Wagler Wisdom

We recently ran across an article online by Peter Hoover .. ‘Radical Anabaptists part one”, a fairly lengthy 6 part writing about the Life and times and Spiritual quests of  Harry Wanner .

Over the last 50 years or so there have been  a shadowy  group of seeking Anabaptist , that constantly were on the move .Mostly from Amish backgrounds .Often moving perhaps from Pa. to Ky. ,to Tennessee , to Belize and then perhaps Michigan . And then start the moving all over again.Lobelville Tennessee is sort of a center for them  . All in the long quest to find someone to be ”enech” , or unified with . The so called unity hardly ever lasted more then a week or a month . At one time in Belize there were 7  factions among 11 households there, among that set of believers .

No modern conveniences allowed , certainly not cars and often no motors at all allowed , continuously seeking that elusive peace ,and or. perfection. Women in these settings are often treated like dirt or as things to own and use, not as people. Each man as a little private dictator, is the way to be ,seemingly.Weird.

Peter Hoover’s background is from this rather eccentric group setting, Although he has embraced modern media technology , and is a good writer . He  lives in Australia at a place called ”Rocky cape” , in an Anabaptist Commune .If that setting is in a dictatorial role , we do not know.

We enjoy his writings , though one notices that he admires Hutterites and their culture , and is somewhat affiliated with a Hutterrite  group in the USA Midwest. That he admires these wandering Stars , that spent perhaps all their lives searching and searching for someone to ”unify” with ,  raises several questions .

Harry Wanner is the subject of his 6 part article , with a lot of names of other such minded seekers too.  Nicolas Stoltzfus,brothers Harold and Victor Stoll, Albert Stoll , Joe J Millers, and many others of like goals if not minds are mentioned.Seeking and moving , the ever elusive “unity ” being just out of reach , seems the norm here.

Harry Wanner had 22 children , married twice . We never met him ,though we have met most of the others mentioned. Knowing some of the Background history  and information on him and those he was around , gives one pause.

Much of that thinking is basically selfish . ”My interpretation , and application of scripture is ground zero , for everything”. Treating those whose views are not exactly as one’s own like trash seems to be part of it ,too. Re-baptizing oneself or one another seemed rather the norm, from time to time .

On the subject of Hutterites , it is our observation that about all the attributes of a cult are found in the way they operate now. We used to visit a Group of them that later went totally to nothing as a group , in Bright, Ont. Called ‘Community farm of the Brethren”, founded in 1940 , they did well until their leader , an avowed dictator , died in the early 1960′s .He once made one of his defeated Rivals live in a Pig-pen there on the colony.(Peter Hoover lists this Leader in his Cloud of Witnesses section, as an inspiration) .

They were all such nice folks , and they all worked very hard like Amish  do, from about age 14 on up. (Note .We desire first hand historical information on this ,on or off record),

Several Factions developed among the Bright, Ont . colony, to where they lived separately on the same compound , but were not on speaking terms. One faction even marched around the other every evening, singing and praying , somewhat like Joshua and the Israelites marching around Jericho.

Sometime in the  1980′s , the young people of  there rose , and said “Enough is enough ”. They ended up selling everything and splitting the money , it was a well to do crowd .They all assimilated into neighboring Churches and communities very well. Maybe some Hutterites get along better then that ,at least on the surface .

Jan 17-12

The  small  town of Stutthof  Poland (West Prussia), was mostly known as a fertile farming region until 1939 . It was also the largest German speaking Mennonite conclave in the World up to that time .It was from here that they had spread into Russia well over a century before. By 1935 the colonies in Russia had all been dissipated by Stalin’s purges ,while  the Polish Mennonite colonies were in their zenith.

Names like Loewen, Peters ,Shraader , Riemer , Wiebe , Klassen,Wall, and Fehr proliferated in the region in the 1930′s . Not Polish names at all , but Mennonite ones.

In 1939 the Nazi Regime  in Germany  was looking around the newly overrun area to establish a ”Resettlement” camp.  They chose Stutthof , in a rural secluded setting, on the edge of this oldest of Mennonite settings . The Mennonites mostly were opposed to it , but were promised lots of jobs , building it .

Today, The somewhat little-known Stutthof Extermination Camp site , is a memorial , to the at least 70 thousand peoples exterminated there that were registered ,and  perhaps that many more that were not registered , but died there , many in the most brutal fashion imaginable . Until recently , the Memorial was not even written up in English . The gas chamber and the crematorium are still displayed there .

Only in the past 20+ years has the story evolved , from records lost in the ”cold war” . The meticulously kept German records are still there , in microfilm now , all the expenses paid out to local people , and all.

Mennonite contractors built almost all the buildings there ,with the supplied slave labor , Mennonite sawmills supplied much of the Lumber , And as the War continued to drain the German manpower pool , Several   dozens of  Mennonite Men , and a few Mennonite women appear to have joined the SS, as ethnic Germans, to be guards in the Stutthof region concentration camps. Some of them were as brutal as they come , and in the SS corps that was quite bad .

