Last Days of Mennonite Life on the Molotschna, September 1943

The Molotschna Mennonite Colony was established in 1803; 140 years later its villages were evacuated by retreating German armies. A map of the larger German operation of 1943 and the various "Trecks" is attached. The tens of thousands of evacuees included some 35,000 Mennonites. Nazi Germany had utterly failed Ukrainians, but continued to have plans for their "ethnic Germans" in the east.

On Sept. 8, 1943, the Red Army successfully took Donetsk (Stalino), 230 km east of Molotschna. The next day, S.S. administrators gave orders that every Molotschna family should load one wagon with their possessions and prepare for an orderly evacuation.

Hitler was intent on holding Crimea, and sought to set up a defensive line from Zaporizhzhia to Melitopol and south to the Sea of Azov. Evacuation plans east of this line were in place since late June—initially to be resettled “somewhere” west of the Dnieper; on Aug. 17 first steps were taken to move 8,000 hospital beds west of the Dnieper (note 1).

The day after the fall of Donetsk on Sept 8 (note 2), work on Molotschna fields ceased as everyone prepared for evacuation. The Ethnic German Cavalry confiscated horses and wagons from neighbouring villages so that all departing families would have adequate transportation.

A-frame shelters had to be built over the rear of the wagons. Some took a cow; remaining pigs, sheep and chickens were butchered and pickled. As much baking as possible was also done; Zwieback, Mennonite buns, were toasted. Some remember how their mothers took sacks of dried cherries, apples, pears, and plums as well. Clothes and bedding were washed and packed together with small implements and kitchenware.

The villages of Marienthal (my mother's village), Schardau and Pordenau and 12 others were part of the “Gnadenfeld Support District” (Betreuungs-Bezirk). Villages were led by mayors and every group of 10 wagons had a captain. The Gnadenfeld District had ca. 2,000 wagons, which if lined up stretched 20 km. (note 3).

Sept. 12–16: Late into the night the Marienthalers travelled to Alexanderkrone—already fully occupied—and then to Kleefeld just as rains began; here evacuees slept in an old windowless school or on wagons (note 4). Katie Friesen recalls:

“Our departure that morning was heart-breaking and depressing. The rain and the accompanying dreariness reflected our own sadness about having to leave our home. It also meant that the roads that we were to travel would be soft and difficult to traverse. German troops were everywhere in our village anxiously awaiting our departure… . Their very presence emphasized the urgency to evacuate with haste as the Germans were rapidly retreating.” (Note 5)

Those who refused to leave “were threatened to be shot, and this actually happened later as well.” Long time Molotschna physician “of the poor,” Dr. Ketat of Montau, refused and “suffered a ghastly and brutal death” by the Germans (note 6).

Because of the mud, families found it necessary to cast off heavy possessions—sewing machines, sacks of flour and potatoes—within the first 48 hours.

The Marienthal and Schardau groups met with others from their district on Sept. 13 outside of Melitopol.

Sept. 14 was warm and sunny, and the unit covered 45 km; this “pleased the German authorities because they like we were eager to proceed as quickly as possible” (note 7). There was heavy rainfall the night of the 15th near Nishni-Sirogosi (Nizhniye Serogozy) everyone was wet the next morning.

On Sept. 19, the Gnadenfeld contingent reached the Dnieper at Kakhovka to cross on a narrow military pontoon bridge. This took an extraordinarily long time because thousands of wagons, troops and military vehicles used this one bridge. Advanced Soviet forces had already pierced into this region--hence the speed with which the evacuation was orchestrated. “Literally the ground was already burning under the feet of the fleeing Molotschna Mennonites” (note 8). No fires were allowed at night for fear of air-strikes. On the 20th they were instructed to travel only 24 kms to Berislaw.

At this time some learnt of the Wehrmacht decision to lay mines and destroy evacuated Molotschna villages; they were not to fall back into the hands of the Red Army or serve as cover. This was Marienthal’s fate, but in the end larger villages like Halbstadt or Gnadenfeld remained intact.

On Sept. 22 the group reached Davidow Brod (Davydiv Brid) on the Inguletz River, where 1,500 other wagons assembled close to the bank for the night.

