An Keuning-Tichelaar and Lynn Kaplanian-Buller,
Passing on the Comfort:
The War, the Quilts and the Women Who Made a Difference.
(Intercourse, Pennsylvania: Good Books,  200?)
reviewed by Helen Rose Pauls
 
The lives of Lynn, an American operating an American bookstore in the Netherlands, and An, who had worked in the Dutch underground resistance decades before, are intertwined by a chance meeting over “the quilts”. When Lynn is invited to pastor couple An and Herman’s house for the weekend together with expatriate students in 1980, she sees very familiar quilts on every bed, and stacks of them in the bed cupboards. They remind her of the work of her Mennonite relatives in Mountain Lake, Minnesota.
Ten years later, Lynn plans a quilt display in her bookstore and asks An for the use of the historic quilts. Now the stories begin to be told.  Seeing the quilts from war time hanging in Lynn’s shop, An finally tells about her work in the Dutch resistance during World War II.
An and Herman, a Mennonite pastor, housed and sheltered countless people, hiding during them in emergency lodgings in their cellar.  The refugees included streams of Jewish children who used their house like way station, rescued from certain death. These little ones, hidden and sent into underground cells like An’s home, were later temporarily adopted by local Mennonite families.
When the war was over,  Mennonite refugees from Ukraine began trickling into Holland. In all 450 arrived, and the Dutch Mennonites attempted to feed and house them. It was a daunting task, for although there were thousands of Dutch Mennonites, they had nothing. They had barely survived the war, and everything was rationed. Somehow, hosts were found for them. “It required a lot of altruism”, says An.
After the war was over, An washed the quilts and stored them in her bed cupboards, and they became the only link to her wartime memories. As she washed and folded them, she wondered what had become of the many people who had passed through her home. It wasn’t until 1991 at the Mennonite World Conference in Winnipeg that An met one of the women who had lived in their house so many years ago. “As I looked into her sad, sad face, I felt the unspoken grief and worry of those same years bubbling up inside me,” says An. For twenty minutes the two women hugged and sobbed, and the woman told An where this one had ended up, how that one had died. It had taken 45 years to let their feelings out.
“A quilt is a blanket with a heartbeat,” says Lynn, who has collected the quilts into a traveling display which visited several Mennonite communities in America last year. They will be permanently housed in a proposed meeting place in Witmarsum, Friesland and continue to tell the story of the gracious women who made them and gave them to comfort strangers.

“My wish is,” says Lynn, “that these work-weary quilts will inspire all of us to help, in whatever small or common way we can, when a need is before us.”

*This book is in the MHS archives library.

Harry Loewen,
Between Worlds: Reflections of a Soviet-born Canadian Mennonite
(Kitchener: Pandora Pr., 2006)
reviewed by David Giesbrecht

Sometimes a book comes along which provides an intimate footprint of an era and of a people. Such is the contribution of Harry Loewen’s Between Worlds. While this autobiography is filled with fascinating personal details and vignettes, its scope extends far beyond.

The first section of this book covers the author’s early years in the Soviet Union and the harrowing escape from “fortress Stalin.” After sixty three  years, Loewen still painfully recalls the day in September 1937 when his father was arrested by NKVD operatives (one of them a Mennonite collaborator), and his mother’s unheeded pleas. For Loewen the pathos of that moment remains enshrined with his father’s last words: “Harry, we might not see each other again. You are the oldest, be good to mother and help her as much as you can.”  That  day,  seven-year-old Harry lost his youthful innocence. With the collapse of the German army a few years later, the Loewens, along with large numbers of other Soviet Mennonites, spared no efforts in leaving the country they once loved. The escape through war-ravaged towns and villages included numerous perilous moments, as the day on which Mrs. Loewen threw herself over her son’s body to shield him from overhead strafing aircraft to discover later that a bullet had riddled her left sleeve. Without his mother’s indomitable spirit, this family would not have reached the British Zone.