Stutthof is also known as a   Nazi concentration camp where some bodies were rendered to make ”Pure Jewish soap” in neatly packaged and labled bars.(This is controversial among historians)

Local farmers , including Mennonites , hired squads of  inmates to help with the harvests , paying the SS for that .  Most , though not all Mennonites were kind to them , giving them food , and not working them too harshly. (As in making them work 12 hours a day , instead of just 8 hours).

Jews were the main target of the Camp Interments , also Gypsies ,captured English servicemen , and about anyone with a physical handicap. It is hard to imagine that kind of brutality taking place , especially that normally peaceful Mennonites sometimes joined in it .

When the Red Army liberated Stutthof Concentration camp in Jan. 1945 , it was the last one to be liberated . They found it almost empty , except for a hundred or so poor souls who had hid when the camp was evacuated by the SS. The last 4000 internees had been marched to the nearby sea , 2 miles away ,the week before , into the water, and all machine-gunned to death . There are allegations today that the local population helped herd this last ”March into the water”.

The Red Army had a rather unique method to deal with any SS solders they found in these situations anywhere close to the concentration camps  . They were always executed on the spot . If anyone was found in the vicinity with any German Army connection , they were executed too . so it would not have been a good idea to even wear military shoes or overcoats , even if they were salvaged . They did immediately  hang a number of guards they caught there in the vicinity , including several women SS guards.

The free Polish came in and conducted 3 sets of trials among which there were a number of local Mennonite men that had been involved as guards at that particular camp. One Fritz Peters , a Mennonite man , was tried and duly hung . The rest of the Mennonites on trail at that time got prison sentences , mostly in the 5 year range for their war crimes against humanity .It is believed that between 25-30 stood trial .

The MCC (Mennonite Central Committee)  sent Plattdeutsch speaking representatives into that area to help displaced Mennonites the next year . They were able to help a number of them immigrate to Canada and to the USA , through their Menno-pass program , which sometimes bypassed regular channels .

In The Mid 1990′s Some of the World’s Nazi-hunting Organisations approached the MCC about accountability on who all they gave Menno-passes to in the late 1940′s . It is unfortunate that it appears that several War-Crime monsters posing as peaceful displaced Mennonites escaped through their perhaps inadvertent  help .

They were especially irked that MCC had helped a Jacob Riemer , born 1918,to escape Europe with a Menno-pass . For 45 years he proclaimed his total and complete innocence , while living in New York  State . In the early 90′s , after The Russians released all the records , enough evidence was found  for the US government to strip him of US citizenship and to deport him back to Russia . In 2005 he had exhausted all his appeals , and was days away from being deported , when he died a natural death in the USA.

The very worst example of the ”Mennonite turns into a monster war criminal ” in the Stutthof  area ,was of a rather meek  natured farmer Named Heinrich Wiens.  Born in 1906 , he signed up to be a member of the SS in the mid 30′s  . In his application to join up with the special program to join the SS Guards , He noted that he was a ”Lover of God”.A rather risky thing to put down , one would think.

Perhaps he had a few reservations about the whole thing . Within a short while all reservations must have been swept away . Perhaps Wiens discovered he just loved brutalising and murdering helpless peoples. Over the next several years he graduated from being a guard to joining a mobile killing squad , the kind where a buses’ exhaust killed the occupants . He was promoted up the ranks until he commanded his own personal  killing squad . He was directly responsible for many , many thousands of murders ,in the area and to the East .

He faded away and disappeared sometime in late 1944 , and was never heard of again ,anywhere . Not even by his family. The Russians and Americans kept a close look-out for him for several decades . It was not believed he had that much money that he could have escaped that way , he was more interested in killing helpless people then in money.

The conclusion most investigators have come to ,over the years ,is that he probably died in some muddy ditch in 1945  , rolled over by a Russian tank perhaps , and left to rot like the animal he had become . No one knows . Being born in 1906 , surely he has met his maker now.

Most Mennonite men, in Poland and Russia that joined the SS were never brought to justice , in this life. They were not military men , but almost always  solely recruited to kill ”undesirables”.  This is not the story that has been put forward by most writers since then , that seek to show the peaceful, blameless side of the Russian and  Polish Mennonites during the war.

to be continued…

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1.On new Year’s Night , Just go to Bed and get some sleep , it is a long year ahead . Staying up late will just tire one out the next day , the first day of the year ….

2.Our Country will survive , (unless the Lord returns) , and there is no use to worry about that . ….

3.A fair percentage of all Tradesmen are scamsters , and always have been . That is why it is so important to build a working relationship with your Plumber, carpenter , car repair shop etc.

We recently heard of a Roto-rooter man who wanted $1400 to unplug a sewer . A painter who asked 22K to paint a house ..Somehow ,they never get ahead , even with an occasional sucker.

4. This is for the men.Never ever Climb into a septic Tank , or into a sewer manhole , for any reason . A lot of the poison but odorless gases stay down , and can kill you in seconds.

5.The louder a preacher shouts , usually the less he has to offer.

A New exhaustive study published recently online,”Preachers who are not believers ” by Daniel Dennett & Linda LaScola, shows there  may be more  unbelievers behind pulpits , then are before it ,and that  is rather sobering . None of their studied preachers mentioned were Anabaptist , but we think the thing would apply there too..

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