European Mennonites and the Holocaust

The introduction to this important collection begins with an account of the ‘glass factory massacre’ of September 1942, in Kislovodsk, in the northern Caucasus, in which 1,800 Jews were murdered. Disturbing as this story is, what may also startle some readers is the fact that the massacre was directed by Heinrich Wiens, a 36-year-old SS officer from the Mennonite community of Molotschna, just north of the Sea of Azov and, since the early nineteenth century, one of the larger Mennonite enclaves in Europe. Given the image and identity that many Mennonites have cultivated since World War II as a pacifist people engaged in relief work, economic development and refugee resettlement around the world, the editors’ choice to open with the story of Wiens suggests that this book will cover unfamiliar terrain. To be clear: the book’s contributors do not contend that ‘killers’ was the most common capacity in which European...

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