Mrs. Loewen and her children arrived in Canada on 19 May 1948. The middle section of Between Worlds recalls Harry’s orientation to Canadian (and Mennonite) society and his scholarly career. It was only after he left the Soviet Union that he discovered his Mennonite roots. But once in Canada it did not take long for him to absorb its essence. He was nurtured in the Coaldale MB church and subsequently spent three formative years in the Coaldale Bible school. Given his keen intellect, Loewen was invited to continued his studies at the Mennonite Brethren Bible College, a time of “sheer joy filled with almost daily excitement.” But it was also at MBBC where his acquaintance with prominent Mennonite leaders of the day led him to conclude that many were paying mere lip service to their faith tradition. He regretfully notes that for many, the “Anabaptist vision was largely lost.”

 Loewen’s spiritual journey only intensified his desire for graduate studies culminating in the completion of a doctoral program at the University of Waterloo and a teaching position at Waterloo Lutheran University. Finally the Loewen family had comfortably settled in a community they loved. Students recognized an outstanding teacher. In the church and community he was a much sought-after speaker.  But the Eden was not to last. In the Spring of 1978, Dr. Loewen was invited to accept responsibility for the Chair for Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg, only the second such program to be established  in any Canadian university. Here his productivity blossomed.  In addition to inspiring a renewal for  Mennonite studies, Loewen wrote numerous books, established the Journal of Mennonite Studies, and helped a generation of Canadian Mennonites wrestle with the essence of their faith.

The final ten chapters include a selection of  “reflective essays” touching on  matters that have been of vital concern to Loewen’s understanding of the Anabaptist faith.
For readers not familiar with the tumultuous events of the early 20th century, the introductory essay sets an important historical context. Significantly, the book includes some fifty personal photographs and an appendix listing the author’s amazing literary productivity.

Harry and Gertrude Loewen have now retired to a home with a commanding view of the Okanagan valley. However, it is the panoramic perspectives with which the author views 20th century Mennonite spiritual and cultural developments that commend this story to a very wide reading audience.

Abraham Friesen,
In Defense of Privilege:
Russian Mennonites and the State Before and During World War I
(Kindred Productions,
Winnipeg, MB and Hillsboro, KS, 2006)
reviewed by Robert Martens
 
In 1912,  prominent Russian Mennonite archivist Peter Braun wrote: "The knowledge of history in general, or that of their own past in particular, is always of incalculable importance for a people.... We Mennonites have, I am sorry to say, distinguished ourselves since time immemorial through an unforgivable disregard of our own history..." (33). Mennonites in Russia had grown defensive and insular over the years. The doctrine of nonresistance, for example, had become merely a part of their cultural baggage as Mennonites lost touch with their Anabaptist origins.

Meanwhile, however, as the Russian empire attempted to transform itself into a nation state, and anti-foreigner prejudice grew, Mennonites were pressured to assimilate, to give up their "sacred" privileges, among them the speaking of German, control over their own educational system, and above all, exemption from military service. Mennonites relearned their own history, late in the nineteenth century, in order to fight back. Abraham Friesen points out that their "defense of privilege" was carried out in the context of a debate: What are we, Dutch or German? The significance of this debate unfolds gradually in the book. But already in the preface, Friesen states his perspective (he likely would not appreciate the word "bias"): "It was not the case...that the loss of the German language and culture would inevitably entail the loss of the Mennonite faith. Indeed, precisely the opposite turned out to be true: it was those who advocated das Deutschtum most adamantly who lost their Mennonite faith" (ix).
 
Friesen's book focuses on a handful of spokesmen for Russian Mennonites, all of them educated intellectuals, among them Benjamin Unruh, brothers Heinrich and Peter Braun, David Epp, and occasionally P.M. Friesen. The first major crisis among Russian Mennonites erupted after the secession of the Mennonite Brethren from the Old Church. Repeatedly the MBs felt forced to prove to the government that they constituted not an illegal "sect" (an accusation that came from the Old Church as well), but a "confession" that merited all the privileges granted to Mennonites upon their arrival in Russia, such as exemption from military service. In contrast to the Old Church, MBs deeply desired to evangelize the unsaved, although this was strictly proscribed by law. When the authorities proclaimed in the Manifestos of 1905 that proselytization would henceforth be legal, MBs sprang into action. The Manifestos were soon abrogated, however, and Mennonites came under close scrutiny by a government now in the grip of a growing anti-German hysteria.
 
