Free from Bondage
After Forty Years In Bruderhof Communities
On Three Continents
by Nadine Moonje Pleil
Volume II of the
"Women From Utopia" Series, Gertrude Enders Huntington,
Series Editor
Introduction by John A. Hostetler
Published 1994 with a four-color glossy cover,
perfect bound with 370 pages including 50 pages of
photos.
The author was born in London, and as an eight-
year-old girl handed over to the Bruderhof by an
unsympathetic stepfather. In 1941 she traveled to
Paraguay where she was informally adopted by a
childless Bruderhof couple in Primavera, the new
community in the backwoods. The Elders aborted her
teenage romance, and after she recovered, told her to
seek baptism. After baptism she fell in love with and
married Augusto Pleil. Their idyllic South American
communal life came to an abrupt end with the power
takeover by the 'American brothers' under Heini Arnold.
All the South American communities were closed, many
members exiled, and the survivors sent to the European
bruderhofs. These in turn were closed by the American
brothers, and the survivors brought to the U.S.
communities. The Pleils found themselves increasingly
scapegoated as "bad parents," and by the late 1970s had
lost their oldest son and one daughter to the 'outside
world.' Afraid to leave but increasingly persecuted by the
hierarchy, the moment they most feared finally arrived
-- to be sent away from the community. Placed in a
rundown house in a small Pennsylvania town and told to
go on Welfare, Nadine, Augusto and their seven younger
children began their lives over. To their growing delight
and amazement, they experienced more love, fellowship
and acceptance in the 'devilish' outside world than they
ever experienced inside the community.
"A heroic labor of love." -- John A. Hostetler, author of Amish Society
List price: $17 ISBN Number: 1-
882260 07-4
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