Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Book Reviews
Harry Loewen, Between Worlds: Reflections
of a Soviet-born Canadian Mennonite (Kitchener:
Pandora Press, 2006). Softcover; 358 pages; ISBN
1-894710-63-0; Bibliography, Index; $35.00 Cdn.
$31.50 US.
Reviewed by Hans Werner, University of
Winnipeg
The life story of a professor hardly seems to be
the kind of book that a reader would immediately
be drawn to. In fact, a history professor is often offered
as the perfect example of an uninteresting life.
So faced with the prospect of reading the memoirs
of professor Harry Loewen, the former Chair in
Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg,
one naturally wonders how exciting it really could
be. Loewen’s story, however soon captures the
reader’s interest, not only for its personal drama,
but also as an interesting look into how his thinking
developed on questions of history, Mennonites, and
the wider church.
Loewen was born in the Soviet Union, and
in 1937 at the age of six he lost both father and
grandfather to the Stalinist terror. During World
War II the Loewen family, now headed by Harry’s
mother, survived the trek out of the Soviet Union
into Nazi Germany and then came to Canada in
1948. Loewen’s family settled in Coaldale, Alberta
where Harry became active in the local Mennonite
Brethren Church. Harry and Gertrude Penner were
married in 1953 and, along with starting a family,
the next years were spent between Winnipeg and
Kitchener pursuing further studies interspersed
with teaching and pastoral assignments. In 1978,
Harry became the first holder of the Chair in Mennonite
Studies at the University of Winnipeg, a
position he held until he retired to Kelowna in 1995.
Tragedy struck the Loewens when they lost their
retirement home and almost all their possessions,
including most of his collection of books in the fires
that swept through parts of Kelowna in the summer
of 2003. The book ends with a sample of essays
written by Loewen that elaborate the themes that he
alludes to in his life story and that were important
in elaborating his thoughts.
It is readily apparent how Loewen’s personal
experiences influenced his thinking on many questions
later in life. His experience of Nazism during
World War II seems to have developed a strong
need to warn any who would listen of the wrongness
of anti-Semitism. The loss of his father and
the resulting influence of his mother seem to weigh
heavily upon his later approaches to the challenges
of loss, forgiveness, and injustice. Loewen does,
however, allow his later thinking to impose upon
his understandings of the events of these formative
years to a considerable extent. After all, he was
eight or nine years old when the war broke out and
a youthful fifteen when it was over. His interpretation
of these events would seem to reflect much
more his later views than his consciousness at the
time. While Loewen acknowledges this tendency
in the preface where he suggests, “recollections of
events of past years, …have been shaped by my
later imagination,” he only marginally addresses
the problems that realization poses for his story
(p7-8).
No less interesting is the story of how Loewen’s
thinking progressed on questions of the Christian
life, the church, and being Mennonite. Here
Loewen continues to keep tightly to the biblical
injunction to not attempt to remove the sliver out
of the neighbour’s eye when a beam blinds one’s
own eye. Loewen reserves his sharpest criticism for
his own Mennonite Brethren. He accuses them of
not remaining true to their Anabaptist theological
origins; he chastises them for their willingness to
be influenced by North American religious currents
(p147) and accuses them of being judgmental and
intrusive in their approach to personal lifestyles and
practices (p 229). In contrast, Loewen is generous
in his approach to the more conservative groups.
Although there is only one anecdote about actual
interaction with Amish, he concludes that the more
conservative groups have in many ways better preserved
their Anabaptist roots than his Mennonite
Brethren coreligionists (p 227). Loewen is nevertheless
clear that the life of the conservatives is not
for him. It is here where the reader might well ask
for more reflection. Although he devotes an entire
chapter to the question, the reader is still left wondering
how he resolved respect for the conservative
point of view on the one hand while challenging
his coreligionists to be less ‘conservative’ in their
judgements of personal lifestyles.
On the whole the book is classic Harry Loewen.
As a former student of the Professor, the text rings
true to the tone of his lectures; the questions he
asked in his classes are revisited again here, as are
the debates in which he participated. Loewen did
live between worlds, not only in the events of his
life, but also in the development of his ideas about
faith and life, Mennonites and history.
________________
Irmgard Epp, ed. Constantinoplers: Escape
from Bolshevism (Victoria: Trafford Publishing,
2006), pb., 370 pp. $29.95 CND.
Reviewed by Lawrence Klippenstein, Winnipeg
The story of how the Civil War after the First
World War in the Soviet Union ended with the
flight of the last several hundred thousand people
from the Crimean peninsula to Constantinople,
is known to many. But first hand accounts of the
fortunate individuals who managed to save their
lives that way, are less readily available. This volume,
prepared by the author in tribute to her father,
Cornelius Heinrich Epp, contains several dozen
stories about the experience that reflect with deep
pathos the often desperate actions of, and personal
feelings about, that traumatic escape.
The first two accounts, written by Gerhard
Wiens and John P Unruh, include useful background
material to create a context for the story
of Mennonite soldiers who fought in the White
Army under General Wrangel. They also relate
how some of them managed to emigrate from the
Soviet Union via Sevastopol and Constantinople.
Extensive accounts by Peter Gerz, John J. Dyck,
and Peter D Froese deal with experiences in the
army. While these do not provide a systematic
account of what happened during the final year
and months of White Army resistance to the Reds,
they do give significant windows for understanding
what Mennonite soldiers had to contend with
in military service during that relatively short, but
fateful, period.
The episode of the so-called Selbstschutz (Selfdefense
militia) is not central to these reports. However,
it is clearly the most immediate background
for Mennonite involvement in the White Army. It
was the termination of the Selbstschutz that led to
a harsh Red Army prosecution of all Mennonites
who had been part of the Selbstschutz, even though
that body intended to oppose only the Makhno
forces, not the Red Army itself. This prosecution
led to the flight of hundreds southward from the
Molotschna into the Crimean peninsula as the Civil
War came to an end.
Part Three, titled “ The Hollanders’ Desperate
Flight,” begins with an account of a reunion of “
Constantinoplers,” in Yarrow, B.C., in June, 1952. It
was here that a decision was made to collect written
stories about that fateful experience, and the task
was begun. Then follow a dozen more stories, in the
course of which one learns about the refugee situation
in Constantinople. Here MCC set up a refugee
centre which could serve the escapees for several
years. It become a gathering point to make plans for
moving to permanent new homes, some in Europe,
but mostly in North America. The oft-told story of
the “62”, a group of young Mennonite soldiers of
the White Army who made it together to the United
States, belongs to this chapter of the story.
The final section of the book brings in accounts
of a number of people (not all White Army
ex-soldiers) who did not leave via the Crimea, but
went first to Batum and then traveled to Constantinople
to leave the Soviet Union with the others.
The harrowing experiences of delay at Ellis Island
in the United States form a distinctive part of this
experience.
It is interesting to note that the several dozen
accounts do not include much reflection on the
problem that going into active military service created
for Mennonites who were historically pacifist.
It seems fairly clear that the self-defense initiative
during Makhno times, once tacitly or even openly
sanctioned by leading Mennonite ministers and
teachers (see Dr. Abraham Friesen’s recent book,
In Defense of Privilege) seemed to leave the door
wide open to take up arms. The Mennonites of
that time did not seem to recognize that this action
compromised their historic understanding of the
Christian faith.
The material is now at hand to write a more
comprehensive history of this part of the Mennonite
story. In this book the material is still in fragments,
but this material along with other studies, e.g. the
story of the refugee home at Constantinople, will
make it possible to tell a more integrated story. The
editor is to be commended for managing an impres-
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