Five Myths about Mennonites

and the Holocaust

“Not all the Jews were bad,” a widely respected Mennonite born in interwar Ukraine
told me recently, “even though they started the [Bolshevik] Revolution. My father had
good Jewish friends.” This statement is classically anti-Semitic. It falsely conflates
communism with Judaism, while using the excuse of having a few Jewish friends to
mask an implied belief that Jews in general were bad. At least as importantly, my
conversation partner’s words reveal how people who do not consider themselves racist
or anti-Semitic can still propagate harmful myths.

New scholarship and ongoing public discussion about the historic entanglement of tens
of thousands of Mennonites on three continents with Nazism and the Holocaust during
the 1930s and 1940s has yielded productive conversation regarding how present-day
Anabaptists can and should respond to this history, as well as calls for further
discussion. At the same time, some church-affiliated periodicals have printed articles,
letters, and reviews that propagate troubling interpretations of Mennonite-Nazi
connections, including anti-Semitic tropes.

1
Such reactionary responses are not exceptional, either in Holocaust historiography or in
the current context of Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians. In February,
Poland passed legislation criminalizing mention of some Poles’ involvement in
genocide, while part of the international backlash to Israeli violence has been couched
in anti-Semitic terms. When certain Mennonites voice anti-Semitic sentiments, this often
reflects—as is the case of other groups—both an attempt to protect their own and also a
real, dangerous current of anti-Jewish prejudice.

The following five myths date to the Third Reich or its immediate aftermath. They
remain in circulation, deployed today to excuse Mennonite involvement in Nazism or
to foreclose public discussion. Examples given below all appeared in Mennonite
periodicals within the past two years. Since my intention is to stimulate thoughtful

2
reflection, not to shame individuals, I have chosen not to cite most quotations.
However, all are easily accessible online and in print.

Myth #1: Mennonites suffered under Bolshevism, justifying Nazi collaboration.

This is the most typical excuse for Mennonite involvement for Nazism. The trope holds
that life in the Soviet Union was so brutal, Mennonites had no choice but to embrace
Hitler’s crusade. In fact, most Mennonites involved with the Third Reich had never
lived in the USSR. The subset who did—approximately 35,000 individuals in Ukraine—
came under Nazi occupation in 1941. Like millions of other Soviet citizens, most of
these Mennonites welcomed Hitler’s armies as “liberators” from hardship and
repression. Yet unlike the majority of their neighbors, Mennonites were generally
considered Aryan, a status that provided additional incentives to support Nazism.

This trope is often accompanied by assertions that Mennonite suffering under

communism has not been properly recognized. But in reality, Mennonite authors have
been publicizing Soviet atrocities without abate since the Bolshevik Revolution.
Scholarly literature and memoirs on Mennonite victimhood greatly outnumber texts
that explore collaboration or perpetration. Nearly all of the latter have appeared only
recently. The imbalance is so stark that Mennonite historians can claim to have created
an entire subgenre on the “Soviet Inferno,” a term in academic use since the 1990s and
whose deployment continues to refer almost exclusively to Mennonites.

Myth #2: The Allied powers committed atrocities, too – why should we single out
Nazism?

“The Nazis were bad, but the Bolsheviks were worse,” a Mennonite born in the USSR
told me in March. “You mean from a Mennonite perspective,” I said. My conversation
partner shrugged. “Of course.” When white Mennonites think about what life might
have been like for them if they had lived in Hitler’s Germany, they invariably assume
that they would have been Mennonite—and by extension Aryan. From such a
viewpoint, each of the Allied powers, not just the Soviet Union, would have posed a
greater threat to life and livelihood than Nazism. In other words, assuming one would
have been Aryan creates a false equivalency that downplays genocide.

Studying the Holocaust from a Mennonite-centric perspective runs the added risk of
repeating debunked Nazi propaganda, such as the myth that Bolshevism was Jewish.
Some invocations of a “Soviet Inferno” falsely imply systematic persecution or even a
“final solution” of Mennonites (by Jews) in the USSR. Nazi perpetrators commonly
used such reversals to portray themselves as the true victims. Last year, one historian
explained Mennonite participation in Nazi death squads, stating: “men and women of

3
Jewish background worked as [Soviet] administrators, agents, and interrogators.” He
had previously directed me to a webpage entitled “Jewish Mass Murderers.”

Myth #3: Mennonites were mostly women and children, so they either had no choice
or could not have been involved.

