Benjamin Unruh, Nazism, and MCC

Abstract

This essay explores Mennonite Central Committee’s encounters with National Socialism in the person and work of Benjamin H. Unruh (1881-1959), the official representative of Russian Mennonites in Germany throughout the period of National Socialism. Benjamin Unruh’s extensive correspondence deposited in five Mennonite archives and his published articles are used to document and assess how MCC’s humanitarian efforts with Soviet Mennonites were entangled with National Socialism and its legacy. The essay explores the roots of Unruh’s pro-German Mennonite orientation, documents his growing pro-Nazism in the 1930s, and his explicit promotion of its racial goals. A fresh reading of these materials offers a more complete accounting of the tumultuous events of the twentieth century in which Unruh played a role, and identifies related themes in the larger Russian Mennonite community which embraced his leadership.