As winter descends, I find myself dreaming of diving into all the things I have attempted to learn. This is more about that attempt. More stream-of-consciousness writing taken from my furious note-taking at the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies conference this past October. (In case you missed it, Part 1 is here.)
Day One, Friday October 3rd – after lunch I made sure I was back in time for the next session, entitled “Imprisonment and Persecution in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, Part 2” – carried over from the morning.
You know, at some conferences even though there is a wide swath of topics, I end up learning about a certain topic that surfaces in various papers. This time it is The Great Terror of 1937 which continued until 1938 November. Werner Toews was the first presenter, and his paper delves into exactly this while other papers this morning had alluded to this Terror.
“This case will now be closed.” But for Werner, “in my mind it is far from closed.” Others said: “What does it matter now, they are all dead.” (I think I wrote this down because this is often said to me, as well. “The past is passed. Leave it alone.” Which only makes me curiouser.)
Werner hunted for photos and documents of his grandfather who disappeared during The Great Terror. He was told “people are no longer interested in this history.”
“They were wrong,” he remarked dryly, eliciting a chuckle from the audience.
He has been persistent. And has found success, locating his grandfather’s police files, and signed confession.
In Canada you can know about why you are being arrested and have the right to not answer, and obtain counsel, he reflected. Not so in Soviet Russia, where his grandfather was charged with sabotage and anti-Soviet propaganda. He questioned, what kind of evidence would support those charges? He was very sure the charges were fictitious and the testimony was extracted via manipulation and force.
“I would suggest my grandfather’s confession was pre-written and he was forced to sign it.”
For many victims, the places of burial were kept secret.
The most important document to Toews was the rehabilitation in 1989.
“Gone but not forgotten, rest in peace, Opa,” concluded Toews.
Next, Waldemar Masson presented on “Persecution and Hope: Survival Strategies in a Hostile Regime – How My Family Survived the Soviet Union.” He presented via Zoom, from his home in Europe (I want to say Germany?) and I would say his presentation moved me quite a lot. I think the experience he researched felt very near.
“It was a time when every step was watched, every word carried weight…” he reflected. “They left me the gift of memory.”
The family has been the Sperling-Mieraus of Annenfeld, Crimea. Also Boschmann and Rogalski. (His other side of family I think.)
His grandmother had written in 1963 asking what had happened to her husband. She heard back that he had been executed in 1942 for “poisoning the livestock” but had been posthumously “rehabilitated”.
I wonder what it would be like to present on family history in this way – to an academic conference. Sometimes I find that sharing personal details or thoughts can hit in a different way and move me to tears. It’s a different level of awareness, somehow.
I think this was about his great-grandfather…
“As they passed a watermelon field they could not leave the fruits behind…” (am I hearing this correctly? Or remembering it on time to type it?)
They steadfastly preserved language and faith, even in Kazakhstan. Memories of Crimea, during their exile in a foreign land.
The story of this family over the decades. In photos and memories.
“Kings come and go but the people endure.” – wisdom from his grandfather.
“Two years after my grandfather passed away, I began to explore my family history… but that is another story.”
The then played a tape or CD on a little stereo with his family photo. We all sat quietly, listening. “Elicits a mood…” I wrote.
“Audio recording of my great grandmother Katharina Sperling in the 1970s,” he explained.
Somehow this presentation quite affected me. The feeling stays with me still, even nearly three months later. It’s a sort of haunted feeling… of catching a brief glimpse of the past, for a moment. And of love.
Naemi Fast also presented via Zoom, on “’The Soviet Union Accuses’: Three Mennonite Preachers in a Public Trial in Karaganda in 1962.”
She opened with, “There are voices calling for a new Martyrs Mirror telling the stories of those who suffered during the soviet era.” On the screen, we saw propaganda posters depicting religious people in a bad light.
“We heard about this already from Maria Lotsmanova,” she says.
In the barracks in Karaganda in the 1930s, “the Mennonites recognized each other very soon.”
They had been accused of “illegal Mennonite activities” such as “raising children in the Christian faith.”
During interrogation authorities used false statements against them – a tactic to get them to tell on each other.
(At this point I can feel myself fading a lot and I don’t think coffee is the answer. I’m kind of vibrating in a way that means my energy is depleting. I think it might be from trying to keep up.)
__ preacher name_ was prevented from seeing his wife during trail so that “he would not gain courage.”
Photo of the Wiebe clan with an empty chair for their absent father… (later reunited). This I remember staring at, just trying to absorb the story from the photograph.
