Volendam: A Refuge Story

VOLENDAM: A REFUGEE STORY is a feature documentary examining the story of a group of two thousand Mennonite refugees living in the rubble of post World War Two Germany, desperate to escape to a new life and a new home as the brutal Soviet dictator Stalin demanded all “his people” back. These Mennonites were trapped within the borders of Soviet and Allied Germany and, if shipped back east, could face death or life in Siberian prison camps. Instead a two-year saga would unfold that would involve a four star American general, a Soviet Commissar, the Queen of the Netherlands and dozens of American and Canadian Mennonite aid workers who would attempt to get the refugees off the continent. Their only hope in the end would lie with a complicated plan of delicate diplomacy and pray, along with an old passenger ship on the coast waiting to take the Mennonite refugees out of Stalin’s reach and straight on to freedom.