TY - BOOK ID - 78010653 TI - The constructed Mennonite PY - 2013 SN - 0887554369 9780887557415 0887557414 9780887554360 0887554385 9780887554384 1306203279 9781306203272 9780887554384 9780887554360 PB - Winnipeg, Manitoba University of Manitoba Press DB - UniCat KW - Mennonites KW - Immigrants KW - Storytellers KW - Ex-prisoners of war KW - World War, 1939-1945 KW - Autobiographical memory. KW - Memory KW - Former prisoners of war KW - Returned prisoners of war KW - Returnees KW - Prisoners of war KW - Raconteurs KW - Tellers of stories KW - Entertainers KW - Emigrants KW - Foreign-born population KW - Foreign population KW - Foreigners KW - Migrants KW - Persons KW - Aliens KW - Anabaptists KW - Baptists KW - Christian sects KW - Influence. KW - Werner, John, KW - Werner, Hans, KW - Werner, Ivan, KW - Werner, Johann, KW - Germany. KW - Manitoba. KW - Mennonite. KW - Russia. KW - Second World War. KW - WWI. KW - World War II. KW - history. KW - immigration. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78010653 AB - 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. ER -