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

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 ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

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...

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval . The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog