Rein Willink’s Relief Expedition to Molochna. Dutch doopsgezinden, Mennonite 'citizens of Dutch lineage' and Bolsheviks in Ukraine between 1920 and 1938. The communities of the Ukrainian Mennonites in Molochna had been ravaged during the First World War, the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. At the beginning of 1921, the Dutch doopsgezinden set up the General Committee for Foreign Emergency (ACBN). The ACBN collected more than two hundred thousand guilders to spend on a famine relief expedition, reconstruction aid and support for emigrants. In 1922, the Winterswijk patrician son Rein Willink led the expedition to Molochna, where he distributed 1600 tons of relief goods, mostly food parcels. As a result, the Mennonites suffered fewer deaths from starvation than their neighbors and their communities were able to get back on their feet relatively quickly. The Dutch doopsgezinden also supported Mennonites who fled from the Soviet Union since 1923. In 1924 they founded the Hollands Doopsgezind Emigranten Bureau (HDEB), which until 1930 supported about a thousand Mennonite emigrants who were on their way to the New World. When after 1930 emigration from the Soviet Union was no longer possible, the HDEB collected a hundred thousand guilders and sent food parcels to persecuted Mennonites in forced labor camps and victims of the 1932-1934 famine in Ukraine. From the beginning, Benjamin Unruh was the indispensable link between the doopsgezinden and the Mennonites. Having his residence in Karlsruhe, Germany, he came increasingly under the influence of the ideas of the Nazis. When he refused to distance himself from the Reichspogrom in 1938, the doopsgezinden ceased the cooperation with Unruh and their relations with the Ukrainian Mennonites ended. The Dutch doopsgezinden intended to contribute to the reconstruction by obtaining Molochna as an agricultural concession. In 1923 Willink managed to organize an investment fund with a capital of 75,000 dollars. Willink operated a small concession in Molochna without much ...