History of the Russian Mennonites

Schönsee is a small but typical Molotschna village; see map ( note 1 ). This story is of four Kliewer brothers arrested in the 1937 Stalin purge: Aron, Johann, Gerhard and Cornelius Kliewer. Their mother Elisabeth’s 1960 obituary in the  Mennonitische Rundschau  (GRanDMA #477382) notes that she had “four sons who were exiled and lost without trace in northern Russia. Two of these sons were married” ( note 2 ). These were my grandmother’s cousins. With the opening of the NKVD-KGB archives in Ukraine a few years ago, files of thousands Mennonite men and a few women arrested in the 1930s have been identified, summarized and catalogued. It is now possible say more about the Kliewer brothers and events in Schönsee, 1937-38. In brief, Aron, Johann and Gerhard were not “sent to the north” as assumed, but like so many others (including my grandfather and his brother) were shot shortly after their arrest. Brother Kornelius, however, was sentenced to 10 years forced labour. On October 29, 19

With the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022, Ukrainian women and men were/are being hailed for their "partisan" fighting against Russian aggression. A similar level of partisan fighting was displayed during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, Fall 1941 to Fall 1943. There is at least one archival account of a young Mennonite woman who became an active underground supporter of a partisan group on behalf of Ukraine/ USSR during German occupation: Anna Petrovna Wiens. The Mennonite story in Ukraine during WWII is messy. Some 35,000 Mennonites welcomed and embraced the Germans as liberators from the very real repression and terror they experienced under Stalin. Anna Wiens however was different—she became a partisan fighter against the Nazis. Anna was born in 1918 in Kleefeld, Molotschna to Peter and Elisabeth (Klassen) Wiens, and she had Mennonite cousins who immigrated to Canada mid-1920s. But according to a later testimony by her Ukrainian husband and director of the vil

Nazi German forces in Ukraine found Mennonites depleted and broken—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually—from Stalinist repression. “Every individual initiative in them has been killed or stifled, because to be an individual is to be suspect, in danger of being reported. They hesitate to express any private opinions, fearing … spies are still at work” ( note 1 ). The 1942 Commando Dr. Stumpp village reports confirm an almost complete breakdown of social life. “Because of the many frictions on the collective [farm], each became weary and wary ( überdrüssig ) of the other.” “After collectivization, neighbours no longer wished to see their neighbours.” “If a few people got together, they were politically suspect. No one trusted each other anymore.” “Life on the collective farm embittered people, and they began to hate each other. Each lived for himself alone, in dreary brooding, without hope of a better future” and “happy if on a Sunday he can stay away from the community for

In 1941 with a young adult population almost fully ignorant of their faith tradition and bitter about their family lot, there is no reason to doubt that many easily adapted their worldviews to the novel Nazi claim that linked Jews as a whole with “anti-Christian Bolshevism,” and complied with the new regime—as others had done under communism. The first outcome of occupation newspapers in Ukraine was for worldview training. Multiple copies of the German Nazi daily newspaper Deutsch-Ukraine Zeitung were circulated in each Mennonite village beginning early in 1942, complemented by the weekly Ukraine Post which published its first isu on July 18, 1942. In some villages these newspapers were the only German reading materials available ( note 1 ). The Ukraine Post reported on the German settlements—including Molotschna and Chortitza—and reinforced in almost every issue the foundational message that “Bolshevism equals Judaism,” that the Soviet Union is a “state of Jews,” and wherever B

Heinrich Jacob Bräul was a village teacher in Pordenau and Rudnerweide, Molotschna—and my great-grandfather. While we have almost no family source material, here is an attempt to piece together his life in a manner which may give some profile to Russian Mennonite life in the “golden era.” Heinrich was born in 1843 in Rudnerweide where his father Jacob was a recognized bilingual schoolmaster as well as a master painter. In 1855 his father wrote an essay on school discipline for the Molotschna School Association, and in 1856 an essay on the moral condition of their village ( note 1 ). These documents paints a positive picture of Heinrich’s school, home and village life. As the son of a teacher, the family was landless and generally poor; in his old age his father “lived under the most dire circumstances” despite having many adult children ( note 2 ). In 1856 Rudnerweide had 33 farmsteads and 67 Anwohner or “cottager” families ( note 3 ). Heinrich was old enough to have experienced

Maps are political artifacts. Russia or Ukraine?  A late nineteenth-century map of “German Settlements and Presence throughout History” offers a good example from the Mennonite settlements ( note 1 ). It was based on the German Colonial Atlas of Paul Langhans ( note 2 ). Langhans was the most important mapmaker and promoter of German settlements around the globe; he continued this work of “pan-Germanism” well into the Nazi era ( note 3 ). Already in the nineteenth century, more than one Russian journalist claimed that Russian Germans—including Mennonites in Russia—promoted pan-Germanism in their schools and spread hatred against Russia ( note 4 ). The consequences on the ground were harsh: Johannes H. Janzen—a geography instructor in the Mennonite high school in Ohrloff—who was known “to love the Russian people and Fatherland more than most of his contemporaries,” was placed under “serious suspicion of treason” for an instructional map ( note 5 ) he made of the Molotschna Mennonite C

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not