Some Mennonite families in Steinbach and elsewhere in Southern Manitoba are hoping new research will find out what happened to their family members who disappeared at the hands of the KGB in the former Soviet Union. Dr. Royden Loewen, formerly of Steinbach, is the Director of the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg. He says the KGB records from the Stalin purges of the 1930's were recently opened up and, through a newly-announced fellowship, the centre hopes to crack those records.

Dr. Royden Loewen"We see this as a huge opportunity for us, Mennonite historians, to go in there and figure out and find out what happened, especially during the 1930's and in particular those purges, Stalin's purges, that cost so many lives. So many people in Southern Manitoba will have had grandfathers or fathers or brothers who were taken away."

Loewen says an estimated 10,000 Mennonite men were arrested and executed from 1936-1938.

"This reverberated throughout the Mennonite communities and left thousands of female-headed households. Some of those folks came out after World War II and, in fact, live in Steinbach and Altona and other places. You can talk to them and they'll tell you heart-wrenching stories of the NKVD (Soviet secret police) pulling up with their black, raven car in the middle of the night and entering into the homes and arresting the father. They recall wrapping their arms around their father and pleading with the NKVD not to take him away."

And while families were never told what had happened to their loved ones, Loewen says the KGB kept meticulous records.

"This is what's really ironic about this. The Soviets would totally make up charges, trumped-up charges. It was a kangaroo court. But they were absolutely prodigious in keeping records, very specific records of interrogation processes, the torture processes, the court records, even sometimes they would photograph the person just before they executed that person."

Loewen says through the research of those records, many families hope to finally find out what did take place.

Through the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg, the newly created Paul Toews Fellowship in Russian Mennonite History will help mine these archives. Recent postdoctoral fellow at the Centre, Dr. Aileen Friesen, has undertaken extensive archival research in Russia, notes there is an urgency to access these KGB files.

"These records are now fully open, but they stand the chance of being closed once again should the political situation in Ukraine change."

The Paul Toews Fellowship will fund researchers in recording, translating and archiving these KGB materials in the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg. The Fellowship will also support other research programs. These include history conferences, graduate and post-doctoral fellowships on Russian Mennonite history, funds for visiting scholarships, and other archival research in both Ukraine and Russia.

The Fellowship is based on a $450,000 endowment fund that has been pledged or donated to date. This Fellowship is part of the broader campaign goal of raising $3,000,000 for the establishment of a Professorship in Russian Mennonite History. While the wider $3,000,000 endowment campaign continues, the Paul Toews Fellowship will guarantee that earnings from monies donated to the campaign will go to work at once. It is estimated that the Fellowship will eventually provide some $20,000 per year in the support of numerous research programs.