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).

Comments

1923 Mennonite immigrants "kept behind": Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp

An important part of the larger 1923 immigration story includes the chapter of the hundreds who were held back at Riga and Southampton and taken to the Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp for medical care. “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a ( Volksbewegung ) movement of people in such critical times,” Benjamin H. Unruh wrote some years later ( note 1 ). Just as the first group of Russländer Mennonites set foot in Canada 100 years ago this month, the North American relief effort in the USSR was also winding down (August 1923). The famine relief work in 1921 and 1922 had found broad support in the North American Mennonite community. However excitement about a larger immigration of Russian Mennonites to North America was muted, and a new call to action could not forge the same level of cooperation across Mennonite groups. The plan required huge money guarantees. In USSR B.B. Janz h...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 4 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accurate and carefully considered. ~ANF Preparing for your next AGM: Mennonite Congregations and Deportations Many U.S. Mennonite pastors voted for Donald Trump, whose signature promise was an immediate start to “the largest deportation operation in American history.” Confirmed this week, President Trump will declare a national emergency and deploy military assets to carry this out. The timing is ideal; in January many Mennonite congregations have their Annual General Meeting (AGM) with opportunity to review and update the bylaws of their constitution. Need help? We have related examples from our tradition, which I offer as a template, together with a few red flags. First, your congregational by-laws. It is unlikely you have undocumented immigrants in your congregation, but you should flag this. Model: Gustav Reimer, a deacon and notary public from the ...

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...

Flemish Anabaptists and Witch Hunts

Political leaders have long used the term "witch hunt"--and there is an historical connection to Mennonites. Anabaptists and so-called “witches” were arrested and tried for related reasons in the Low Countries in the 1500s: namely, as a means to divert God’s wrath. The late-Medievals feared that heresy—in this case ana-baptism and the challenge to other sacraments—invited the wrath of God, and was an instrument for the devil’s own hellish apocalyptic assault. The assumption: the devil's tactics to destroy Christendom included the use of both heretics and sorcerers. Gary Waite writes convincingly that both were seen as “polluting” the community and thus both had to be "excised." "This fear of pollution, or scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a smal...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog