German Christmas with Moscow Refugees, 1929

In the last century, tens of thousands of Mennonites were homeless, stateless refugees at the mercy and generosity of others. In Fall 1929, as many as 10 to 13,000 Soviet Mennonites left all behind to flee to Moscow in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to escape the USSR.

The German government played the crucial role in a high stakes, international confrontation with Stalin in those months. They successfully extracted 3,885 Mennonite, 1,260 Lutheran, 468 Catholic, 51 Baptist and 7 Adventist "German farmers" in November and December 1929, and served as a transit nation and assisted refugees not accepted by Canada to settle in South America.

The experience of Christmas 1929 was a stark contrast to Christmas (1928), which had been a nightmare for Mennonites:

“The conditions which existed in Russia at that time had the effect of practically destroying all the traditional joys of Christmas for our children,” for whom “all public participation in the celebration of Christmas was strictly forbidden.” The “usual Christmas Eve celebration with the children had to be eliminated.” Christmas celebrations “were not directly forbidden if held within the family circle in private,” yet special candles and Christmas trees “to brighten the home,” could not be bought. Instead, “we took decorative shrubs with home-made candles of tallow … [and] in this way we managed to enjoy Christmas within the close family circle.” (Note 1)

In October and November 1929, these refugees had spent cold weeks in largely unheated cottages outside of Moscow, hoping they might make it to Canadian relatives by Christmas.

Fewer than half were permitted to leave however, but by mid-December some 3,200 persons were safe and well-housed in Germany at the Hammerstein refugee camp, and another 1,350 persons were at the Mölln camp. Canada was wavering, but that did not diminish the joy of those who had escaped.

One couple wrote a letter on December 12 to the Rundschau: “Germany has taken us in and provides us with food, clothing and gives us a warm room with beds, mattresses, pillows and blankets. Oh, Germany does so much for us. They met us with love. It is impossible to describe. ... They are happy that they can have us here for Christmas. Oh, we have it so good here” (note 2).

A large Christmas celebration was planned later in the Christmas week:

“We passed the Christmas holidays in quiet meditation without either candlelight or outward glitter. However, preparations were made for a big performance to take place on [December 30, 1929], which would include a celebration of Christmas. For this purpose a large hall with an altar and pulpit was used. It could seat three thousand people. All along the hall the sponsors of this festival had arranged ten rows of tables with benches. On every table they had placed twenty little Christmas trees, which were equally distant from each other, so that the appearance was one row of trees wherever one looked. In front of the altar and the pulpit stood two huge decorated Christmas trees, lit with electric light bulbs. Everyone had a number, which corresponded to numbers on the filled plates on the tables. Everything was arranged according to the camp houses in which people lived, so that everyone present could easily find his place at any particular table.

The Christmas program included, first, an address by a Catholic priest, which was chiefly directed against the Red Terror of the existing Communist regime in Russia. This was followed by a Christmas message delivered by a Lutheran pastor. The final speech was given by a Mennonite refugee preacher. Various choirs, taking their turns, added to the Christmas spirit by rendering a number of Christmas songs, while the entire refugee assembly sang several appropriate choral hymns. It was truly a typical German Christmas celebration, which everyone enjoyed with grateful hearts.” (Note 3)

This is how the German press covered the event (see pic; note 4):

“Christmas with the German Russians in Mölln”

"A hall of the non-commissioned officers' preparatory school near the Mölln camp was decorated for a Christmas party gathering, including high trimmed fir (Tannen) trees, gift tables, long benches, and a podium with a lectern. The Russian refugees celebrate their Christmas here on New Year's Eve and have taken their places. On the one side the men and on the other women, and then also the children. Only the little ones are with their mothers. It is a unique people from a foreign country. Most of the faces are marked with a Slavic type, though they are not purely Slavic. And this is no wonder. One and a half centuries of Russia have had an impact. The clothing is old-fashioned, but scrupulously clean.

The boys’ hair is cut very close, and the little girls’ hair is also closely cropped and short (Bubenkopf). Older girls and women wear their hair long, parted in the middle and combed over the temples. Shawls, long skirts, sometimes colourful, flowery blouses. Older men wore frockcoats. Earnest faces, silence even among the children. Only now and then one of the very small ones coughs or screams in the mother's arms.

