Path of thorns : Soviet Mennonite life under Communist and Nazi rule / Jacob A. Neufeld ; edited, with an introduction and analysis, by Harvey L. Dyck ; translated from the German by Harvey L. Dyck and Sarah Dyck.

Print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part One Five Years in the Gulag, 1933-1939. 1 Arrest and Interrogation, 1933-1934 -- 2 Marking Time, 1934 -- 3 Railway Building in the Far East, 1934-1935 -- 4 Managing a Pig Farm in the European Far North, 1936-1939 -- 5 Coming Home, 1939.

Part Two Tiefenwege : Soviet Mennonite Life and Suffering, 1929-1949. Section One: New Directions and Shattering Experiments, 1928.1939 1 Stalin's Upheaval -- 2 A Day in the Gnadenfeld Kolkhoz "Karl Marx" -- 3 The Establishment of Collective Farms -- 4 Getting Rid of the "Kulaks" -- 5 Stalin's Impact on the Mennonite Character -- Section Two: World War II, the End of Bolshevik Rule, and the German Occupation, 1941. 6 Outbreak of World War II -- 7 The Last Days of Bolshevik Rule -- 8 German Occupation and Rule, October 1941-September 1943 -- Section Three: The Great Trek, 1943-1944 (based on personal diaries). 9 By Wagon Train across the Dnieper -- 10 West to the Polish Border -- 11 Refugee Life in Western Ukraine and the Warthegau (Poznania) -- Section Four: Germany's Collapse, 1944-1945. 12 Pell-Mell by Horse and Wagon to West Germany, 1945 -- 13 The End of Hitler's Reich -- Section Five: Allied Occupation and Emigration, 1945-1949. 14 Come Look, The Tommies, 1945 -- 15 Rekindled Hopes, 1945-1949.

Under Bolshevik and Nazi rule, nearly one-third of all Soviet Mennonites - including more than half of all adult men - perished, while a large number were exiled to the east and the north by the Soviet secret police (NKVD). Others fled westward on long treks, seeking refuge in Germany during the Second World War. However, at war's end, the majority of the USSR refugees living in Germany were sent to the Soviet Gulag, where many died.Paths of Thorns is the story of Jacob Abramovich Neufeld (1895-1960), a prominent Soviet Mennonite leader and writer, as well as one of these Mennonites sent to the Gulag. Consisting of three parts - a Gulag memoir, a memoir-history, and a long letter from Neufeld to his wife - this volume mirrors the life and suffering of Neufeld's generation of Soviet Mennonites. In the words of editor and translator Harvey L. Dyck, "Neufeld's writings elevate a simple story of terror and survival into a remarkable chronicle and analysis of the cataclysm that swept away his small but significant ethno-religious community."

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