1947 · event
The Volendam and Mennonite refugees
The Volendam carried displaced Mennonites toward refuge in South America after the Second World War, with Peter and Elfrieda Dyck helping lead the transports.
Also searchable as: Volendam
After the Second World War, displaced Mennonite families were searching for homes in which they could begin again. The Netherlands permitted Mennonite Central Committee to charter the Volendam for a transport to Buenos Aires, followed by settlement in Paraguay. The photographed timeline dates this episode to 1947.
Two further transports followed on the same ship. The account gives a total of about 4,700 people who found refuge in South America through these voyages. That total belongs to the sequence of transports, rather than being the passenger count of a single crossing. Peter and Elfrieda Dyck helped lead several of the journeys as part of their work with refugees.
The ship’s place in Mennonite history is inseparable from the work around it: relief programs, arrangements for travel, accompaniment of families, and the search for places of settlement. The Volendam story continues the earlier history of MCC’s relief and resettlement, showing the care of displaced church communities taking a practical form after another destructive war.
Sources for this history: [1]
