Hardship, Resistance, Collaboration: Essays on Dutch Mennonites During World War II and Its Aftermath

An engaging and critical study of Dutch Mennonites during the 1940s, Hardship, Resistance, Collaboration investigates the diverse Mennonite reactions to German occupation during and after World War II, making important recent scholarship available in English for the first time. Dramatic Mennonite attempts to help Jews, including scores of children, escape deportation and death are well documented as is the painful failure of leadership and moral clarity that valued toleration of wildly divergent individual views within the church above a united voice against racially motivated exclusion and murder. A unique final chapter describes mixed attempts to revive a Mennonite peace witness by conscientious objectors to the Dutch war on Indonesia 1945-49 when the tables were turned and it was the Dutch government that wielded power in oppressive ways. Beyond telling the story of Dutch Mennonites in their most tumultuous decade of the twentieth century, this volume provides a useful model for reclaiming both light and dark in a church's history as part of developing a path forward in reconciliation and in truth.