History of the Russian Mennonites

My grandmother Helene Bräul (age 42) with my mother and her sister crossed into The Netherlands on February 21, 1946. My uncle Walter and his friends—seventeen-year-old decommissioned German soldiers at war's end—crossed a few days later. Peter J. Dyck, the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Europe Director offered a 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 ) Dutch Menno...

My mother’s brother Peter Bräul was seventeen years-old on the 1,100-kilometre refugee trek out of Ukraine, 1943-44. After two months in German-annexed Poland (Warthegau) and as a newly naturalized German citizen, Peter now eighteen eighteen-years-old, volunteered as a Black Sea ethnic German for the Waffen-SS. Peter Dueck of Margenau, Molotschna was the same age as Peter Bräul and recalled this “remarkable incident” at boot camp in Warthegau. “A German officer questioned the young recruits: ‘And who of you would not serve the Third Reich voluntarily?’ I think it was a shock for all of us. Out of 500 only 3 men lifted their hand. They were asked to come to the front. Officer: ‘And what reason do you have not to serve the Third Reich voluntarily? Their answer was: ‘We as Mennonites, we believe in nonresistance.’ Officer: ‘We have no use for such people. We all defend our Reich.’ They were led out to the back door and to this day I would still like to know what was their verdict.” (...

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 ...