Mennonite Weekly Review

One contemplates in awe the story of Peter J. Dyck, his life with Christ, a journey of peace and compassion through the most violent century in human history. (Dyck died Jan. 4 at the age of 95.)

A frightened and confused young refugee asks Peter Dyck for help.

Peter was born in 1914 in a village in the Am Trakt settlement of Czarist Russia, land on the upper reaches of the Volga River that flows down to the Caspian Sea. His was a devout Mennonite family — nine children — that endured war, revolution, civil war, famine, epidemic and flight as refugees.

Six-year-old Peter almost died of typhoid and famine, but he survived, benefiting from gifts of food from Mennonites in Canada and the United States. Etched into Peter’s being was an awareness that to be a disciple of Christ means ministering to others who hunger, suffer and live in fear.

The Mennonite Central Committee story and Peter merge again in 1941 when Peter was a 26-year-old lay pastor in Ontario. Out of the blue came a telegram from family friend C.F. Klassen, who invited Peter to serve with MCC in England, then at war. After modest hesitation he responded, “Yes.” And so began Peter’s journey of almost 70 years in the ministries of MCC.

Embedded in Peter’s being were essential characteristics of MCC identity: operating frugally, living in hope and expectancy, empowering youth as leaders, leadership as servanthood, serving in the name of Christ.

The Akron, Pa., headquarters Peter encountered in 1941 was one of lean frugality: the Main House, two telephones, staff furnishing their own typewriters, Peter sent off to New York to find his own ship passage to England. After a month, he found an ex-whaling ship, the Hektoria, and then the 28-day trip in convoy to Liverpool.

In an England threatened by invasion, Peter joined a small MCC team and was expected to find his job — in time, a mobile canteen serving in air raids, projects with the Quakers, a home at Taxal Edge for war-scarred boys. As a Civilian Public Service man based at Akron, I vividly remember reading the flow of upbeat reports from this resourceful young Peter Dyck.

Add to it romance. At Taxal Edge arrived a young nurse from Manitoba, Elfrieda Klassen. A friendship merged into romance. With V-1 rockets flying overhead and air-raid sirens sounding, Elfrieda responded “yes” to Peter’s request to be his bride. Barriers were breached as a General Conference Mennonite boy married a Mennonite Brethren girl.

In 1945 with the surrender of Germany, Peter and Elfrieda entered the Netherlands to launch under 30-year old Peter’s direction a carefully designed program that brought food and clothing to one in 10 of the 10 million Dutch citizens — a people who had suffered four years of Nazi occupation. Reports of the Dutch program were electrifying to Mennonites on the home front.

Another MCC theme writ large in the Peter Dyck story was the way MCC entrusted and empowered youth in leadership. In August 1945 at Maastricht at the south tip of Holland, 33 refugees stumbled across the border and said that they, after 400 years, had “come home.” Peter and Pastor Hylkema visited them and confirmed that they were Mennonite brothers and sisters fleeing Soviet Russia. Peter immediately contacted authorities in The Hague to gain assurance of Dutch protection for this forlorn group. In one of the most ambitious actions in MCC history, Peter immediately printed in three languages 5,000 copies of a Menno Pass pledging to verified Mennonite refugees a safe border crossing, care in Holland and emigration overseas. Just like that, Peter had made a multimillion-dollar commitment for MCC. Before the border was closed, 450 refugees crossed to freedom.