Salome

Salome Friesen’s role in the women’s deliberations is defined by a practical question: how can a departure protect people who would otherwise be left exposed? A mother of Miep and Aaron, she argues for including boys who fall between the group’s existing age limits, challenges male authority over biblical interpretation, and ultimately acts to keep the women’s departure from being reported. Her care is not abstract; it is bound to particular children, family separations, and the risks of leaving Molotschna.

Identity and responsibilities

Salome is a mother whose plans for departure carry the pain of leaving Aaron behind, at least for the time being. Agata puts an arm around her shoulders and consoles her with the hope that the grieving mothers can build a better colony. Mejal, often at odds with Salome, crosses the plywood table to embrace her; in a crisis, their disagreements give way to solidarity. The scene makes the cost of leaving visible without reducing the decision to private grief: Salome’s loss is shared by other mothers, and the imagined future is a community they might rebuild together.

Salome’s responsibilities also include Miep. When the women are coming down from the loft, August Epp offers to help carry Miep down the ladder, but Salome refuses. He uses the brief moment alone with her to disclose that the key to Molotschna co-op is in Isaac Loewen’s tack room, above a blue salt block, and asks forgiveness for having lied. Salome frowns; the exchange records the information and the unresolved tension between them, not a reconciliation.

Advocacy for the boys

Salome presses the women to reconsider the boundary that would allow boys twelve and younger to leave with them while leaving thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds with the men. Fifteen-year-old boys are already in the city with the men, she notes, because fifteen marks baptism and full church membership. She asks why boys in the intermediate ages should be excluded, and raises the possibility that accused assailants released on bail could return to Molotschna and target them. Her argument extends the women’s protective responsibility beyond girls and women to boys whose age places them in a vulnerable gap.

Mejal backs the question, asking why the group should fear boys of that age. August Epp answers that adolescents can cause harm but are still children, capable of being taught with direction, patience, and love. His response holds risk and possibility together: Salome’s concern is not dismissed, but neither are the boys treated as beyond guidance. The discussion places protection alongside education, and makes the question of who may leave inseparable from who will remain responsible for the children.

The limits of the departure are also apparent in the case of Cornelius, who will stay because his mother has chosen the Do Nothing camp. The young people value his humor and creativity, and Agata leaves open the possibility that he and his mother might join them elsewhere. Mariche rejects that hope, saying the women will not be allowed to leave once the men return. For Salome, the unresolved question of the boys therefore belongs to a larger and urgent conflict over whether families can choose their own course.

Challenging male authority

Salome argues that leaving does not necessarily mean disobeying men according to the Bible. The women cannot read the text for themselves, she points out, and their belief that wives must submit comes from what their husbands have told them the Bible requires. Her challenge is directed at the authority to interpret: a rule presented as divine command may instead be a claim made by men who control access to scripture.

To test that claim, she asks Mejal to consider a husband invoking the Bible to justify violence against his wife and children, and requiring his wife to enforce his orders. The example exposes the danger of treating a husband’s interpretation as unquestionable. Salome’s position does not depend on claiming that the women already know what the Bible says; it begins with their exclusion from reading it and questions why that exclusion should bind their decisions.

Preventing the warning and beginning the departure

As the departure approaches, Salome acts to prevent the Koop brothers from going to the city and informing on the women. She arranges for Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen to draw them to the loft and make enough noise for her to enter without being noticed. She uses Belladonna anesthetic spray to render the brothers unconscious, explaining that they will then be unable to alert the men. The plan relies on coordination: Salome directs the action, while the younger women create the distraction.

Before this, Salome has taken her time when called from below and refused August Epp’s offer to carry Miep. Later, after setting the plan in motion, she sends Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen to the buggies behind the schoolhouse. Her action turns the discussion of departure into an immediate fact: the warning has been prevented, and the women are leaving. The evidence closes on that movement rather than on a settled future for the whole group; Salome’s decisive contribution is to make this moment of departure possible.