief through play. My mother remembers how she and her girl-friends buried (temporarily) their dolls in the dirt together to reenact ...

The Molotschna/Gnadenfeld trek leader Jacob A. Neufeld was distraught at the thought of an imminent German defeat: “Thus far the German leaders have accomplished remarkable things. … Should they fail in the end after so many years of desperate economic and military struggle? Oh no, no, surely that cannot be!” ( note 1 ). In the early months of 1945, western regions of the Reich were obligated to take in ethnic German refugees; the quota was determined based on the ratio of occupants to the available living space. Many of the Molotschna / Gnadenfeld refugees who had successfully escaped advancing Soviet troops in Warthegau (annexed Poland) were designated for the Municipality of Hermannsburg, District of Celle in Lower Saxony, about 300 kilometres west of Berlin. Helene Bräul (my grandmother) and her two daughters were sent to a Hilmer family in the village of Bonstorf; population: 280 (1939). This region had been deeply shaped by the 19th century Pietist revivalism and strict moral...

Like so many others, as Susanna Toews recalled in her little book Trek to Freedom that “[o]ur discussions always centred around the question, what the New Year had in store for us” ( note 1 ). The first Christmas after war’s end brought some early glimmers of normal life for those in the Western Military Zone of Germany. My Walter Bräul—a war-weary vet at age 17—attached wheels to the back of an old suitcase and made his “kid-sister” Käthe—my mother—a functional doll carriage. My grandmother found time and material to sew doll clothing. The joy was tempered by the fact that they had no word on the other boys: Franz Jr., Heinrich, or Peter. Though the war had ended seven months earlier, they did not know if and how long they would be able to stay in the village of Bonstorf ( note 2 ), near Celle in the British Zone. In February 1945, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met secretly in Yalta and agreed that after the war Germany would be divided into three zones of occupation. Moreover, R...

"In the Case of Extreme Danger 1. We are Russian-Mennonite refugees who are returning to Holland, the place of origin. The language is Low German. 2. The Dutch Mennonites there, Doopsgezinde , will take in all fellow-believing Mennonites from Russia who are in danger of compulsory repatriation. 3. The first stage of the journey is to Gronau in Westphalia. 4. As a precaution, purchase a ticket to an intermediate stop first. The last connecting station is Rheine. 5. Opposite Gronau is the Dutch city of Enschede, where you will cross the border. 6. On the border ask for Peter Dyck (Piter Daik), Mennonite Central Committee, Amsterdam, Singel 452. Peter Dyck (or his people) will distribute the relevant papers—“Menno Passes”--and provide further information. 7. Any other border points may also be crossed, with the necessary explanations (who, where to, Mennonites from Russia, Peter Dyck, M.C.C., etc.). The Dutch border Patrol is informed. 8. Here the whole matter must be h...