The Poor Ones?

War washed them west from the Ukrainian lands where Catherine the Great had given their fathers refuge two centuries ago. In World War II many of their men had been forced, in spite of the Mennonites' pacifist principles, to fight for the Germans in the retreat from Russia. After victory Russia, which considered the Ukrainian Mennonites as Russian nationals, long refused them permission to leave Germany. Amazingly, as if in answer to a prayer, permission came. Last week, 2,312 of them reached Buenos Aires aboard a Dutch ship chartered by the Mennonite Central Committee (TIME, Feb. 10).

They were on their way to the Paraguayan Chaco, where Canadian and European Mennonites, in settlements now decades old, have made the swampy wilderness bear fat crops of cotton and kaffir corn. There the immigrants will have a chance to prove by the banks of the Paraguay what their co-religionists have proved by the banks of the Susquehanna, the Dnieper and Canada's Red River--that Menno Simons' followers are among the world's best farmers.

Meanwhile, crowded into green Argentine Army tents in Buenos Aires' waterfront park, they stared at the glittering skyline, at the bulging grain elevators, and the ships from half the world loading with rich Argentine produce. Patiently they bore the midsummer heat (Paraguay would be hotter), queued for food, washed themselves at one open hydrant, spoke in Plattdeutsch of husbands, sons and brothers not yet given up for lost. Sometimes at night a few gathered around an accordion to sing "Now thank we all our God, with hearts and hands and voices...."

"Who are these fine-looking people?" asked the porteno taxi driver, staring at the broad, blond faces. He was told that they were bound for Paraguay's Chaco. "Ah, the poor ones," sighed the man from the city's pavements.

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