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 ...

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...

1920s: Those who left and those who stayed behind

The picture below is my grandmother's family in 1928. Some could leave but most stayed behind. In 1928 a small group of some 511 Soviet Mennonites were unexpectedly approved for emigration ( note 1 ). None of the circa 21,000 Mennonites who emigrated from Russia in the 1920s “simply” left. And for everyone who left, at least three more hoped to leave but couldn’t. It is a complex story. Canada only wanted a certain type—young healthy farmers—and not all were transparent about their skills and intentions The Soviet Union wanted to rid itself of a specifically-defined “excess,” and Mennonite leadership knew how to leverage that Estate owners, and Selbstschutz /White Army militia were the first to be helped to leave, because they were deemed as most threatened community members; What role did money play? Thousands paid cash for their tickets; Who made the final decision on group lists, and for which regions? This was not transparent. Exit visa applications were also regularly reje...

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

Flemish Anabaptists and Witch Hunts

Political leaders have long used the term "witch hunt"--and there is an historical connection to Mennonites. Anabaptists and so-called “witches” were arrested and tried for related reasons in the Low Countries in the 1500s: namely, as a means to divert God’s wrath. The late-Medievals feared that heresy—in this case ana-baptism and the challenge to other sacraments—invited the wrath of God, and was an instrument for the devil’s own hellish apocalyptic assault. The assumption: the devil's tactics to destroy Christendom included the use of both heretics and sorcerers. Gary Waite writes convincingly that both were seen as “polluting” the community and thus both had to be "excised." "This fear of pollution, or scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a smal...

1923 Mennonite immigrants "kept behind": Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp

An important part of the larger 1923 immigration story includes the chapter of the hundreds who were held back at Riga and Southampton and taken to the Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp for medical care. “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a ( Volksbewegung ) movement of people in such critical times,” Benjamin H. Unruh wrote some years later ( note 1 ). Just as the first group of Russländer Mennonites set foot in Canada 100 years ago this month, the North American relief effort in the USSR was also winding down (August 1923). The famine relief work in 1921 and 1922 had found broad support in the North American Mennonite community. However excitement about a larger immigration of Russian Mennonites to North America was muted, and a new call to action could not forge the same level of cooperation across Mennonite groups. The plan required huge money guarantees. In USSR B.B. Janz h...

School Reports, 1890s

Mennonite memoirs typically paint a golden picture of schools in the so-called “golden era” of Mennonite life in Russia. The official “Reports on Molotschna Schools: 1895/96 and 1897/98,” however, give us a more lackluster and realistic picture ( note 1 ). What do we learn from these reports? Many schools had minor infractions—the furniture did not correspond to requirements, there were insufficient book cabinets, or the desks and benches were too old and in need of repair. The Mennonite schoolhouses in Halbstadt and Rudnerweide—once recognized as leading and exceptional—together with schools in Friedensruh, Fürstenwerder, Franzthal, and Blumstein were deemed to be “in an unsatisfactory state.” In other cases a new roof and new steps were needed, or the rooms too were too small, too dark, too cramped, or with moist walls. More seriously in some villages—Waldheim, Schönsee, Fabrikerwiese, and even Gnadenfeld, well-known for its educational past—inspectors recorded that pupils “do not ...

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 ...

More Royal News! Mennonites give gifts of “Oxen, Butter, Ducks, Hens & Cheese” to new King (1772)

What do Mennonites offer a new king? The ritual ceremonies of homage to a new European king—as we see on TV these days--are ancient. Exactly 250 years yesterday, Frederick the Great became king over Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta where most of our ancestors lived. Here is how that played out. On May 31, 1772, Heinrich Donner was elected elder of the Orlofferfelde Mennonite Church, 25 km north of Marienburg Castle in Polish-Prussia; thankfully he kept a diary ( note 1 ). Only a few months later the weak Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and was partitioned by powerful, land-hungry neighbours: Austria, Prussia and Catherine the Great’s empire. In the preceding decades Mennonites had lived with significant autonomy, felt secure under the Polish crown and could appeal to the king for protection . Now some 2,638 Mennonite families were under Prussian rule. Frederick II took possession of his new lands on September 13, and then invited four persons of nobility plus clergy from ...

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...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog