European Mennonites and the Holocaust ed. by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen (review)

Reviewed by: European Mennonites and the Holocaust ed. by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen Benjamin W. Goossen European Mennonites and the Holocaust. Edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. 337 pages. $39.95 (paper). Until recently, attention to antisemitism and the Holocaust figured marginally, if at all, in major popular and scholarly accounts of Mennonite history. The worldwide Mennonite community is a decentralized collection of Christian groups with common theological origins in the sixteenth century Reformation in Europe. Early tenets included adult or believer's baptism, avoidance of oaths, rejection of violence, and distance from formal politics. Today, Mennonites are known for pacifism and humanitarianism. Some conservative members in the Americas share the practices of the closely related Amish, adapting selectively to forms of modern technology like automobiles or electricity. If Mennonites have often been associated with German heritage and customs— even though most members are now people of color who live in the Global South—their German affinities tend to be portrayed as soft diaspora versions, at odds with the virulent nationalism of the Nazis. Experiences of persecution, migration, and cultural cohesion have led Mennonites to compare their history with that of the Jews. [End Page 117] European Mennonites and the Holocaust is a sobering corrective. It provides a persuasive and geographically comprehensive evaluation of the roles played by Mennonites (living in the Third Reich and Nazi-occupied territories of Poland, the Netherlands, and Soviet Ukraine) in the Holocaust of European Jews. At the height of Hitler's empire building during World War II, around 125,000 Mennonites (approximately one-fourth of the global church at that time) lived under Nazi rule. In their introduction to the volume, Doris Bergen, Mark Jantzen, and John Thiesen make two central points. The first concerns diversity: "Mennonites varied widely in location, beliefs, and actions." Their second argument identifies a pattern. Considered in aggregate and when compared to their neighbors, European Mennonites were significantly implicated in Hitler's crimes. They "landed on the end of a spectrum tilted toward enabling, participating in, and benefitting from Nazi German rule, which included the genocide of Jews." Put differently, "most Mennonites under Nazi rule," both collectively and individually, "accepted and supported the Nazis" (4). This book emerged from an important conversation unfolding between historians of Mennonites over the past decade or so. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Mennonite leaders in both Europe and the Americas successfully distanced the church from its entanglements with Nazism. Those ties had been too extensive to be entirely buried, however, and hints trickled out into public and scholarly consciousness on a regular basis, especially beginning in the 1960s. The Mennonite historical establishment confronted new findings with a combination of silence and selective absorption. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, multiple monographs on Mennonite-Nazi connections had appeared in German and English. Yet they were not widely known by the general Mennonite public. Nor did they focus extensively on antisemitism or the Holocaust, keeping discussion of the most serious crimes offstage. Against this backdrop, European Mennonites and the Holocaust is a significant achievement. The editors and authors of this volume represent a cohort of scholars uncovering a history of Mennonites in twentieth century [End Page 118] Europe who were not only victimized but contributed to the rise and fall of totalitarian governments and the cataclysmic events of war and genocide. Suffering and martyrdom have been keywords for scholars of Mennonites. The 120,000 Mennonites who lived in the Soviet Union, in particular, experienced repression under Stalin for their relative wealth, perceived Germanness, and their religiosity. This Soviet repression was intimately connected to the context of Mennonite interactions with Nazi invaders. A lopsided emphasis on communist violence in historical memory has helped to foster a problematic parallel between Mennonites and Jews. As Bergen, Jantzen, and Thiesen write, "This notion of Mennonites as somehow akin to Jews easily elides knowledge and memory of Jewish suffering and Mennonite involvement in inflicting it and replaces it with an image of Mennonites as the true victims" (19). Puncturing the myth of Mennonite exceptionalism—the idea that Mennonites were unusually innocent—paves the way for...

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