Mennonite German Soldiers from Paraguay

In January 2020 I received information from the German Federal Archives on the fate of my father's oldest brother, Jakob Fast, 1918-1944 -- a WW2 German soldier and Mennonite from Paraguay.

Jakob was among the first group of young men from Friesland, Paraguay who "returned" to Germany in May 1939. Their families had all arrived in Paraguay in 1930 via Germany and Moscow from the Soviet countryside. These young men were promised an apprenticeship in Germany with the hope their families might be able to follow.

Only a few months later the war started. There would be no return to Paraguay for 11 of the 28 Friesländer, including my uncle. The three little file cards from his record indicate that Jakob Fast, Jr. was first conscripted in Oldenburg in April 1942. Some of the 28 young men from Friesland had volunteered earlier. Fast's unit reached the Dnieper River in south Ukraine according to a letter an aunt received--the area their grandparents left in the 1890s in search for land (they were pioneers of the Neu Samara Settlement, where this uncle too was born in 1918).

Sometime after February 24, 1943, communication with family ceased. The materials received indicate he was still with his troop as late as September 1944. There is no record of his death, nor a record that he may have been taken to the USSR as a prisoner of war. While that is not improbable, he likely died before war’s end at about age 26. Jakob had been a "Kradmelder" or motorcycle dispatcher, typically tasked to relay information between the battalion and the command post. It was a dangerous role because opposing forces were always keen to break down communication.

How could this come about?

The Nazi German support and propaganda in Paraguay had been very effective before Jakob left for Europe. In 1938 the German External Affairs envoy H.C. Büsing was very pleased with the Nazi-friendly attitude in the colonies of Fernheim and in the new colony of Friesland, which my grandparents and their family helped establish. Here is a part of Büsing’s report:

“The inhabitants of the Mennonite settlement Friesland—established September 1937—… are undoubtedly closer to Germany than the two aforementioned settlements. … They know very well that this biological inheritance (Erbgut) alone—their love and capacity for work that is in their blood, their sense of order and discipline—will guarantee them economic success.

As a summary of the facts in this report, the following can be said: the Mennonites are of the most valuable German blood. … Their Nordic blood-- they probably originally stem mostly from Frisians and Lower Saxony-- which gave them unprecedented willpower, tenacity and perseverance on the journey of life, in the same way also made them stubbornly thickheaded (starke Dickköpfigkeit). … They are not intellectually untalented, however ... they are still a long way from the ideas of National Socialism and the Third Reich, however ... in all of the colonies apart from Menno, a love for things German and enthusiasm for the Third Reich is on display. … However, one senses an unmistakable caution when they happily confess their allegiance to the Third Reich. At the moment they only have Germany from whom they can expect help and support, and they are not foolish enough to forfeit that. It goes without saying, however, that you cannot leave such valuable German racial material unattended. Just as the young Mennonites in Asuncion are beginning to sense a strong feeling for today's Germany growing within them, it will not take long for this feeling to gradually assert itself in the younger generation in the settlements as well, aside from Menno for the time being. I have had the impression that the many presentations that I have made everywhere, have stimulated new thoughts, and that some of them have wished to free themselves from their intimate community and to grow into the greater German Volk-community. I have already mentioned that Colony Friesland has already come a long way on this path. Among the majority of other settlements, especially in Menno but probably in Fernheim as well, the older generation will hardly be open for anything new. --Büsing.” (Note 1)

There were also a few young women from the colony who returned to Germany in 1939. Justina Epp Goering recalled how arrangements were made by a former student of Unruh’s, Heinrich “Hayo” Schröder.

"Mr. Hayo Schröder, who arranged through the Reichsnährstand (Reich Food Production Agency) to bring us young people to Germany, also visited me at the farm. His smart SA uniform (Storm Detachment [paramiitary]) and slick speeches made me uncomfortable, especially at the first Christmas party [1939]. We were all homesick, and he let us be informed by a stylish Mennonite from Canada (Hayo Schroeder had also recruited young men from Canada and California, USA) that it was a solstice festival. Franz P. [Pankratz] stood up and said, 'For us it is the birth of Jesus and we're not changing that!' So the celebration ended without singing or music. Everyone received a copy of Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf." (Note 2)

Schröder was not a theologian, but argued that the deep religiosity of Mennonites was characteristic of “Frisians” generally, that in turn awakens concern for “blood purity” which alone can ensure the health, vitality and survival of clan and race (note 3). Schroeder was from a wealthy Molotschna family and he fled to Germany after the Russian revolution and became a teacher and fanatical Nazi. He published many columns on genealogy and on German “Frisians” in Canadian Mennonite publications throughout the 1930s. The Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Volkswarte afforded Schröder space for extensive explanations of Aryanism and its supporting pseudo-scientific racial theory—e.g., that racial/genetic purity is critical for the development of a people; that foreign blood is poison for a people; that the Nordic race is the determinant race for the German people; that "Frisians" are the most ancient Aryan branch; that God has given every race a mission in the place that they have dwelt for centuries; the importance of a politics of race and a racial state; the yearning for a Menno-state, praise of Hitler, and all of this peppered with explicit anti-Semitic statements (Note 4).

Schröder’s amplification of Nazi theory and its adaptation for Mennonites was encouraged in some Canadian circles, tolerated by his former teacher Benjamin Unruh in Germany, and for those struggling in Paraguay an acceptable quasi-scientific and historical consistent with other sources from Germany. His pitch to attract young Mennonites in Paraguay to return to Germany was compelling but hollow, fanatical and ultimately deadly, as was the case for young Jakob Fast, Jr.

–Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: H. C. Büsing, Excerpt from Report on Paraguayan Mennonite Colonies, June 20, 1938; Akten des Auslandsamt (Germany), Fernheim Archive, Paraguay, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_416/fernheim_archives/SKMBT_C35108043009400_0002. jpg; other pages: https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_416/fernheim_archives/.

Note 2: Justina Epp Goering, Eine Familiengeschichte und eigene Erlebnisse (Nanaimo, B.C.: Self published, 2001), 50. Dietrich Rempel, ";Studienfahrt' nach Deutschland," in Auf den Spuren der Väter: Eine Jubiläumsschrift der Kolonie Friesland in Ostparaguay, 1937-1987, ed. Gerhard Ratzlaff (Asuncion: Cromos, 1987), 167-169. Pics: memorial and Studienreise group pic pp. 170, 171.

Note 3: Heinrich Schröder, Ruβlanddeutsche Friesen (Döllstädt-Langensalza, 1936) 31, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1936,%20Schroeder,%20Russlanddetusche%20Friesen/. For background, see Gerhard Rempel, “Heinrich Hajo Schroeder: The Allure of Race and Space in Hitler’s Empire,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 29 (2011) 227–254, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/1416/1406; also John D. Thiesen, Mennonite and Nazi? Attitudes among Mennonite Colonists in Latin America, 1933-1945 (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 1999), https://mla.bethelks.edu/temp/nazi%20book%20thiesen/.

Note 4: See Heinrich Schröder, “Was heißt völkisch?,” Mennonitische Volkswarte 2, no. 8 (August 1936), 252-256, https://chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk379.pdf; no. 9 (September 1936) 279-282, https://chortitza.org/pdf/vpetk380.pdf.

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