The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 (note 1).

During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages.

A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination.

In 2017 I interviewed Peter Harder, and he told me the most fascinating story about his Uncle Boris—who was Jewish.

Immediately prior to German occupation, Chortitza had 402 Jews. On May 29, 1942 there were none, according to the detailed village reports by “Commando Dr. Stumpp” (note 2; pic). The report was signed by the Mennonite village Mayor Klassen and by Gerhard Fast, a Mennonite leader (and minister) charged with data gathering and report writing, with: “Heil dem Führer!”

Peter’s aunt Aganetha Krahn (b. 1914) was married to a Jewish man in the neighbouring village of Rosenthal, Boris (Bernhard) Tinkelstein. “Onkel Boris” operated a store with candy, as Peter recalled fondly.

Peter remembered clearly as a 16-year-old seeing a truck loaded with local Jews leave Chortitza and then return empty. This was shortly after the start of the occupation. Tinkelstein however had fled east before occupation, while his young daughter and wife remained behind—assuming they would be safe.

A few weeks later the daughter (Peter’s cousin) was identified as half-Jewish by some neighbours. The girl and mother were required to go to an administrative centre in Zaporizhzhia (across the Dnieper River from Chortitza) where the daughter was "examined" behind doors. Peter’s cousin was not returned. In hindsight his aunt of course wished they had fled east together as a family (note 3).

The nearby town of Einlage had 633 Jews prior to occupation (Stumpp’s unit counted carefully; note 4). Einlage was founded by Mennonites, but since 1928 it was full of engineers etc. for the construction of the Dnjeprostroy Hydro Dam on the Dnieper River.

A member of my extended Bräul clan—Johann A. Bräul, was an engineer on the dam—had married and had children with two Jewish women (note 5).

These children of mixed marriages were not spared. Jacob Braun recalls:

"Not long after [occupation], we heard of a Mennonite woman in a neighbouring town who had married a Jewish man. Since he was Jewish, he had fled east, leaving his wife and small child behind. When the Germans found out this child had a Jewish father, they took him from his mother and poisoned him. … About this time, we heard that German soldiers had shot and killed ten Jewish men just outside our village. I was working with a number of women in the field who decided to go and see these corpses after work. I went with them and witnessed a pile of dead and decaying bodies. Some men were stripping these corpses of any valuable items" (note 6).

It is estimated that a half-million Jews were murdered in Nazi-occupied Ukraine alone. In Einlage like in Chortitza, there were "no Jews" eleven months after the start of German occupation.

The large Ukrainian and Russian population in those two villages was also cut in half. This is dark side of the Stumpp Reports.

Dozens of widows like Mrs. Krahn/Tinkelstein, a few of the men charged to create the Stumpp reports (Gerhard Fast's family), and dozens of the young boys conscripted into the German army--were among the members of the Canadian Mennonite congregation of my youth.

The documentary evidence available today supports this "old man's story".

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See Gerhard, Das Ende von Chortitza (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1973). For Gerhard Fast's reflections after the war, cf. “The Mennonites under Stalin and Hitler,” Mennonite Life 2, no. 2 (April 1947) 18–21; 44, 2, no. 2 (April 1947), 18–21; 44. https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1947apr.pdf.

Note 2/pics: “Familienverzeichnis des Dorfes Chortitza (mit Rosental)” in “Chortitza Village Report Commando Dr. Stumpp.” Prepared for the German Reichsministerfor the Occupied Eastern Territories, 1942. In Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BArch R6_GSK, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709, via State Electronic Archive of Ukraine. Pages 1, 46, 63, 97 (map); https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/gallery.php?tt=R_6_622+Gebiet%3A+Zwischen%0D%0ARayon%3A+Chortizza%0D%0AKreisgebiet%3A+Saporoshje%0D%0AGenerelbezirk%3A+Dnjepropertrowsk+Dorf%3A+Chortitza%0D%0Arussisch+%E2%80%93+Chortitza+&p=R_6_622%5C%D1%821_01-188%0D%0A#lg=1&slide=66.

Note 3: Interview with author November 7, 2017, St. Catharines, ON. More generally, see my 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). See also the other chapters in this volume.

Note 4: “Einlage Village Report Commando Dr. Stumpp,” https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/gallery.php?tt=R_6_622+Gebiet%3A+Zwischen%0D%0ARayon%3A+Chortizza%0D%0AKreisgebiet%3A+Saporoshje%0D%0AGenerelbezirk%3A+Dnjepropertrowsk+Dorf%3A+Einlage%0D%0Arussisch+%E2%80%93+Kitschkas+&p=R_6_622%5C%D1%823_842-975%0D%0A#lg=1&slide=1. For more on Stumpp, cf. Eric J. Schmaltz and Samuel D. Zinner, “The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine and Its North American Legacy,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 14, no. 1 (Spring 2000), 28-64, https://www.academia.edu/21430355/The_Nazi_Ethnographic_Research_of_Georg_Leibbrandt_and_Karl_Stumpp_in_Ukraine_and_Its_North_American_Legacy.

Note 5: John Dyck, compiler, Braeul Genealogy (1670–1983) (Springstein, MB: Self-published, 1983), 31; the first marriage ended in divorce.

Note 6: Jacob Braun, The Long Road to Freedom (Winnipeg, MB: Word Alive, 2011), 66f. Cf. also Harry Loewen, Road to Freedom: Mennonites Escape the Land of Suffering (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2000), 61f.

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