Then, Alex Tepperman, presenting on “The Jacob Luitjens Debate: Religion, Justice, and the Challenges of In-Group Solidarity.”
“It’s strange to speak to an audience of more than five people,” he remarked. (I guess this is well attended, which yeah, I agree, it is!)
So, he was discussing cross cultural interactions, particularly the relationship between Jews and Mennonites, who in general get along pretty well.
I made a note to “see John Longhurst article about Jews and Mennonites called ‘It’s Complicated’,” which I’ve just found here. (And just read, now, as I’m re-reading my notes from the conference. Like anything Longhurst writes, it’s well worth a read.)
“Two groups at the margins disagreeing about the nature of justice,” Tepperman said.
Of note, Luitjens was a Nazi collaborator in 1940s and lived in Mennonite colony in Paraguay in 1948. If I’m understanding my messy notes correctly, in 1989 and article was published with the title “Mennonites, Jews clash over fate of Luitjens” – Mennonites forgave him but Jews said “only the dead can forgive.”
It all “got messy very quickly” as loving him or punishing him was not the issue at hand. Choosing love to forgive, “if you haven’t got love, you have nothing” – but Luitjens didn’t repent. Said he didn’t do it or not in the way you think and/or it’s not a big deal…
And that wasn’t seriously grappled with by Mennonites and Jews.
He “spoke obliquely about a wish to “leave behind the bad things of the past” – he’s talking around it! That complicates the question of whether to forgive because he wasn’t even seeking forgiveness.
Who gets to speak for Holocaust victims?
Who gets to forgive?
What is redemption?
Is it okay to ONLY get forgiveness from G_d?
So what was the correct path for Mennonites?
If people don’t take accountability, the Bible says you can cast them out.
Luitjens is not meeting the brief for forgiveness.
The idea of forgiveness and restoration is reasonable to pursue… if you look at the work of the MCC… but it requires the participation of all stakeholders.
He adds that intergroup disagreements are common within both Jewish and Mennonite communities.
Tepperman is a criminologist. What does this all mean in terms of understanding the law.
People here were going after ends that were not their actual ends… using certain words but meaning something else.
Using religious justifications for their own ends – so in a justice situation they are using religious language.
Mechanical solidarity – we will stand with our side – obscures the aim of justice and harmful for both groups.
.
Q&A:
Jeremy: What did rehabilitation mean for the families?
Waldemar: They were innocent and we know that but they had that reputation and in this case it was too late. While their children and grandchildren know he was not a criminal it was too late.
Naemi: In most cases it was a moral retribution, my grandfather WAS innocent. But in some cities there was an effort to find the victims of Stalinist repression and to receive financial retribution – my grandfather received that in 1990 but he died in 1992. But recognition that families suffered needlessly.
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COFFEE BREAK
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Keynote:
Tobin Miller Shearer: A Beginning in Birmingham: Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Curious Contributions of a Black Mennonite Civil Rights Activist
Harding had a hard time reconciling the idea that Mennonites would not support unions. Just an example of how he was a Mennonite but had questions.
While in the army he realized he could not reconcile his Christian faith with the idea of having to kill someone.
Opened Mennonite House in Atlanta just around the corner from Martin and Loretta King!
“Your community has been practicing the peace witness for 300 years…”
(At some point it occurs to me that I’ve been sitting on a chair for a long time and need to sit elsewhere. I retire to the very back of the balcony where I can sit on the floor with my back against the wall. I am not getting as much out of this as I ought to and I am disappointed in myself.)
Racial revolution
Peacemaking with the enemy proved critical to the 1963 Birmingham campaign
Vincent and Rosemary Harding
In their own adopted religious community
He did formally leave but returned to speak time and again.
He is writing Vincent Harding’s biography.
NOTE: The way he started – he stated that at the end there will be a Q&A and requests that before you voice your question, you state your mother’s mother’s name. He finds it grounds people. I love this.
Harding to Mennonites – you say you do not get involved politically but you fight for the CO’s.
Selective.
During the Q and A, Royden Loewen pointed out that Vincent Harding had spoken here as well in the past.
Harding was instrumental in pushing the white Mennonite community to not just be quiet in the land.
What it means to be nonviolent when you feel your life threatened…
Racio-religious identities – an interesting idea, I have never heard this before
Yes, my notes are very pathetic.