History of the Russian Mennonites

The quasi-scientific, Nazi-German racial hocus-pocus about “blood” and the Reich ’s tireless effort to quantify percentages of “Nordic” or “Slavic” or “Jewish” blood in order to separate and rank individuals and racial groups hierarchically, and in turn to deny basic human rights to most--justified by some bizarre correlation to “racial” resilience, health, cultural vitality, and achievement by some mythical German racial corpus--is nothing short of repulsive. These theories had horrific outcomes. Yet somehow it was compelling in the 1930s and 1940s to think, speak, and act in this way. Mennonites were part of that story—one which is not so easily unraveled. At best this post can add one or two new elements to that story. I begin in Canada . In two issues of the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Volkswarte in 1936 Heinrich Hajo Schröder—born in Halbstadt and a one-time student of Benjamin H. Unruh—offered extensive explanations of Aryanism and its supporting racial "theory"—e...

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...