Investigations were conducted by the authorities, particularly in Molotschna, into the possible "subversive" activities of Mennonites propagating their faith. Spokesmen such as David Epp and Peter Braun countered with their own versions of Mennonite history that would ostensibly prove that Mennonites were totally loyal to the tsar. Their interpretations of history, Friesen argues, were deeply flawed. They were based on a theory that the Mennonite church stemmed not from Menno Simons, who was reduced to a mere organizer, but from the true strands of the early church, and consequently constituted neither heresy nor sect. Mennonites in their isolation failed to realize that this theory was a slap in the face of the Russian Orthodox Church, which claimed absolute purity for itself. The theory also ignored the Anabaptist origins of their own faith. In addition, Old Church and Mennonite Brethren were deeply divided, and did not achieve any kind of consensus until a draft for a common constitution was written up under the intense political pressures of 1914 and the start of the Great War. It was too little, too late. Neither side, Friesen contends, appreciated historical Anabaptist/Mennonite values. The Old Church, with its automatic membership, had become a territorial religion much like the Catholic or Lutheran, while the MBs emphasized a Pietistic instant conversion experience that was Lutheran rather than Anabaptist. "Here now," Friesen writes, "was the Russian Mennonite tragedy.... [I]gnorance of their history, especially that of their origins had permitted such things to transpire and to divide them radically..." (163). Mennonites were later to flee the USSR still deeply divided.
 
The second major crisis for Mennonites was the land liquidation laws of 1915. Russian racism and xenophobia had grown during World War I to the point where the lands of all German settlers were to be confiscated, and their owners transported elsewhere, likely to Siberia. Mennonites immediately argued that, although their mother tongue was German, they were in fact Dutch in origin and faithful to the tsar. When the authorities refused to relent, panic ensued. Mennonites stated in a memorandum, "In our veins flows not a drop of German blood. We reject everything Germanic" (240). How honest were these declarations of "Dutchness?" They were made under extreme duress, and Friesen may overstate their "hypocrisy." It is clear, however, that Mennonites were prepared to emigrate from Russia long before the Revolution. Regarding the Russians, Peter Braun later wrote, "We hate and loathe this people..." (257). And Benjamin Unruh, upon his escape from the USSR to Germany, became a convinced follower of Adolf Hitler, hoping that German forces might liberate the lost Russian Mennonite lands.
 
In his fascinating epilogue, worth reading in itself, Abraham Friesen summarizes the basic issues of his book. "In Defense of Privilege" takes a long time getting there, with a rather slow start, meticulous academic style, and a circuitous argumentative structure. It may also focus too much on the writings of a handful of men. The volume, however, is a journey worth taking. "Who are the (Russian) Mennonites?" Friesen asks. His vision is profoundly Anabaptist/Mennonite, as one might expect from a specialist in Reformation history. Menno Simons, Friesen maintains, was clearly the founder of a pacifist and mainly Dutch movement quite distinct from the violence of some early Anabaptists in places such as Münster. Mennonites, he says, were later never quite convinced of Simons' pacifism, and would turn to the early church for their origins when they wished to argue for military exemption. Meanwhile, due to extreme persecution, Mennonites soon became the "quiet in the land," disavowing proselytization and concentrating on economic and social success. In Russia, Mennonites eventually referred to themselves as a distinct Völklein, segregated from the world, thus becoming an ethnic/cultural entity and retaining Anabaptist values only by tradition. They became self-aware only late in the nineteenth century, and perhaps only then, Friesen asserts, "cultural Germans."
 
