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CURRENTLY IN BOOKS
Plight of Mennonite women refugees examined

Edna Froese

Women Without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the Second World War Marlene Epp. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. 245 pp. Softcover. $21.95.

Marlene Epp, well-known Mennonite historian, challenges the “dominant modes of historical writing on immigrants” in her latest book Women Without Men. Using the personal stories of 34 individuals and archival material from organizations (such as MCC and Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization) that “facilitated the process of immigration and settlement” and from the churches that received the immigrants, Epp examines the “intersection of gender, war and immigration”. Because so many Mennonite men had been lost through exile and conscription, the majority of Mennonite refugees who fled to Canada and Paraguay after World War II were women and children. Epp examines in detail how these women coped with fragmented families, economic and personal vulnerability, the experiences of war and the integration into existing Mennonite communities.

For me, a child of 1920s Russian Mennonite immigrants, the book was a revelation; finally I understood the stories of those relatives who came to Canada in the 1950s or later. Epp provides a necessary larger context for the individual accounts of horror and hardship and some unspoken attitudes among Mennonites.

Readers accustomed to devotional biographies or religiously didactic histories may be initially put off by Epp’s scholarly style and factual examination of an important part of our MB history. Her work is thorough: abundant footnotes indicate sources, her methods are self-critical, and details support every conclusion. It is still not pleasant to discover that Mennonite relief agencies and receiving church communities often negated the strength of these courageous women, treating them as “weak widows”, judging their survival tactics as immoral, and generally relegating them back to a proper silence within the church.

Even more disturbing is the shameless competition for members between Mennonite Brethren and Mennonite church leaders in the refugee camps in Europe and later in the colonies of Canada and Paraguay. The extreme conditions these refugees experienced had long since blotted out subtle distinctions between Mennonite conferences, leaving the refugees bewildered by inter-church prejudice and a legalistic focus on peripheral matters such as dress and hair.

This book should be required reading for ethnic Mennonites and perhaps for all members of MB churches. Admittedly, the scholarly style will be an obstacle for some, but the additional effort required is well worth it.

Edna Froese teaches English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, and is a member of Forest Grove Community Church, Saskatoon.

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Last modified March 30, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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