Mennonite Weekly Review

WINNIPEG, Man. — Otto Klassen, a Russian born Mennonite and self-taught film producer, has more than 50 films to his credit in his 35-plus years as a film producer.

Filmmaker Otto Klassen has preserved the stories of the Russian Mennonite people.

His goal has been to preserve the stories of the Russian Mennonite people.

Klassen’s films cover the Russian Mennonite story in Prussia, Russia, Canada, Mexico and Paraguay. His most well-known film is the two-part Great Trek, documenting the flight of Mennonites out of Russia to Germany during the Second World War.

Klassen lived through the devastating Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, the horror of war in Europe and survived the hardships of pioneer life in Paraguay. He witnessed the Soviet propaganda films of the 1930s and the German military creating documentaries during the Second World War. At an early age, he understood the power of story told through motion pictures.

After arriving in Canada he worked as a bricklayer but continued watching, observing and analyzing motion pictures and their structures. Today he uses digital technology in his storytelling endeavors.

Six of Klassen’s films on Russian Mennonite history are being offered through the “Text to Terabyte” project.

• Remembering Our Mennonite Heritage traces the origins of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement and the migration of the persecuted Anabaptist believers to Polish-Prussia in the 16th century. Two hundred fifty years later, more than half of these Prussian Mennonites responded to an invitation of the Russian czars to settle in southern Russia (in what is now Ukraine) from 1789 to 1836 and in central Russia from 1853 to 1870. Here, Mennonites established prosperous agricultural villages with their own administrative and educational systems, their own hospitals, welfare and insurance programs. The “golden years” of this Mennonite commonwealth came to an end with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. This 2007 production is a 45-minute DVD.

• Prairie Pioneers: The Mennonites of Manitoba (1874-1974) is Klassen’s first full-length film, produced in 1974. The film recreates various aspects of pioneer life, such as the building of sod huts (zemlin) and the arrival of Russian-Mennonite settlers at the junction of the Red River and Rat River in 1874. It also includes footage of Manitoba centennial celebrations of 1970 in various Manitoba Mennonite communities, including the first visit of members of the British royal family — Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip and Prince Charles — to a Mennonite village in Canada and the visit of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to Steinbach. This 1974 production, remastered in 2007, is a 43-minute DVD.

• Remembering Russia, 1914-1927: War and the End of Mennonite Tranquility begins in an era when the Mennonites of southern Russia, present-day Ukraine, had become affluent. Their lives were largely undisturbed by national or international events. That all changed with the beginning of World War I in 1914. Political, social and economic events in Russia had eroded the authority of the czarist regime in the years leading up to Russia’s entry into the war. Dissatisfaction with the regime and Russia’s military performance in the war eventually led to the 1917 Russian revolution. A bloody civil war followed, churning through the country and ending the Mennonites’ way of life. Farms, enterprises and churches were expropriated, and families died at the hands of marauding anarchists. As their world crumbled around them, thousands of Mennonites fled to Canada. This 2006 production is a 43-minute DVD.

• Remembering Russia, 1928-1938: Collectivization and Mass Arrest documents the spiritual battles and sufferings of Mennonites in Soviet Russia from the introduction of the first Soviet five-year plan in October 1928 to the end of “the great terror” in 1938. Soviet plans for the collectivization of agriculture, the elimination of so-called kulaks (landowners) and the closing of all churches struck a hard blow to the traditional Mennonite way of life. Thousands fled to Moscow in a desperate attempt to leave the Soviet Union. Others risked crossing the Amur River into China.

Some 6,000 Mennonites were able to leave the Soviet Union. Of those who remained, many were exiled to the forests and mines of Northern Russia, Siberia and Kolyma, where they provided slave labor. Life in the collective farms was a constant struggle. Hundreds died during the terrible famine of 1933. Thousands of men and even some women were rounded up by the secret police and exiled to labor camps or shot. This 2007 production is a 52-minute DVD.

• The Great Trek: Part 1 (1939-1943) uses rare archival photographs and film footage from the German Bundesarchiv to document the effects of the Soviet-German Non-aggression Pact, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and the subsequent two-year occupation of Ukraine, including the Mennonite villages of Chortitza and Molotschna. This 1992 production, remastered in 2007, is a 35-minute DVD.

• The Great Trek: Part 2 (1943-1945) uses rare archival photographs and film footage from the German Bundesarchiv to document the westward retreat of more than 350,000 Soviet-Germans and Mennonites in the fall of 1943, their resettlement in German-occupied Polish territory, and their eventual flight from advancing Red Army forces in the early months of 1945. This 1992 production, remastered in 2007, is a 39-minute DVD.