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.

Comments

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...

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 ...

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...

Polish-Prussia? Royal Prussia? West Prussia? Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth? Notes for Clarification

The historical jurisdictions, names and political powers under which Mennonites lived since their arrival in lands that are today Poland are difficult to keep straight. However they are important for telling the story right. This post simply provides some notes for orientation with reference to the late sixteenth-century map below. Polish- or Royal Prussia comes into being with the defeat of Teutonic Knights by the Polish Crown in 1466. See the pink-shaded area of the map below. Ducal Prussia is a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Poland after 1525 (see stiped on map). In 1618, this duchy (voivodeship) is inherited by Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg, who separated it from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1657. After 1701, the Elector of Brandenburg is the “King of Prussia” when in that territory. With the First Partition of Poland in 1772, it becomes East Prussia . By 1569 Polish- or Royal Prussia was fully integrated into Kingdom of Poland and part of the larger Polish-Lithuanian...

Jews and Mennonites Together in Danzig's Suburbs

There has been very little reflection on the relationship of Jews and Mennonites in the suburb of Schottland (or Alt-Schottland or Stare Szkoty) where Mennonites first settled in the mid-1500s. Here Mennonites and Jews lived in the small community together for two centuries, quite literally on the margins outside the gates of the city of Danzig. Many historic maps that include Alt Schottland have become available in recent years ( note 1; pic ). H.G. Mannhardt’s book on the Danzig Mennonite church community plus some archival membership lists are our best sources for the Mennonite experience, while illustrations from the day bring many of those episodes of prosperity, repressions, war, plague, emigration, flooding etc. in an urban environment to life ( note 2 ). Peter J. Klassen’s writings on Mennonites in Poland and Prussia also present newer research on Mennonite life in and around Danzig in helpful ways ( note 3 ). There is one small sentence in Klassen’s larger volume that sugg...

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2 is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse...

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle...

Russian Mennonites: A People of Peace and a People of Witness

One way of explaining well who a certain group of people is, is by looking at the unique set of questions they kept on asking, generation after generation. What peculiar issues did Russian Mennonites (or earlier in Prussia) keep struggling with in each new context? What were their experiments as community? Of course the answers differed in each place and time, and the arguments were divisive. Some experiments failed. Utterly. Below are two basic sets of questions that Mennonites asked over and again in each generation in Russia/Ukraine. The questions, I would suggest, were unique to their experience; that is, the other Christian communities in their context--Lutheran, Pietist, Catholic and Orthodox--were asking different sets questions First, and perhaps least surprising, Mennonites in Russia/Ukraine kept asking / being concerned about non-resistance, about being a people who took those New Testament admonitions of peace seriously, and did not return evil for evil, seek revenge o...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog