Kristallnacht 1938, German Mennonites and Benjamin Unruh

The following is a Holocaust-related story of the South German Mennonites and Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, November 9/10, 1938.

The well-known leader Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh, the representative of Russian Mennonites in Germany, is a key figure in the German churches at this time and also in this story (note 1).

The Night of Broken Glass occurred a week before the German national and religious holiday for “Prayer and Repentance” (Buß- und Bettag). The Conference of South German Mennonites met annually on this holiday at their Bible and retreat centre Thomashof in Baden. They come closest to what we might call “evangelical” Mennonites today, with an emphasis on personal piety, small groups and Bible study.

On the night of November 9, 91 Jews were murdered across Germany. Jewish homes, stores and offices were vandalized, and 170 synagogues set aflame, including the synagogue in nearby Karlsruhe—Benjamin Unruh’s place of residence (note 2). Three days later a decree was issued barring Jews from selling goods and services of any kinds (Decree on the Elimination of the Jews from Economic Life; Verordnung zur Ausschaltung der Juden aus dem deutschen Wirtschaftsleben). The United States recalled its ambassador on November 14, and on the day before Mennonites gathered for retreat, Jewish children were barred from attending any public school in Germany.

The report on the Mennonite gathering on November 16 is important as much for what it doesn’t say as for what it does say. The conference began at 10 a.m. with Tersteegen's hymn, “God himself is with us.” Daniel Hege (Durlach) greeted those present with the words of the Psalm 46:8, "The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."

“An eventful time has passed since the last conference. We have every reason to thank God and our government for the return of Austria and the Sudetenland [today Czechia] to the Reich and averting the threat of war. But there are still more tasks ahead. Let us not be timid: God is with us” (note 3).

Repentance, let alone sadness for the events of the past week, is entirely absent in the report.

Benjamin Unruh was the keynote speaker. Unruh spoke on the essence of Christian hope according to 1 Peter 1, and the word of forgiveness which Christ speaks. Not our piety, but Christ is the foundation of our hope, Unruh emphasized. The hope of the kingdom of God, which has already broken in with Easter "drives the Christian to work and struggle" (note 4).

The silence on the events of the past week is not surprising.

The same issue of the denominational paper also reminded readers, based on 1 Peter 2, that “Israel was the holy and chosen people (Volk) to proclaim the virtues of its God ... But Israel did not fulfill its calling, did not accomplish its task. It fell away from God and sank into idolatry and pagan vices” (note 5). Rather than calling the church to extend refuge or protection for their vulnerable and disenfranchised Jewish neighbours, the Gemeindeblatt fueled anger towards Jews.

Not even a month after Kristallnacht, Unruh received a letter from a Mennonite professional which highlighted the fact that "a whole row of leading Bavarian Mennonites are members of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and some have been members for a long time” (note 6).

That snapshot wasn’t unique. In a presentation on July 4, 1938 at the infamous Nazi Party "Brown House" in Munich, Benjamin Unruh boasted that an “overwhelming majority of the elders and ministers in West Prussia and Danzig are members of the [Nazi] party” (note 7)—a conference defined by traditional Mennonite teaching and personal piety as well.

And even in the north-west, the liberal Mennonites—for whom neither doctrine nor piety were defining criteria for Christian Mennonite faith—joined the other German Mennonites in their apostacy. In that same year Krefeld Mennonite pastor Gustav Kraemer delivered and published a widely received essay in which he wrote that he feels very sorry for the suffering of individual Jews, but he also understands the need for “the hard exclusionary battle against Jewry (Judentum). … At first [the new anti-Jewish] laws appeared very brutal and unjust to me, but later I could appreciate that … in the ordering of this world, which of course is God’s order … we live as members of a community, in both good times and in bad.' And now the old Jewish law—that the children are punished for the sin of the parents “to the third and fourth generation' (Exodus 34:7)—falls upon the decent and innocent Jews as well," according Kraemer. As a people Jews have sinned against the Volk that had offered them hospitality; they always refused to take any responsibility, according to Kraemer (note 8).

From north to south Germany, and from west to east—pious, liberal and orthodox German Mennonites together with a few Russian Mennonite leaders in the mix, helped pave the path not only to Kristallnacht, but also to the Holocaust (note 9).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See my a) shorter and b) longer essays on Unruh: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Benjamin Unruh, MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] and National Socialism,” Intersections: MCC Practice and Theory Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Fall 2021) 17–27, https://mcc.org/media/resources/10441; and (longer), idem, “Benjamin Unruh, MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] and National Socialism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022): 157–205, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1571.

Note 2: On Karlsruhe and Kristallnacht, see: https://www.ka-news.de/region/karlsruhe/stadtgeschichte./80-Jahre-Reichspogromnacht-Die-Nacht-in-der-auch-in-Karlsruhe-die-Synagogen-brannten;art6066,2297020.

Note 3: “Bericht,” Gemeindeblatt 70, no. 1 (January 1, 1939), 3, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Gemeindeblatt%20der%20Mennoniten/1933-1941/DSCF7793.JPG.

Note 4: “Bericht.”

Note 5: “Der erste Petrusbrief,” Gemeindeblatt 70, no. 1 (January 1, 1939), 1, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Gemeindeblatt%20der%20Mennoniten/1933-1941/DSCF7792.JPG.

Note 6: Karl Würtz to Benjamin H. Unruh, December 7, 1938, letter, Vereinigung Collection Folder 1938, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof.

Note 7: Report, Presentation by Benjamin H. Unruh and Daniel Dettweiler at the Brown House, Munich, July 4, 1938, p. 3, Vereinigung Collection Folder 1938, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof.

Note 8: Gustav Kraemer, Wir und unsere Volksgemeinschaft 1938 (Krefeld: Consistorium der Mennonitengemeinde Krefeld, 1938), https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1938,%20Kraemer%20Wir%20und%20unsere%20Volksgemeinschaft/.

Note 9: See my published essay: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “German Mennonite Theology in the Era of National Socialism,” in European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen, 125–152 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020).

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