Women Without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War

T.D. Regehr is a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan.
He is the author of Mennonites in Canada, 1939–1970: A People
Transformed, The Beauharnois Scandal: A Story of Canadian
Entrepreneurship and Politics, and Remembering Saskatchewan:

The terror of Joseph Stalin’s program of collectivization in the
1930s, together with the exigencies of military defeat and flight
westward in the Second World War, claimed the lives of millions of men
(including thousands of Mennonite men) in the Soviet Union. The serious
gender imbalances that resulted forced women into unaccustomed roles.
The situation was made much more difficult because most of the mothers,
wives, and children did not know the fate of the men who were arrested
for anti-Soviet activities or conscripted for service in various labor
battalions or in the Red Army. The disruptions to family life were
severe.

Thousands of Mennonites, together with many more Soviet citizens of
German-ethnic background living in Soviet territories occupied during
the war by the Germans, were evacuated westward by the retreating German
forces following their defeat at Stalingrad. The majority perished along
the way, or were overtaken by the Soviets and sent into exile in Siberia
and remote eastern territories of the Soviet Union. But more than ten
thousand Mennonites from the Soviet Union, the great majority being
women and children, found refuge in Western Europe before the end of the
war. From there most immigrated to Canada.

Marlene Epp has done extensive research in the relevant Canadian and
Mennonite archives, and interviewed many of the women who survived these
ordeals. She describes in sensitive detail the desperate problems and
challenges these women faced as they struggled to survive with their
children. Many also had to fend off or come to terms with harassment and
abuse, often including sexual exploitation, in the turbulent last years
of the war and during the immediate postwar years in Europe.

The problems did not end with immigration to Canada. While many found
support in Canadian Mennonite communities and congregations, they faced
the daunting task of earning a living while at the same time looking
after the needs of their families. Making the situation even more
difficult was their unfamiliarity with the English language, onerous
family obligations, and distrust or misunderstanding by community and
church leaders because of their lack of religious training and the
ethical and moral compromises many had made to survive and save their
children. A particular source of tension was the strong opposition of
church leaders to the remarriage of any refugees who did not have clear
evidence that their spouse was dead. That opposition forced most of
these women to remain near the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy.

Marlene Epp tells the stories of these women with empathy,
understanding, and candor. She has an excellent understanding of the
relevant scholarly literature, which is cited where appropriate. But she
does not allow that to distort the telling of the story as these women
remembered and told it, and as it is documented in the relevant Canadian
and Mennonite archives.