This first stage of evacuation included a number of deaths of children and elderly. My mother’s 8-year-old sister Lenchen had a typhus-like fever at the start of the trek, and day by day her situation became critical. A doctor insisted she be taken from the wagon to a medical transport along the route to Alexanderstadt (Alexandrovka); the hospital unit of Halbstadt had already been relocated. My grandmother was instructed to stay with her other children; her single sister-in-law accompanied Lenchen.

On Sept. 25, after some 12 days “under constant pressure and filled with fear that we would again fall into the hands of the Russians,” the Gnadenfeld contingent arrived 350 kms later at their temporary destination in the villages around Vladimirovka (Volodmyrivka) on the Inguletz River.

Lenchen and Aunt Tina arrived in Alexanderstadt where Lenchen's two brothers were also stationed (Ethnic German Cavalry unit). Alexanderstadt was 40 km west of the old Mennonite settlement of Zagradowka. Tina Bräul cared for Lenchen until her death on Sept. 28, only 15 days after leaving. She was 8 years old.

On that same day the Chief of the Security Police and SD wrote to the Immigration Central Office in Litzmannstadt that SS Oberführer Hoffmeyer was currently leading some 50,000 ethnic Germans out of the Halbstadt and Mariupol areas for resettlement in other areas of the “former” USSR, and not within the old boundaries of Germany (note 9). Also on Sept. 28, Soviet troops had reached the Dnieper River at Dnepropetrovsk.

The developments with Mennonite evacuees were communicated to Benjamin H. Unruh in Karlsruhe, Germany on Sept. 29 by SS Obersturmführer Dr. Gerhard Wolfrum of the Ethnic German Liaison Office (VoMi).

"Unfortunately, as you will have read from the Wehrmacht reports, some shifts have taken place on the Eastern Front … and all ethnic Germans from this area have been taken back across the Dnieper and will be (exclusively) reassigned to the settlement area around Kronau near the Inhuletz River [tributary of Dnieper]. … Dear Professor, at this moment I am unable to assess whether a trip would be expedient. Of course, these repatriations have imposed an infinite amount of hardship on the commando and, to an even greater extent, on the ethnic Germans; what these people have to go through psychologically with the loss of their homeland cannot be underestimated. Today I will correspond by telegraph with SS-Oberführer Hoffmeyer whether your trip is desired for these very reasons, and whether it is even technically feasible at this time." (Note 10)

Unruh travelled with a stipend from the SS Ethnic Liaison Office to gather and provide pastoral and political support for the refugees. Given the fast-paced developments, Unruh’s trip was impossible.

On Oct. 14, the “Molochna River” is mentioned by the Associated Press in an article reprinted across North America and the UK. Surely some of the thousands of Russländer Mennonites in Canada noticed and were anxious about relatives.

The papers reported fighting in Melitopol (pop. 25,000): “Breaking through elaborate German defences in the South Ukraine, the Russians forged the Molochna river and swept to the very center of Melitopol where fierce street battles were reported now in progress” (note 11). The Soviets "secured possession of Melitopol after ten days of most savage house-to-house fighting within the city and bitter fighting outside of it” (note 12). The Mennonitische Rundschau does not pick up on this story (note 13).

Melitopol was one "of the two escape railways open to the German garrisons in the Crimea. Its capture would be a milestone in the Russian drive to isolate the Crimea from the north,” the papers noted (note 14).

In a meeting led by Higher SS- and Police Leader Prützmann on Oct. 13, a new settlement structure west of the Dnieper was approved—consistent with Himmler’s original plan of fortified ethnic German communities and bases along transportation lines under SS-governance. Consequently, it was “the wish of the Reich Commissar” to "keep the Low Germans from the District of Halbstadt clustered in the area of Alexanderstadt.” These Volksdeutsche “settlement pearls” would then serve as a strategic military strongholds and buffers on the eastern edge of the territory (note 15).

But only 12 days later, on Oct. 25, the massive refugee trek started up again. There would be no return to Molotschna and Mennonite life on the Ukrainian steppe came to a definitive end.

           

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Trek Maps: 1) military (attached; BA (Bundesarchiv) R 69/215, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/invenio-viewer/lixe/files/49/37/493764b9-7b86-40a4-9f3e-bafa3170e260/R_69_215_0239.jpg); 2) Jacob A. Neufeld, Tiefenwege: Erfahrungen und Erlebnisse von Russland-Mennoniten in zweJahrzehnten bis 1949 (Virgil, ON: Niagara, 1958), attached; c) my Google Interactive map of the trek, http://bit.ly/2jHT6hD.