Women and children are often invoked to claim Mennonite innocence in Nazi war
making. One writer recently claimed, for example: “in the 1930s most Mennonite men
[in the USSR] had been exiled, imprisoned or executed, leaving families to be led by
mothers and grandmothers,” who were not “collaborators, anti-Semites or Aryan.”
Mennonites in Nazi-occupied Ukraine were indeed disproportionately women and
children. But there were also plenty of men—many of whom served in administrative
positions, as translators, policemen, or soldiers. Gender disparity at the end of the war
in part reflected the death or capture of Mennonite men in German uniform.

This myth further assumes that women or children could not have contributed to
Nazism or the Holocaust. However, many Mennonite women served as translators or in
bureaucratic capacities, sometimes enriching themselves with the spoils of genocide.
More often, women supplied moral support to male relatives and contributed to the
war effort through their labor. Meanwhile, some underage boys took up arms. And
most Mennonite children in the Third Reich absorbed Nazi ideals at school and through

4
organized youth activities. They helped boost morale by singing, marching, and telling
stories. Some racist proclivities learned in the 1930s and 1940s persist today.

Myth #4: Mennonites knew nothing about Holocaust-related atrocities.

This is simply untrue, as numerous archival documents testify. Nonetheless, the way
this myth is told is itself revealing. Consider one statement: “Although Mennonites
under German occupation witnessed how their Jewish neighbours packed up and fled,
they did not know about the outcome of this fleeing until much later.” Another,
strikingly similar account holds that Mennonites “saw their Jewish neighbours pack up
and flee eastward across the Dnepr; how many survived and how many were executed
on the eastern side they did not know until later.” These authors care more about
locating killing elsewhere than considering why Mennonites stayed as Jews fled.

5
To suggest that murder did not occur around some Mennonite settlements or that
Mennonites in these areas had no knowledge of genocide is a form of Holocaust denial.
Such myths repudiate known facts. Yet claims persist that Mennonites “had not heard
of Aryanism and other racial theories until well after the conclusion of the war.” The
author of this line, in subsequent postal correspondence, described glowingly her own
wartime work as the secretary for a top German officer in Nazi-occupied
Dnipropetrovsk, her receipt of German citizenship, and the voluntary induction of
Mennonite men into the military; “I am a beneficiary of the German occupation!”

Myth #5: Mennonites suffered under Nazism.

Among the most disingenuous myths about Mennonite life under Nazism, this trope
holds that the general suffering of Mennonites in the USSR continued under German
rule. Nazi occupation was indeed catastrophic for a minority of Mennonites who were
committed communists, as well as for disabled individuals and those of Jewish
heritage. Some in Nazi-occupied France and the Netherlands joined the resistance or
hid Jews. Yet claims of Mennonite suffering normally refer to those who in 1943 and
1944 participated in the “Great Trek” from Ukraine to Poland to escape the Red Army—
an endeavor supervised by the SS and praised by Mennonite leaders at the time.

Indeed, closer inspection reveals that allegations of Mennonite hardship are often
complaints that Nazism did not live up to its potential. If only the Eastern Front had
held; if only religious reform had been more thorough; if only welfare programs were
more generous—then Mennonite life would have been easier. Even the Holocaust and
other persecutions are said to have “occasioned much disappointment among
Mennonites.” This may be true. But note how the author chooses to emphasize the
“disappointment” of Aryans, not the actual enslavement and slaughter of Jews. Despite
the fading of his own initial “euphoria” for Germany, he could remain “deeply
grateful.”

***

Mennonite authors and editors should think carefully before writing or printing pieces
about the Third Reich. This is an important topic and requires our attention. But we
must approach it in ways that do not recapitulate racism. Even those of us with good
intentions need to be wary. In April, the cover story of a major denominational
magazine laudably covered Mennonites and the Holocaust; yet in her introduction, the
editor blithely compared Mennonites murdering Jews to Jews murdering Jesus—
arguably the single most injurious trope of Christian anti-Semitism. Proofreaders
apparently saw no problem with invoking “the crowd that yelled ‘Crucify him!’”

6
A few rules of thumb might be helpful. If you are discussing Nazism or the Holocaust,
consider how someone from a different background might react—particularly if you are
defending actions by your own group. Second, be aware of contextual differences:
refocusing from the Holocaust to Soviet atrocities erases the specificity of Jewish
genocide. Finally, when evaluating suffering, do not discriminate. While Mennonites
have faced many difficulties, they never suffered alone. Nor were they always victims.
Anabaptists, of all people, must surely grasp that violence can permeate even the most
peaceable of cultures, a process we should understand but never justify.

Ben Goossen is a historian at Harvard University. He is the author of Chosen Nation:

Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era, published in 2017 by Princeton University Press.

This essay originally appeared at: https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2018/06/14/five-myths-about-

mennonites-and-the-holocaust/