Women’s meetings in Molotschna

The Women’s meetings in Molotschna are the June 6–7, 2009, gatherings in which women reason together about whether to do nothing, stay and fight, or leave the colony. Their deliberations answer an urgent threat: the women have little time to organize a response, and Peters has said that if they refuse to forgive the accused men, they will have to leave. Recorded by August Epp, the meetings become both a debate over survival and a record of women asserting authority over choices that shape their lives and their children’s futures.

Record, Setting, and Urgency

The meetings are held in Molotschna Colony and documented as minutes by August, who says Ona Friesen asked him to record the gatherings. He has been appointed minute-taker because the women are illiterate and cannot make the written record themselves. His account is therefore not a transparent transcript: the women speak Plautdietsch, and August must translate their speech into English before writing it down. The minutes preserve their deliberation while also revealing the dependence of that written record on a male intermediary.

The deadline is set by the colony’s immediate circumstances. The men accused of the attacks have been taken to the city after the community’s initial attempts to contain them, and Peters and the elders have called in the police, ostensibly for the men’s safety. The remaining men have gone to the city to post bail, hoping the accused can return to Molotschna while they await trial. Peters has made forgiveness the condition for the women’s continued place in the colony: refusal means expulsion into an outside world they know nothing about. The women have only two days to organize their response.

The women collectively authorize two families, the Friesens and the Loewens, to debate the merits of the options and decide how the chosen course should be implemented. The Do Nothing option is excluded from that deliberation, though some women in the colony had voted for it and will not attend the meetings. That exclusion does not erase the disagreement: Salome Friesen had argued that allowing a vote for doing nothing could itself be empowering, while Mejal Loewen cautioned that Salome could not unilaterally define the options or reality. The arrangement gives the debate a practical focus while making visible the tensions within the group.

The Debate Over Leaving

Leaving is argued not as indifference to the colony but as a way to protect its people without answering violence with violence. Agata Friesen reasons that staying would put the women on a course toward conflict, whether they became perpetrators or targets. In her account, remaining would risk turning Molotschna into a battlefield and contradicting the Mennonite commitment to pacifism. Mejal accepts the force of this argument. Later, Agata adds that forgiveness offered under pressure would not be genuine; leaving, she argues, gives the women a better chance of living by pacifism, love, and forgiveness, and of teaching those values to their children.

The debate also challenges who gets to interpret the faith invoked to demand women’s submission. Salome points out that the women cannot read the Bible and have been told by their husbands what it requires. Their apparent obligation to submit therefore rests on an interpretation they have not been able to verify for themselves. The meetings make religious commitment a field of argument rather than a rule monopolized by male authority: the women consider what their faith requires by reasoning from their own circumstances and responsibilities.

Salome gives the choice a stark emphasis when she stands holding Miep and says that there are no cons to leaving. August imagines her walking away across the fields and beyond the border without turning back. His account marks this as an imagined departure, but the meeting’s later preparations make leaving more than a debating position: the women agree to travel after dark, when passing the Chortiza and Hiakjeke colonies, so they will not be seen.

Children, Care, and Unequal Risks

The meetings repeatedly test the proposed decision against the different needs of children and families. Ona Friesen is pregnant and keeps an empty feed pail beside her because of nausea. After her pregnancy became known, some women hurriedly tried to arrange her marriage to Julius Penner. Ona refused, saying he deserved better than a woman marked by Narfa and that marrying her would taint him with sin. The elders regard her as beyond redemption and incapable of reasoning because of Narfa; August observes the irony in that judgment. They also plan for her unborn child to be raised by another colony family. These circumstances place Ona’s bodily future, social standing, and child among the stakes of the women’s discussion of safety and departure.

Salome and Mejal, despite often being at odds, come together in a moment of crisis. Salome is distressed at the prospect of leaving Aaron behind for the time being, and Agata supports her by presenting the separation as a reason to build a better colony for everyone. Mejal crosses the table to embrace Salome. The discussion then turns to boys: fifteen-year-olds are already in the city with the men because fifteen is the age of baptism and full membership, while boys twelve and under may accompany the women. Salome asks why boys aged thirteen and fourteen should be left with the men, especially if the accused return and the girls and women are gone.

August answers that boys of those ages can pose a risk, but are also children capable of being taught. He describes their immaturity and potential for harm alongside tenderness and empathy, and argues for direction, firm love, and patience. His response helps shift the question from whether these boys should simply be feared to whether they can be educated into different roles. The discussion links the women’s immediate protection to their responsibility for what the next generation learns.

Agata frames that responsibility as both maternal and deliberative. When Ona calls the decision to influence their sons revolutionary, Agata says it is instinctive: the women are their mothers, and the boys are their children. She describes maternal care, intellect, and faith as working together in the choice. The proposal is not that every boy will leave; Agata says those who refuse may remain in the colony under the care of the Do Nothing women and their fathers. The plan consequently recognizes different choices even as it exposes the costs of staying.

Decision and Departure Preparations

As the discussions move toward action, the women agree to leave after dark and consider how to pass neighboring colonies without being seen. Their preparation has a material dimension. August reports that the safe is under the back seat of Greta Loewen’s buggy, while onions, soap, and pieces of wood have been packed for food, washing, traction in mud, or kindling. A map is wrapped around a block of cheese and covered in brown paper; dynamite, the map, and other provisions are also placed in the buggy. These details show the effort required to turn a decision into a journey through unfamiliar territory.

The gathering’s final preparations do not resolve every family’s future. The children are reported clean, fed, and ready, with extra clothing and linen in barrels and boots and hats packed. But Cornelius will not be joining the women: his mother belongs to the Do Nothing group, and he has no choice but to stay with her. Autje Loewen and Neitje Friesen react with distress, while Agata suggests that he and his mother might change their minds and join them elsewhere. Mariche Loewen counters that this will not be possible once the men return and women are no longer allowed to leave.

The meetings thus produce a collective course of action without making departure simple or complete. Their significance lies in the way the women turn a threatened choice between coerced forgiveness and expulsion into a considered decision shaped by faith, safety, care, and disagreement. The minutes preserve not only the decision to leave but the reasoning and practical labor behind it—and the limits on who can go.