Trek Photos from Mennonite Library and Archives--Bethel College: https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/numbered-photos/.

Note 1: Cf. BA RH 22/142 (entire folder); regarding the military hospital, cf. doc. 82, frame 164; https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/6c56a19a-8e59-4cb1-a8a9-27ef05786abc/. Already in March 1943 some 12,000 ethnic Germans from the Donetz and Caucasus regions had been evacuated to Galicia; cf. Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, Einwandererzentralstelle, Kommission XVI Sonderzug, Lemberg, to the Einwandererzentralstelle Litzmannstatdt, March 6; March 20, 1943; BA R 69/704, doc. 218, 223; slides 437; 447, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/62e82039-e32f-401c-8eff-73637dae9129/.

Note 2: The following chronology is based on J. Neufeld, Tiefenwege, 101ff.; cf. also Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986); Harry Loewen, Road to Freedom: Mennonites Escape the Land of Suffering (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2000); K. Becker, in A.A. Töws, ed. Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart, vol. 2: Der große Leidensweg (North Clearbrook, BC: Self-published, 1954), 377–385; and a shorter summary in Frank H. Epp, Mennonite Exodus (Altona, MB: Friesen, 1962), 357–363.

Note 3: K. Friesen, Into the Unknown, 52.

Note 4: Cf. Selma Kornelsen Hooge and Anna Goossen Kornelsen, Life Before Canada (Abbotsford, BC: Self-published, 2018), 61.

Note 5: K. Friesen, Into the Unknown, 52.

Note 6: Cf. A. A. Toews, Mennonitische Märtyrer der jüngsten Vergangenheit II, 378; 38. Both he and his colleague Ivan I. Klassen are recognized by Jacob A. Neufeld for rebuilding the Muntau hospital (by Halbstadt) during Nazi occupation.

Note 7: K. Friesen, Into the Unknown, 52.

Note 8: Gerhard Lohrenz (Lose Blätter, III. Teil [Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1976], 106), notes that the Soviets had reached Bakhmach on September 8, took Krasnograd and Pawlograd on September 18, and reached the Dnieper River across from Dnepropetrovsk on September 28. However Melitopol and and Kahkovka were held by German troops until the end of October; cf. Robert Forczyk, The Dnepr 1943: Hitler’s Eastern Rampart Crumbles (Oxford: Osprey, 2016), 33, 70.

Note 9: Der Chef der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD [Ernst Kaltenbrunner], Einwandererzentralstelle, Kommission XVI Sonderzug, to the Einwandererzentrale Litzmannstadt (Lodz), September 28, 1943, BA R 69/704, no. 265 [slide 531], https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/62e82039-e32f-401c-8eff-73637dae9129/.

Note 10: SS Dr. Gerhard Wolfrum (VoMi) to Benjamin H. Unruh, September 29, 1943, Technische Hochschule (TH) Karlsruhe, Universitätsarchiv Karlsruhe, S499, Schrank 2a, Fach 24.

Note 11: “Russians drive new spearhead close to Kiev,” Associated Press. Clippings File. Europe Disorders, Oct. 14, 1943, https://archive.org/details/sim_associated-press-clippings-file-europe-disorders_1943-10/page/n311/mode/2up.

Note 12: “The War in Russia, (September 24 to October 22, 1943),” The Field Artillery Journal 33, no. 12 (1943): 910, https://archive.org/details/sim_field-artillery_1943-12_33_12/page/908/mode/2up?q=molochna.

Note 13: The Rundschau does not mention either “Molotschna,” “Molochna,” or “Melitopol” between October 15 and December 31, 1943. See https://archive.org/details/die-mennonitische-rundschau_1943-12-29_66_52/mode/2up?q=melitopol.

Note 14: “Russian Army on verge of major victories; Four important strategic centres almost in grasp,” The Ontario Intelligencer (Belleville), October 14, 1943, 1, https://archive.org/details/intelligencer-october-1943/page/n123/mode/2up.

Note 15: Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Das Dritte Reich und die Deutschen in der Sowjetunion (Stuttgart: Deutsches Verlags-Anstalt, 1983), 241f.