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

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 ...

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 ...

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...

"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...

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. ...

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...

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 )...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog