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Eichenfeld, Ukraine
Memorial reflections


On May 27, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, a crowd of over 300 people stood at the site of a mass grave in Eichenfeld/Novopetrovka in southern Ukraine. Most of the people present had come from Eichenfeld and other surrounding villages, from Baptist and Orthodox churches, and from the Mennonite Churches of Zaporozhye and Petershagen. Seventeen of us from Canada and the United States came as part of a “Mennonite Heritage and Memorial Tour”. We came because we were descendants of ancestors whose legacy we wanted to honour with the unveiling of a memorial stone.

Memorial service held May 27, 2001 Photo by Charles Harms

Here, and in other mass graves in such nearby villages as Hochfeld, Franzfeld and Petersdorf, lie the remains of 136 victims brutally massacred during a period of civil war in Russia. Eichenfeld alone lost 82 people on the nights of October 26 and 27, 1919. It was a time of political upheaval and confusion. The occupying German army had retreated, and neither the Tsarist White Army nor the Communist Red Army was in control of the region. Nestor Machno, a Ukrainian anarchist who had been released from prison, took advantage of the situation and unleashed a reign of terror in the Mennonite villages between 1918 and 1920. His followers called him Batjko (little father) Machno, and with his fellow bandits he implemented his own system of justice. Monstrous acts of cruelty were enacted as he ravaged the villages and forced a “redistribution” of the land and possessions of wealthy Mennonite farmers and estate owners.

Laying flowers on the memorial stone Photo by Charles Harms

Mennonite historians John B. Toews of Regent College and Harvey Dyck of the University of Toronto, leaders of the memorial tour, had planned every detail of the memorial day program. We stepped off our bus at the entrance to Eichenfeld so that we could walk the entire length of the village street. We were delighted to meet groups of women from Eichenfeld laden with peonies and irises on their way to the memorial site. Even today Eichenfeld is a lovely village with a little river, fields of sunflowers and grazing cattle in rolling meadows. It was difficult to believe that gruesome atrocities could have taken place in this peaceful setting.

While waiting for the service to begin, I was particularly drawn to an older gentleman holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand, leaning heavily on his cane and painfully making his way to the memorial stone. I was able to strike up a conversation in Russian with him and learned he was Vasiliy Michaelovich Chumachenko, born in 1917. He shared a few things he knew about these “good people” (the Mennonites), and then, holding up his flowers, he vowed, “As long as I live, I will come and place the first spring flowers on this grave. This I promise you.”

Steven Shirk of Mennonite Central Committee Ukraine presided over the ceremony. Officials representing regional and local government offices, as well as pastors of various churches, participated in the program. Words of sorrow, regret and forgiveness were shared as speaker after speaker came forward. Prayers and our group’s German hymns reflected our unshakable faith in a living and loving God. Hope was expressed that this time of reconciliation and healing might lead to peace and friendship between our peoples.

The victims in this mass grave had been denied the traditional rituals of a Christian burial. John B. Toews reminded us that we had come “to hold a memorial for people who had never had one. . . . The people buried here were not washed or dressed for burial. There was no solemn procession to the church,

Memorial stone Photo by Charles Harms

no Bible reading or song, no march to the open grave, no coffin to lower. . . . It was a burial amid heartbreak, fear and uncertainty. . . . Instead of a funeral meal, the survivors fled.” Yet, with him, we were confident that “the Mennonite victims buried here believed in the risen Christ.” Not many of those standing at the gravesite could communicate in all three languages used during this service – Ukrainian, English and German. Nevertheless, standing there together in some measure rectified what could not be done at the time of the deaths.

The memorial stone was designed by Paul Epp to capture the image of the deceased in repose. Epp states that the low-to-the-ground, slightly tilted granite slab “represents the coffin these people never had and the dignified public viewing they did not receive”. And as he had envisioned, it was necessary to bow our heads to view the stone and read the inscriptions written in Ukrainian and German. Following the solemn reading of the names of the 136 victims, the last prayer and the laying of flowers on the stone, everyone attending was invited to move to tables set nearby for the “funeral meal”. Our final act that day was to walk the two-kilometre “widows’ walk” to Adelsheim which the widows and children had taken as they fled the horrors of those October nights.

Johann Peters’s gravestone in Petersdorf

Honouring our ancestors’ legacy should not be underestimated. (I recall our excitement earlier that morning when we found the cemetery and mass grave in Petersdorf, a once beautiful village of estates completely destroyed in 1920.) We also recognized our responsibility to the Ukrainian people now living in the many former Mennonite villages. Their needs are great; poverty, sickness and despair are everywhere. Yet various Christian agencies are providing spiritual nurture, outreach and humanitarian aid. The organization Friends of the Mennonite Centre Ukraine (FOMCU) has purchased and is renovating the old Maedchenschule (girls’ school) in Halbstadt/ Molochansk to minister to the needs of many desperate people in the surrounding villages. Recalling the prosperity of earlier generations, Ukrainian villagers have been asking, “When are the Mennonites coming back?” Already a clinic set up in Eichenfeld/Novopetrovka is providing limited assistance to those with physical ailments. Herb and Maureen Klassen of Abbotsford, B.C., interim directors of FOMCU, are recording the most urgent needs. More information on FOMCU is available from Harvey Dyck at ahdyck@idirect.com.

 – Mary Dueck

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Last modified October 10, 2001.

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