Holocaust

Event explores Jews, Mennonites and the Holocaust

Wally and Millie Kroeker of River East (MB) Church talk to presenter Aileen Friesen, right, at ‘ Jews, Mennonites and the Holocaust,’ a public presentation at the Asper Jewish Community Centre in Winnipeg on Nov. 5. (Photo by John Longhurst)

About 80 years ago, Jews and Mennonites lived peacefully together in the Ukrainian city of Khortitsa. Then the Nazis came, and everything changed.

In 1941, before the invasion, Khortitsa had about 2,000 Mennonites and 402 Jews out of a population of about 14,000. A year or so later, the Jews were all gone, killed by the Nazis.

Readers write: May 21, 2018 issue

‘Just one more example of a privileged western interpretation’

Re: “A peace that ignores Jesus’ atoning work” review of A Palestinian Theology of Liberation, April 9, page 24.

Ugly stories

Virginia Hostetler

I don’t like the cover of today’s issue. I don’t want to see it lying on my coffee table. You probably don’t either. At the top, a large uniformed man wields a whip, as armed soldiers ride toward a house below. Red and yellow flames shoot up in the background.

An eye-witness account of Nazi occupation

Waldemar Janzen is the author of Growing Up in Turbulent Times.

Waldemar Janzen's book, Reminiscences of My Father: Wladimir Janzen: Teacher, Minister, and Gulag Survivor, published in September 2017.

At the age of 85, I am probably one of the few survivors of the German occupation of Ukraine/Russia from 1941 to 1943 who still have clear personal memories of that time.

Scholars uncover hidden stories of the Holocaust

Doris Bergen of the University of Toronto delivers the keynote address, “Neighbours, killers, enablers, witnesses: The many roles of Mennonites in the Holocaust,” at the Mennonites and the Holocaust conference held on March 16 and 17, 2018, at Bethel College in North Newton, Kan. (Bethel College photo by Vada Snider)

Bethel College students Jacob Russell, left, of Lawrence, Kan., Albert Bratthammar of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Henry Baxter of Dothan, Ala., talk with Mark Jantzen, centre, Bethel professor of history, and Doris Bergen of the University of Toronto. (Bethel College photo by Vada Snider)

Participants in the Mennonites and the Holocaust conference talk after Doris Bergen’s keynote address in Memorial Hall at Bethel College. At left is Ben Goossen of Harvard University, author of Chosen Nation: Mennonites and Germany in a Global Era. At right, Joel Nofziger, director of communications for Lancaster (Pa.) Mennonite Historical Society, talks with Rachel Waltner Goossen of Washburn University in Topeka, Kan., who moderated one of the conference sessions. (Bethel College photo by Vada Snider)

In 2004, Joachim Wieler of Weimar, Germany, opened a small wooden box he inherited after his mother’s death. To his surprise and horror, it contained letters his late father wrote while serving as an officer in the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Holocaust

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