A former Canadian mayor has returned from a visit to Ukraine with a story that has captured the hearts of Mennonites and Ukrainians alike.

Chris Goertzen is the former mayor of Steinbach, Man. It's a city in eastern Manitoba with a rich Mennonite history. While Goertzen was visiting the Mennonite village of Halbstadt, he ran into Alvin Suderman of Winnipeg, who works with the Mennonite Centre there.

Suderman told him about a troubling historical find.

"This was in the village of Chortiza. They were demolishing a building (that) was built in the 1930s and when they came to the foundation, they realized the whole foundation, for many layers down, was made of tombstones," Suderman says. "They brought in an expert from their local museum who identified them as Mennonite tombstones. You could see the Mennonite names engraved on them."

Suderman says in the Soviet era, it was common to desecrate cemeteries.

"It was standard practice during Soviet times to try and obliterate all signs of the previous inhabitants in the area. Local residents, at the time, were encouraged to destroy all evidence, especially of all the cemeteries where the tombstones were. There are very few cemeteries that have been left untouched. But what is special to us is that local people are now recognizing what happened back then and the local Ukrainian population is making an effort to restore this."

He says Ukrainian people in the area are committed to recovering the approximately 200 gravestones and setting up a historical display. Suderman adds, in many cases, the headstones are from the forefathers of Mennonites in Canada.

"The stones are being removed and all the names are going to be compiled. A lot of the stones are broken, but they will identify as much as they can and there will be something published in one of the Mennonite newsletters so people can see whether tombstones of their ancestors have been recovered here in Ukraine."

Suderman says the gravestones also reveal some unique things about Mennonite burial customs in the Soviet Union.

"The Mennonites had a very elaborate tombstone. And, there is one that thing that is a give away that marks a Mennonite tombstone. That's if it has the sign of an anchor engraved on it. The anchor was symbolic of the Mennonite faith being anchored in Christ. Every Mennonite tombstone had that anchor on it."

For now, Suderman says all of the recovered gravestones are being moved to a safe location, while the local community determines how to put them on display. He says there are various ideas such as making them part of a museum.

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