Journal of European Baptist Studies, 2007

atstvo. Obshchiny, v kotorykh imeyutsya predstaviteli bratstva. [German- Mennonite Brotherhood. Churches With Representatives of the Brotherhood] Manuscript. Papers of Emil Baumbach, in possession of his son Alexander Baumbach, Fulda, Germany. 51 M.P. Fadin, Doklad po istorii tserkvi. [Report on Church History] Manuscript. Archive of the Karaganda ECB Church. 52 List of church members for 1946. Archive of the Karaganda Evangelical Christians-Baptist Church (electronic copy). 53 Svedeniya o kolichestve obshchin evangel’skikh khristian-baptistov i chlenov obshchin. [Information On Number of Congregations of Evangelical Christians-Baptists And Congregation Membership ] Letter of the AUCECB to the Council for Affairs of Religious Cults N° 2126 from 30/X 1958. Archive of AUCECB, file 2, document 8 (electronic copy), p. 2. 54 List of church members for 1946. 55 Memoirs of P. Bergmann. Phonogram, collection of M. Bergmann, Bielefeld, Germany; K. Fast, Orenburg, die letzte mennonitische Ansiedlung in Osteuropa (Winnipeg: Das bunte Fenster, 1995), pp. 64-6. Rebirth in the Valley of Shadow 47 his seventeen-year-old brother Johann Koop. 56 With the end of the war in 1945, the barbed wire around the barracks was removed, and some young Germans found their way to the Russian ECB Church. Peter Bergmann became their spiritual father. In this way, a relatively large number of young Germans became involved in a revival in a church environment. The revival among young Germans in Karaganda peaked in 1949, as Reinhold Mantai remembers. He was bom in 1929, lost his father in the early 1930s and, in 1941 was deported with his mother to Central Kazakhstan. He had only two years of primary school education. As a fourteen-year-old, he was ordered to work in the Karaganda coalmines. In 1948, a Lutheran pastor began regular gatherings in private houses in Mantai’s neighbourhood. The people were hungry, and the living rooms were full. Ignorant of religion up to this point, Mantai received baptism and confirmation from this pastor. In 1949 he discovered a small Russian Baptist church in his city where he experienced a conversion and received believer’s baptism. Mantai, together with Valentin Kemling and Johannes Schwarz started their own evening gatherings. Several times during the week, the houses were full. Conversions occurred often - up to five in one evening. Similar gatherings occurred simultaneously in several parts of the city. The converted people joined either the Baptist or the Lutheran Church. In this way, Karaganda became the largest crystallisation point of the revival. 58 The number of Germans in Karaganda continually increased due to repatriates who, in 1943, were taken by the Nazis from the Ukraine to Germany and sent to Central Asia by the Communists in 1945. These people experienced a revival in occupied Ukraine and practiced their faith in German. After the war, family reunions were made possible, a