An Archivist at Mennonite Heritage Centre calls it a significant move that five streets in Ukraine now have Mennonite names.

Conrad Stoesz says prior to the late 1800's, the Mennonites were part of a large German population that was invited to settle in Russia and Ukraine. The Russian government of the day wanted 2016 04 stoesz(Conrad Stoesz)hard working farmers and they believed the Germans could be model farmers for the Russian and Ukrainian population.

But over time, Russian nobles and elites resented the fact Germans were given a privileged status above and beyond Russian and Ukrainian people. This grew into what was referred to as The German Problem. By about 1915, there was a liquidation law that all German property be confiscated and Stoesz says by the end of World War II, virtually all Mennonites in the southern Ukraine were gone. Stoesz says this was the result of either being killed, exiled or having fled.

Stoesz says Mennonite homes, factories, Churches and even tombstones were re-purposed. He notes the result was that not only were the people gone but so was much of the evidence of their presence. The Mennonite existence in southern Ukraine was erased from the landscape and grew dimmer each passing year, existing only in living memories.

Stoesz says after the fall of the iron curtain, a Canadian based group started a mission in Ukraine. Their mission was to help the local Ukrainians but also to commemorate and revitalize Mennonite pasts and give a voice to the Mennonite colonies that had been in Russia for so long.

Then, earlier this year, city council for Zaporozhye took the necessary steps to change a handful of street names in order to honour Mennonites. Five names were accepted, while two were rejected. Fadeev Street is now Mennonite Street, Lezhenko Street became Schoenwiese Street, Schadenko Street has been renamed Nieburs' Street, Komintern Street is now Rosenthal Street and Dybenko Street is now called Gerhard Rempel Street.

"They are wanting to diminish the Communist presence and the Communist ideals and they are doing that by renaming the streets into something else," explains Stoesz.

According to Stoesz, for the local authorities to commemorate the Mennonite presence in the area with the naming of streets is significant and speaks to the historical importance of the Mennonite experience but also the positive relationship of the Mennonite aid offered to the area.

"Naming something is to have power over something, something that's being named," says Stoesz. "And to overtly rename something is to privilege a people, an idea or an event and consciously downplay what the names stood for before."