The identification with Germany, Friesen concludes, was a moral disaster, as some Mennonites abandoned Anabaptist values for those of fascism. It has been necessary in the ensuing decades to recover the "Dutchness," the peace principles, of the Anabaptist vision. "...[I]f the Anabaptist faith," he writes, "was worth sacrificing one's life for in the sixteenth century, it should certainly be worth our while to attempt to recover it in its pristine form in the twentieth century. Perhaps, as we are assimilated into the Canadian, American, or any other dominant culture, we should seek to separate even our race from our faith as it was in the earliest years of the movement" (372).

Henry Schapansky.
Mennonite Migrations and the Old Colony
(New Westminster: Self Published, 2006, 816 pp)
reviewed by David Giesbrecht
 
The author has developed an impressive expertise with respect to  Russian Mennonite history. The first half of this major study offers a detailed accounting of Northern European Mennonites and their migrations, including a listing and brief biographical account for each of the early Anabaptist reformers. Schapansky continues his narrative by delineating among High Germans, Flemish and Friesians and Lamists; then traces the migration to, and the development of, Mennonite communities in Prussia

In large measure this book focuses on the immigration and settlement of Mennonites in the Old Colony (Chortitza). Many readers will appreciate the methodical naming and discussion of prominent leaders as well details pertaining to the expansion of Mennonite colonies.

Appendices include immigration documents of the era as well as maps (eg. Gemeinden in West Prussia), tables (eg.  Population Statistics for the Old Colony) and a wealth of information reflecting early Russian Mennonite history.

Profiles of the Past:  Jakob C. Reimer –  a Soldier
translated by son Edgar Reimer,
North Vancouver (formerly of Greendale)

When Jakob C. Reimer was drafted into the Russian Imperial Army, at the beginning of WWI, he was not very well prepared for his army life.  He had always felt comfortable and secure up to that time; as an eldest son he was the favourite of his parents; he always had the money for anything he wanted.  He had never had to do anything straining or exhausting; he had never had to face anything ugly or unpleasant, and he would pass out at the sight of blood.

Jakob’s conscience demanded that if he had to join the army he would have to be in the medical corps, where he could help people rather than kill.  His training was rough.  The doctors who trained him were mostly female army captains.  Cleaning wards, making beds, handling bed pans, giving injections and assisting in the operations were experiences he had not anticipated.  The first time he saw blood while assisting in surgery, he collapsed in a faint.  He was rudely awakened with a dousing of water, a bit of kicking, and a great deal of screaming by a female doctor.  It did help him to get his blood pressure up so that he could stay conscious.  Eventually he could take any kind of sights.

The army outfitted medical trains to transport wounded men from army dressing stations to hospitals well behind the lines.  Most trains had 24 box cars, with one trained medical corpsman in each car; each box car had bunks for 36 wounded men; and one female doctor circulated through the train.  If a medic could keep half of his men alive until he got them to a hospital, it was considered a successful trip.  Jakob served two years on a train.

In the confusion of war at the front, a train would sometimes take up to three days to reach a hospital.  During that time a medic, in boots and uniform, would steal sleep here and there in ten minute snatches, while men moaned and called for help and died.  It was not an easy life for a man of compassion.

Watching men die was a daily, sometimes hourly experience.  But there were rewards as well when a dying man could be saved or a disabled man rehabilitated.  Jakob noticed that one man who had a head wound from a bayonet, would pass out at the slightest exertion or excitement.  Jakob discussed surgery with the man and the on-board doctor…  Jakob helped the doctor make an incision on the head, and they came across a bayonet tip that was so placed in the skull, that the slightest increase in blood pressure would bring the brain into contact with it  The tip was carefully removed, and the man restored to perfect health.

Revolution brought a peace treaty with Germany, and Jakob could leave the army.  But it was not the end of his experiences with deaths and violence.  The Civil War, the Great Famine and ‘War Communism’ as well as his arrests and sentences perpetuated fear and difficulties.  But he survived to become a peaceful family father in Canada.