The greatest thing is the choir. This is how I hear it: these basses, the full basses, in which the soul of the vast Russian steppe lives, of Mother Volga and the endless forests, of the lonely fur hunters, coal burners and tar boilers. But from alto and soprano the bells of the onion domes ring and sound like contractions in birch crowns, and from the harmony then the indescribable longing of Tchaikovsky's preludes emerge.

These German Russians are all Mennonites. Deep religiousness lives in their songs. Men, women and girls from Turkestan, Crimea and Caucasus gathered here and sing as if they had been singing together since childhood. It is the religious factor, the common faith that enables this. Inexpressible devotion is on their faces, and unmistakably an expression of strong internalization emerges. The singing is utterly haunting, like when a serious question is asked. There is much more to it than the undisputed beauty of the tone, the novelty of the strange sound and the knowledge of the rarity of such a performance.

Six, seven children step up to the podium. Sometimes boys and girls together. They recite poems with separate roles. Sometimes they illustrate the content of the poems. For example, a girl mends a garment. As she speaks, she bites off the sewing thread. Can one call such a thing art, although it is completely natural? Perhaps precisely because of that. But to the little ones, of course, it is only a representation and should be nothing more than that.

Then there is the children's choir, which sings Christmas carols. Some of the lyrics are a little different from ours. Among these children are some who are not yet a metre tall, but who already sing along with all the verses. You smile, but they continue to sing unperturbed. The dialect of the men's and women's choirs is much purer, while the littler are sometimes hard to understand. It resembles a very, very flat East Prussian.

The Mennonites choose their preachers from among themselves. They are all lay ministers. The final word was spoken by one who had also been in Russia, but had returned earlier and had now found his brothers again here in the camp [B. H. Unruh]. He spoke on the Apostle Paul's word, "I want to forget!" --So he said, "Forget what you once possessed, what you once hoped and planned. Forget also what evil men did to you. You must forget, forget! So that you become free for the present and the future. If you cannot forget, you are lost!"-in this way he implored his brethren. From his words spoke an irrepressible persuasiveness that gripped even the bystanders. The lights at the lectern had almost burned down. On the whitewashed wall fell the shadow of the man who knew the plight of his brethren and cried out to them again and again, as if out of inner distress: "You must forget!”

The distribution of the Christmas gifts began and then the hall emptied. We became acquainted with a people that had put peace on its ‘banner of faith’ and experienced peacelessness on this account. In order to endure the immediate misery of their existence, this people must with closed eyes attempt to struggle through the distress of their souls."

Another newspaper wrote: "These farmers wander on this earth with their heart, while we [in the German Reich] live from our intellect. If you imagine yourself fully into their situation, you cannot shake the impression that these so-called 'primitive' people really live, while we just function. Why did they leave their homes and farms behind? For the sake of faith alone" (note 5).

-- Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Henry J. Willms, ed., At the Gates of Moscow. God’s gracious aid through a most difficult and trying period. Committee of Mennonite Refugees from the Soviet Union, translated by George G. Thielman (Yarrow, BC: Columbia, 1964), 27, https://archive.org/details/at-the-gates-of-moscow-ocr/.

Note 2: Letter , Heinrich and Maria Pettker, Dec. 12, 1929, Mennonitische Rundschau 53, no. 3, (January 15, 1930), 13, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1930-01-15_53_3/page/n12/mode/1up.

Note 3: Willms, ed., At the Gates of Moscow, 107f.; cf. also p. 118. See other posts on the flight to and escape from Moscow (coming soon). Benjamin H. Unruh played a pivotal role in this refugee and resettlement story; see: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Benjamin Unruh, Nazism, and MCC,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022),157-205, esp.164-171, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/bitstream/handle/20.500.12730/1571/Neufeldt-Fast_Arnold_2022a.pdf. For a copy of a lengthy poem recited by a German nurse at the Christmas program, see Mennonitische Rundschau 55, no. 51 (December 21, 1932), 7, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1932-12-21_55_51/page/6/mode/2up?q=prenzlau.

Note 4 (and pic): “Weihnachten bei den Deutschrussen in Mölln,” Hamburger Anzeiger, January 2, 1930. Reprinted in the Mennonitische Rundschau 53, no. 52 (December 31, 1930), 16, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1930-12-31_53_52/page/n15/mode/2up?q=m%C3%B6lln.

Note 5: Cited in the Rundschau (above, note 4).

Photo outside Hammerstein Camp, 1929: https://audiovis.nac.gov.pl/obraz/1151/.

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