Death of refugee children as political football, 1929-30 Germany

By January 2, 1930, over 50 mostly Mennonite children under the age of four had died very suddenly from a measles-like condition in the camps. These children and their families had fled to Moscow in the fall of 1929 and were then rescued to Germany before moving on to Canada, Paraguay or Brazil.

The German government had appointed the Social Democrat politician Stücklen as Commissioner for German-Russian Aid to oversee all aspects of the emigration.

The German Communist Party paper Rote Fahne did not waste the opportunity to politicize the epidemic and lampoon Stücklen and all involved. The paper published a grizzly political cartoon depicting the “mass death of the Kulak-children at the Hammerstein camp” with the comment from Stücklen that these deaths are "still better than in the hell of Russia." The paper depicted the Commissar as a smiling “fat-cat” capitalist politician beside the children’s caskets who was happy to use even the worst events to smear the USSR.

Many families like my own had children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews suddenly take sick and perish at one of the camps. My great-uncle Isbrand Janzen (#473153) recorded the following at Prenzlau:

January 2, Elvera (age 2; daughter) admitted to hospital; Prenzlau
January 3, Gredel (Margaretha; age 3½; daughter) admitted to hospital; Prenzlau
January 7, Mika Janzen (relative?) buried.
January 7, Willy (age 10 months; son) half-day in hospital.
January 9, Elvera released from hospital
January 12, Willy admitted to hospital
January 15, Willy died; 1 AM
January 17, Willy buried in Prenzlau
January 24, Gredel released from hospital

The notes reflect how suddenly illness and death came knocking and hint at just how devastating the epidemic was for the family. Our family was from Spat, Crimea (note 1; pic 1).

Almost without exception, affected children were under the age of four. It was not simply measles as first thought, but a “peculiar febrile (fever) disease,” which in most cases leads to death within a few hours. It is caused “by a rarely occurring bacillus, streptococcus,” which had occurred in Germany only once before, in Berlin in 1922, according to the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. “The severe complications caused by the fever manifest themselves in inflammation of the cornea, inflammation of the skin of the cheeks, the mucous membrane of the lips, and in many cases also severe pneumonia” (note 2).

Stücklen “immediately had additional hospital barracks erected in Hammerstein and called in an additional number of physicians. ... The camp is strictly guarded. It is forbidden to enter the camp, and the refugees in the individual barracks are not allowed to visit each other, lest the disease be spread. Currently, 3200 persons are accommodated in Hammerstein.” (Note 3).

Some of the children—but not all—were very weak and poorly nourished when they arrived in Germany, and had particularly low resistance. The newswire carried the following paragraph, which was reprinted widely:

“The refugees recognize that everything that can be done for them is being done from the German side. However, it has happened in a number of cases that mothers have hidden sick children because they did not want to part with them. The very religious Mennonites, in keeping with the customs of their former homeland, try to pray the children to health. When searching for sick children in the camp, many mothers used every imaginable trick to hide their children from the examining physicians. Exits were guarded and a thorough search of the barracks was carried out. ... In the Prenzlau refugee camp, a number of children have also fallen ill with measles. ... The health of children in the Mölln (Holstein) refugee camp is good.” (Note 4)

What the families did not know was that the death of these children was also being used as a type of political football.

The Rote Fahne of sought, of course, to use the epidemic to reveal a larger scandal, in their eyes:

“In fact, the cause of the rapid spread of the disease after several weeks of stay in Germany is only to be found in the unsanitary conditions [of barracks] and the backwardness of the kulaks based on their religion motives. The bourgeois press itself has to admit that the kulaks perceived the disease ‘as God’s providence,’ and that at the beginning of the epidemic the mothers resisted medical treatment. …

The ‘8 O’Clock Evening News’ on January 3 let the cat out of the bag: its inflammatory article was directed against the Soviet Union with the headline: ‘The death of children in the refugee camp - still better than in the hell of Russia.’

