| Abstract | In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Marlene Epp Marlene Epp completed her Ph.D. in Canadian history at the University of Toronto in 1996. She currently teaches courses in Canadian studies and Mennonite history at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario. Acknowledgement I would like to thank Ian Radforth, Franca Iacovetta, T. D. Regehr, Karen Dubinsky, Pamela Klassen, and two anonymous readers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Toronto, and the Quiring-Loewen Trust for financial assistance. Notes 1. Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1975). In addition to Brownmiller's work, specifically historical studies of rape include Karen Dubinsky, Improper Advances: Rape and Heterosexual Conflict in Ontario, 1880-1929 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); and Ruth Harris, "The 'Child of the Barbarian': Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War," Past & Present 141 (November 1993): 170-206. 2. This paper is drawn from my larger study, "Women without Men: Mennonite Immigration to Canada and Paraguay after the Second World War" (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1996). 3. For background on German minorities in the Soviet Union, see, for instance, Ingeborg Fleischhauer and Benjamin Pinkus, The Soviet Germans: Past and Present (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1986). Specific discussions of Mennonites in the early Soviet era include: John B. Toews, Czars, Soviets, and Mennonites (Newton, Ks.: Faith and Life Press, 1982); John B. Toews, "Early Communism and Russian Mennonite Peoplehood," and Victor G. Doerksen, "Survival and Identity in the Soviet Era," in Mennonites in Russia, 1788-1988: Essays in Honour of Gerhard Lohrenz (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 1989), 265-87, 289-98. 4. On the departure of Mennonites from the Soviet Union, their years as refugees in Europe, and subsequent immigration to Canada and South America, see for instance: Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus: The Rescue and Resettlement of the Russian Mennonites since the Communist Revolution (Altana, Manitoba: D.W. Friesen and Sons, 1962); George K. Epp, "Mennonite Immigration to Canada after World War II," Journal of Mennonite Studies 5 (1987): 117-18; T. D. Regehr, Mennonites in Canada, 1939-1970: A People Transformed (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), chap. 4; Peter Dyck and Elfrieda Dyck, Up From the Rubble: The Epic Rescue of Thousands of War-ravaged Mennonite Refugees (Scottdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1991). On the experience of Mennonites living in Eastern Europe, see T. D. Regehr, "Polish and Prussian Mennonite Displaced Persons, 1944-50," Mennonite Quarterly Review 66 (April 1992): 247-66; Horst Gerlach, "The Final Years of Mennonites in East and West Prussia, 1943-45," Mennonite Quarterly Review 66 (April and July 1992): 221-46, 391-423. 5. During the early 1990s, I interviewed 35 Mennonites who immigrated to Canada and Paraguay after the war, many of whom expressed an identification with Germany and German culture. To maintain anonymity, I will identify specific interview references by number. 6. For background on these events see, in particular, Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945-1949 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995); Alfred M. De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Expulsion of the Germans from the East, 3d ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Guenter Boeddeker, Die Fluechtlinge: Die Vertreibung der Deutschen im Osten (Munich: F. A. Herbig, 1980). 7. Several sources suggest that Soviet soldiers were incited to rape in part by the literary propaganda of Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg. See, for instance, De Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam, 65-66, and Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 72. See Naimark, 105-15, for a discussion on the causes of the rapes. One first-person account observes that Soviet soldiers, in explaining their assault on German territory and civilians, would recite a seemingly rehearsed list of German atrocities against their people, implying that there was a systematic element in their attacks. See "Report of Johanna Dueck, formerly of Marienburg, West Prussia, on the death of the Marienburg Mennonite Home for the Elderly, known as 'Helenenheim'," in Die ost- und westpreussischen Mennoniten in ihrem religioesen und sozialen Leben in ihren kulturellen...
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