How has war affected your family?

My father, Earl Koehn, was a conscientious objector during World War II and served in several Civilian Public Service camps during a span of about four years. My grandfather on my mother’s side, David Duerksen, was drafted into the army during World War I, but he was a Christian pacifist and refused to fight. My great grandparents on both sides of my family migrated from Russia to central Kansas in 1875, when there was growing pressure for men in the Mennonite colonies in Russia to participate in the military. They were recruited as wheat farmers by the Santa Fe railroad to settle the frontier, grow wheat, and provide raw materials to be shipped by rail. These lands had recently been won in wars against the Native Americans. Several generations earlier in the 1780s, my ancestors were recruited from Holland and Poland to Russia to by Catherine the Great, to grow wheat and settle lands that she had recently won in a war with the Turks. They were promised complete religious freedom and exemption from military service for all time.

This brief sketch of family history shows that my family was affected by war by trying to stay out of it – by preserving a Mennonite understanding of Christian discipleship that did not allow the killing of enemies. They were also affected by war in that they (probably unknowingly) settled on land in Russia and the United States that had recently been won through war. Thus they were the unwitting beneficiaries of the immoral practice of war, which they deplored.