Truly, the six million Reichsmarks that were squeezed out of the German proletarians [for the emigrants] have been well invested for the bourgeoisie: even the self-incurred mass death of children is brilliantly exploited for their anti-Soviet agitation [and agenda].” (Note 5)

The Rote Fahne followed the lead of Moscow and viewed the entire rescue drama of formerly wealthy Soviet German farmers—kulaks—as deviously orchestrated to embarrass the USSR on the world stage. Not surprisingly, the Soviet paper PRAVDA headline on January 3 read: “Infection among Mennonite Emigrants: Capitalist ‘Paradise’ Disappoints.”

Like the Rote Fahne, PRAVDA referred to the German refugee barracks as “concentration camps” (of course pre-WW2) adding that “many families are already openly discussing their wishes to return to the USSR” (January 3, 1930). Two days later the PRAVDA headline read: “Kulak-Mennonites in their Bourgeois ‘Fatherland’: Anti-Soviet Emigration Campaign fails Miserably” (note 6).

The “emigration campaign” was led by kulaks and preachers, according to PRAVDA, and their tricks have ended in catastrophe.

This brutal blame-game also had a context. The Vossische Zeitung, one of Berlin’s oldest newspapers and sometimes regarded as the nation’s “newspaper of record,” is telling. It represented the broad liberal middle-class between the rising parties on the left and the right in 1930—the Communists and the Nazis.

On January 2, 1930, page 3 (pic) offers a great example of the political temperature in the country. The VZ page included a report a) on the epidemic at the Hammerstein camp; b) on street brawls between the Nazis and communists (Nazis fatally stab someone); and c) on a break-in at a government employment agency, in which confidential files were stolen by communist agitators for the purposes of “party propaganda” in order to stir labour unrest and dissatisfaction among the unemployed (note 7).

In fact, in the VZ from mid-November 1929 to mid-January 1930, almost every other issue reports on demonstrations, clashes, shootings, arson, riots, stabbings and street fights between the two radical parties. The Mennonite refugees would surely have had access to some newspapers, and would have known this, if not seen it first-hand. In one of the items, Hitler argued that his paramilitary thugs were necessary because—in his view—police and state were failing to protect the German people from “organized Marxist terror.” The flight of "German farmers" in Russia to Moscow and Germany, their strong anti-Soviet testimony, played perfectly into his hand.

In the midst of all of this, children were dying in an epidemic—and their deaths were being used for political purposes. A letter of thanks written by the newly arrived refugees and published in newspapers across Germany a month earlier reveals some convictions already formed:

“In Russia we were treated as enemies, here as friends, even more, as brothers. After all, German blood also flows in our veins. ... With all our hearts we implore the blessings of the Most High upon Germany and her people. May peace and prosperity be granted to the German Fatherland” (Note 8).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: I thank John Janzen (Niagara) for the notes from his father Isbrand (my grandmother’s brother).

Note 2: “Die Epidemie im Hammersteiner Flüchtlingslager,” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, Morning Berlin edition, January 3, 1930, no. 3 Beiblatt, https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/.../PLEKFIHZB....

Note 3: “Masernepidemie bei den Wolgadeutschen,” Volksfreund (Karlsruhe) 50, no. 2 (January 3, 1930), 1, https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/.../webcache/1504/3684465.

Note 4: Ibid, and others: https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/.../newspaper....

Note 5: “Massensterben der Auswandererkinder: Die Früchte der 'Brüder-in-Not' Aktion," Rote Fahne (Berlin) 13, no. 3, supplement 1 (January 4, 1930). http://ciml.250x.com/.../1930/die_rote_fahne_1930-04-01.pdf.

Note 6: PRAVDA (official newspaper of the Communist Party USSR), January 4, p. 1; January 5, p. 1; translations from the Russian by Brent Wiebe.

Note 7: Vossische Zeitung (Berlin), Thursday, January 2, 1930, p. 3, https://dfg-viewer.de/show.... For all issues of the Vossische Zeitung: https://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/.../zdb/27112366/.

Note 8: Vossische Zeitung, December 7, 1929, evening edition, p. 1, https://dfg-viewer.de/show/?set%5Bmets%5D=https://content.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/zefys/SNP27112366-19291207-1-0-0-0.xml.

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