The Regehr family was among approximately
120,000 Mennonites who lived in the Soviet Union during the 1920s.[1] Mennonites are an ethnic[2]
and religious Anabaptist group who traditionally practice pacificism, voluntary
adult baptism, and a rejection of oaths.[3] Following the teachings of a Catholic priest
from the Netherlands, Menno Simons (1496-1561), the Mennonites were forced to
frequently migrate to avoid persecution from both church and state authorities
who were, at times, hostile to Mennonite religious practices.[4] In the late-18th century, Empress
Catherine II offered religious freedom and exemption from military service to
Mennonites who would settle in Russia.[5] But after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917,
Ruth Derksen Siemens writes, “the exclusiveness of many Mennonite communities,
their perceived prosperity, and their religious practices [attracted] the
attention of Marxist revolutionaries.” The Mennonites’ status within Russia as
a distinct group with special privileges was revoked, and following the
collectivization of agriculture and the Mennonites’ reclassification as kulaks, many fled the USSR.[6]
Originally from Altonau in the Sagrdowka colony of present-day Ukraine, the Regehr family, consisting of Jasch and Maria and their six children, attempted to flee the Soviet Union in December 1929, hoping to travel by train from Moscow into Latvia.[7] Approximately half of the estimated 10,000 Mennonite refugees who congregated in Moscow by November 1929 escaped to Germany;[8] however, the Regehr family was stopped at a railway station only a few hours after relatives, the Bargen family, managed to escape.[9] The Regehrs missed their opportunity to escape the Soviet Union, perhaps due to a decision to delay their departure by just twelve hours.[10]
The Regehr family was arrested in June 1931, and transported to the northern Ural Mountains where they were initially held in a work camp in Tarabunka before spending time in Lunowka, Ulaxma, and Polowinka between 1931 and 1933.[11] From these locations, the Regehrs wrote many letters that made their way to the Bargen family, who, after leaving Russia, settled in Carlyle, Saskatchewan.[12] Through these letters, translated and compiled in Ruth Derksen Siemens’ Remember Us, the Regehrs inform the Bargens about their lives, expressing the pain and suffering that they must endure working low-status camp jobs, harvesting lumber, working in mines and agriculture, as well as building rail lines, all while fighting off frostbite and starvation in the Soviet north. In a letter from 10 January 1933, Jasch writes, “if it would be possible to write all our days into a book under one title, it would certainly be called ‘Lamentations.’”[13] Whether or not Jasch specifically intended to draw a comparison here between the Regehrs’ situation in the Soviet Union and that of the Jewish people following the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem in the biblical book of Lamentations, the Regehr letters appear to follow much the same structure and function as the laments in the book of Lamentations. This means that, as well as allowing them to express pain and despair, by using a biblical form of lament, the Regehr letters act as a form of dialogue that allows them to address both God and the Mennonite community, calling for and expecting change.[14] It is through these laments that the Regehrs attempt to solicit material support and maintain hope for the future.
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[1] Lucille Marr, “The History of the Mennonite Identity: Developing a Genre,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 23 (2005): 49.
[2] There is still debate over whether there is a distinct Mennonite ethnic identity. Both Ruth Derksen Siemens and John B. Toews, the main sources for my overview of Mennonite beliefs and history, contend that Mennonites are a distinct ethnic group due to community migration and isolation from wider society. See notes in Siemens, 37 for more information about Mennonite ethnic identity.
[3] Ruth Derksen Siemens, ed., Remember Us: Letters From Stalin’s Gulag (1930-37) (Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2007), 22.
[4] John B. Toews, Czars, Soviets and Mennonites (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1982), 1-5; Siemens, 22.
[5] Toews, Czars, 1.
[6] Toews, Czars, 33; Siemens, 25; John B. Toews, “Early Communism and Russian Mennonite Peoplehood,” in John Friesen, ed., Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1888 (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989), 268.
[7] Siemens, 25.
[8] Toews, Czars, 131.
[9] Siemens, 25.
[10] Siemens, 25.
[11] Siemens, 26.
[12] Siemens, 29.
[13] Siemens, 193.
[14] Walter Brueggmann, “Lament as Wake-Up Call (Class Analysis and Historical Possibility),” in Nancy C. Lee, Carleen Mandolfo, eds., Lamentation in Ancient and Contemporary Cultural Contexts (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), 228; Kathleen O’Conner, Lamentations and the Tears of the World (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002), 10.
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