1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786208403321

Autore

Werner Hans <1952->

Titolo

The constructed Mennonite : history, memory, and the Second World War / / Hans Werner

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Manitoba, Canada : , : University of Manitoba Press, , 2013

©2013

ISBN

0-88755-436-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (214 pages)

Disciplina

289.7092

Soggetti

Autobiographical memory

Ex-prisoners of war - Manitoba

Mennonites - Manitoba

Mennonites - Russia (Federation) - Siberia

Storytellers - Manitoba

World War, 1939-1945

World War, 1939-1945 - Influence

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Part 1 Siberia. 1 Beginnings ; 2 Difficult Years ; 3 Ivan, Stalin's Hope ; 4 The Mist Clears __ Part 2 War. 5 War Stories ; 6 Johann: Becoming a German ; 7 The Fog of War ; 8 The 401 ; 9 The Collapse -- Part 3 Becoming Normal. 10 New Beginnings ; 11 Margarethe (Sara) Vogt (Letkeman) ; 12 The Immigrants ; 13 Memories, Stories, and History -- Appendix: Family Trees -- Glossary Notes.

Sommario/riassunto

John Werner was a storyteller. A Mennonite immigrant in southern Manitoba, he captivated his audiences with tales of adventure and perseverance. With every telling he constructed and reconstructed the memories of his life. John Werner was a survivor. Born in the Soviet Union just after the Bolshevik Revolution, he was named Hans and grew up in a German-speaking Mennonite community in Siberia. As a young man in Stalinist Russia, he became Ivan and fought as a Red Army soldier in the Second World War. Captured by Germans, he was resettled in occupied Poland where he became Johann, was naturalized and drafted into Hitler's German army where he served until captured



and placed in an American POW camp. He was eventually released and then immigrated to Canada where he became John. The Constructed Mennonite is a unique account of a life shaped by Stalinism, Nazism, migration, famine, and war. It investigates the tenuous spaces where individual experiences inform and become public history; it studies the ways in which memory shapes identity, and reveals how context and audience shape autobiographical narratives.