CURRENTLY IN CULTURE: Hated for who he was

Dora Dueck

Most of us enjoy hearing what "outsiders" think of our Mennonite community, especially when we're being extolled for our many virtues. There is no flattery and very little comfort, however, in Ernest Sirluck's recollections of growing up in the Mennonite community of Winkler, Man. (as told in his autobiography, First Generation, University of Toronto Press, 1996).

On his first day of school, in 1923, Ernest found himself surrounded by Mennonite children. They informed the five-year-old that he was "a dirty Jew who had killed Christ". They illustrated this point with blows and pinches. The children stopped when the teacher appeared, but were not reprimanded.

Ernest learned a lot in those five minutes. He learned what he, as a member of a Jewish community of eight or nine families in a largely Mennonite population, would experience many times in the years ahead.

"A favourite Bible verse in Winkler," he recalls, "was Matthew 27:25, `His blood be on us, and on our children.' " He also recalls, "There was always someone willing to defend Christianity, and indeed racial purity, by hitting a smaller Jew."

The incidents were less frequent, but more violent, in high school. While the teacher sat with his head down, Ernest was choked to unconsciousness by a certain Peter Doerksen, a large fellow, after an exchange of words about Jews. He was thoroughly beaten over the same issue by Victor Unruh, son of a preacher.

Ernest fought back with his fists as best he could, and with his intellectual rebuttals. Other forms of anti-semitism were harder to combat. He was bitterly hurt to discover that an older friend, Jack Funk, whom he had liked and trusted, was president of the newly-formed local branch of the Canadian Nationalist Party, an organization with Nazi connections.

"There's nothing personal in it," Jack said to him, "and I hope we can stay friends."

Ernest replied that if Jack believed the Jews to be what the Nazis said, he couldn't be friends with him; if he didn't believe it but had joined anyways, knowing what they were doing in Germany, he was worse than they were.

"I never fully got over the pain of the betrayal," Sirluck writes more than 60 years later. "It was one of the sharpest and most hurtful lessons I ever received about how precarious the friendship of a Gentile for a Jew can be."

Sirluck's memoirs refer with affection to several Mennonites of the community, particularly Dr. C.W. Wiebe, who occasionally invited the young man along on his calls to deliver babies. The exceptions, however, scarcely balance what one senses is a great weight of pain, one experienced at both the hands of individuals and as a result of the community's belief system. Sirluck writes of "the self-hatred that endemic anti-semitism can induce".

Anti-semitism among Mennonites of the past has been well documented. It can even be, if not accepted, put into context. The facts of scholars take a different and disturbing twist, however, when confirmed by someone who so vividly remembers being hated, not for what he did, but for who he was.

It's also true that attitudes about Jews have changed within the Mennonite community since those years. Still, I wish I could, on behalf of my people, ask Ernest Sirluck's forgiveness.

Dora Dueck is a writer and a member of Jubilee Mennonite Fellowship in Winnipeg.

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