History of the Russian Mennonites

Mennonites can appreciate an orderly garden, but SS- Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s vision of a racial garden for annexed Poland—i.e., for Germanic peoples alone—was criminal and murderous. The new Warthegau province was to be a “ Pflanzgarten (nursery) of pure Germanic blood,” with plants of “singular and decisive racial value” ( note 1 ). "Lesser types" were to be pulled out to make space for this expansion of German living space. And all new plants brought in would be carefully screened for their characteristics and purity. Racial selection meant life and privilege for ethnic Germans, and loss of rights, deportation for many, and in some cases (and for all Jews) death. In Himmler's mind, Mennonites were deemed among the most highly desired of these "seedlings" (see below). A few of the phrases above are from a speech Himmler gave in Posen on October 24, 1943, a few kilometers away from resettler camps in Warthegau where many from Molotschna would settle fi...

Throughout 1930, Mennonite defiance and hope for another mass emigration was morphing into deep disappointment and growing apathy as they contemplated a permanent future under communist rule ( note 1 ). Together with rapid industrialization—including the Dnieper hydro dam—Stalin’s new focus on the collectivization of agricultural units in 1930 was both an economic strategy and the critical means for reconfiguring society and for the creation of the new “Soviet man,” with the liberation of women too from “exploitation and social isolation” ( note 2 ). This massive project of social engineering had profound effects on Mennonite faith, community and family life. Economic restructuring brought famine and profound poverty to the countryside. Women were increasingly removed from their children and subjected to impossible labour demands. Newly educated youth and children were the future of the socialist state, but their memoirs mostly speak of a lost childhood clouded by memories of pover...

The biggest temptation of genealogical or in-group history writing is “hagiography”– literally “writing about the lives of saints,” i.e., idealizing a subject matter, writing about a person or people in an unreal, flattering light. Hence the title of James Urry’s classic: “None but Saints” (quote from an Alexander Pope poem: “ Vain Wits and Critics were no more allow'd, When none but Saints had license to be proud; ” note 1 ). Group histories like the Russian Mennonite story are cluttered with myths in need of deconstruction—whitewashed or highly selective accounts, e.g., of the “Golden Years,” of a persecution narrative—either by outsiders, or from the enemy group within because of division—of stories of amazing self-accomplishment, wealth or group accomplishment without recognition of privilege and context—or perhaps exploitation. Family storytelling inevitably leaves much unsaid, and most of that is up to the family to decide to record or not. For example, a birth out of we...

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

Always check the original document if you can! Anyone doing historical work knows the importance of accessing original sources where possible, and to check translations for accuracy. Here is an example of where I found this to be important for the larger story. In other posts I have written about the Molotschna-based “First Ethnic German ( Volksdeutsche ) Cavalry Regiment” ( note 1 ). Two of my uncles became members in 1942 at ages 17 and 19. This began as a local home-guard and morphed into a Waffen-SS regiment (October 1942) in less than a year; 500 to 700 Mennonite young adult men in the Molotschna settlement area became cavalry members. It is a sad and traumatic part of my family story; both uncles (plus a third) did not survive the war/ Soviet POW camp. But it is a larger Mennonite story that raises disturbing questions—most of which are unanswerable—about the squadron's activities (see upcoming publication). The sobering book "Lost Generation" by a cavalry sq...