Skip to main content

Litzmanstadt (Łódź): Entering the Reich 1943-44

Thirty-five thousand Mennonites were evacuated from Ukraine for resettlement in German-annexed Poland in 1943/44. Almost all of them came through Litzmannstadt (Łódź)--one of only two points of processing and reception in the new German Province of Wartheland.

Here resettlers were thoroughly cleansed, disinfected, and deloused in a large steam bath. Later arrivals from the long trek were mostly full of lice, in their hair and up and down the seams of all their clothes, one resettler told me (note 1). 

Besides lice, rickets and scabies were common, as well as tuberculosis and trachoma. The larger concern however was racial purity and the health of the Volk-body as a whole, consistent with the official “Racial Policy” published by the Reichsführer S.S. Central Office for Racial Policy:

"Since the rise and fall of a people’s culture depends above all on the maintenance, care, and purity of its valuable racial inheritance, responsible statesmanship must be concerned with racial policy and must do everything possible to maintain the purity of the racial inheritance for the future. Our Führer, Adolf Hitler, was the first statesman in history to recognize this and base his policies on it. The all-encompassing global war that the German people are currently engaged in under his leadership is the battle of the Nordic race against the forces of chaos and racial decay." (Note 2)

Albert Dahl told me that some of their Mennonite people simply “disappeared” upon arrival in Warthegau—the handicapped and mentally weak. My aunt Adina told me they were worried for her mother who was epileptic, that she too might be "taken."

Today, many descendants use th Litzmannstadt “EWZ” forms of their grandparents for genealogical information. The EWZ, or Central Immigration Office (Einwandererzentralstelle) was comprised of representatives of Reich ministries for health and labour, Party officials, S.S. organs for political and criminal examination, and S.S. racial office experts (note 3). Early evacuees underwent discreet racial examinations based on anthropological evaluations of physical attributes (note 4).

The first Mennonite group to arrive in Litzmannstadt came straight by train from Chortitza in October 1943; they were received with “unexpected and touching warmth” and provided room and board in a former Jewish summer resort. The Mennonite resettler Heinrich Hamm reported that “in every respect we are taken care of.” Hamm was well versed in a twisted nazified history of Russian Mennonite settlement, i.e., of “true Germans” who “opened up” the wide expanses of the wild, wolf-populated eastern steppe without assistance from Russian authorities. His letter to Danzig Mennonite Church board member and kinship researcher Franz Harder contained racially-charged comments about those of “mixed marriages.” But he and other “true Germans” from the Soviet Union “thank God and the Führer daily with tears in their eyes for the great privileges they may now enjoy.” Harder’s response to Hamm from Danzig was signed with the German greeting, “Heil Hitler!” (note 5).

Harry Loewen was 14 years old when he was placed in a residential all-boys school near Litzmannstadt.

"The songs we sang as we marched were meant to fan German nationalism and hatred toward Germany’s “enemies,” especially the Jews. I still remember some lines of these songs: … “Singing, we march into a new Age. Adolf Hitler will lead us; we are ready to do battle.” A song that vilified the Jews went as follows: “… Crooked Jews wander back and forth, perhaps across the sea. The waves cover them and the world has peace.” (Note 6)

When the larger group of Mennonite refugees from "Molotschna" had arrived in Litzmannstadt in March 1944, the city’s Jewish ghetto was larger than the Warsaw Ghetto; the infamous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was only a month away.

Benjamin H. Unruh travelled freely with Pastor Abraham Braun of Ibersheim—both born in Russia--throughout Warthegau and arrived in Litzmannstadt on March 16 at the conclusion of a large two-day Nazi-party rally in Litzmannstadt. Both had been in Germany for more than two decades.

Here Unruh consulted with the Reich Governor Arthur Greiser, one of the architects of the Holocaust in Poland (note 7). Unruh was able to reaffirm and secure for Mennonite resettlers the freedom to practice their faith within the framework of the Nazi law (note 8). The Constitution of the Alliance (Vereinigung) of Mennonite Congregations in the German Reich—first drafted by Unruh in 1934—became the institutional identity into which Russian Mennonites were to be received and provided pastoral care. It assured authorities that German Mennonites had “renounced giving witness to their Christian peace convictions through the particular principle of non-resistance” (note 9). Why? Because in Nazi Germany the other historical distinctives for which Mennonites had often suffered were “secure” and “had now become the common heritage of all,” according to their Constitution. Mennonites now felt a stronger “responsibility and duty towards Volk and state in which they lived.”


The two days before Unruh’s meeting with S.S. Gauleiter Greiser in Litzmannstadt, Greiser welcomed the “millionth resettler” to the Reich and addressed a large gathering of Volksdeutsche on March 14, 1944 (see photos). In an earlier telegram to Hitler, Greiser reported to the great satisfaction of the Führer that the Warthegau milestone had been reached, and added that “save for a tiny remnant, Jewry has completely disappeared, and Polishdom has been reduced from formerly 4.2 million to 3.5 million persons” (note 10). Though this fell far short of the demographic targets Hitler had set shortly after annexation in 1939, both he and Greiser were confident that the new era was now truly dawning.


Unruh agreed that Mennonite ministers in the camps would organize two worship services per month, and once a month resettlers and their ministers would participate in the Nazi Party Sunday “Morning Celebration” (Morgenfeier) (note 11). Its purpose was “to awaken and kindle for ever anew the forces of instinct, of emotion and of the soul which are vital for the struggle for existence and the bearing of our people and our race for all times” (note 12). Nazi Germany was not so much pro-church but spoke vaguely of "positive Christianity" in the party platform and of Germanic religion.

Greiser's vision was for “German lords” to rule over “Polish servants." Greiser's Herrenvolk “took over the homes and farms of the Untermenschen, literally lock, stock and barrel” (note 14). Some 65,000 Polish farms had been forcibly evacuated by the end of 1942. Volksdeutsche resettlers in turn received these farms.

Czesław Łuczak argues that that the “machinery of occupation set in motion to fight against any sign of Polish life would not have operated so efficiently had it not enjoyed the everyday help of the great majority of Germans inhabiting the Warta Land. … Their attitude towards the discriminatory actions of the authorities against Poles was completely passive” (note 15).

After disinfection in the border-city of Litzmannstadt, members of the Molotschna Mennonite evacuee group were put back on trains to proceed to the final destination and their new home in Warthegau.

“It seemed as if a long, long dream was coming to an end. We were out of danger at last and in the Reich! In our exuberance we decorated our freight cars with evergreen boughs and put up banners reading … “Home at last in the Reich”! And yet some of us had lingering doubts and misgivings. … Were we strangers from Russia, us refugees, really welcome?” (Note 16).


In this way, some 35,000 Mennonites from Ukraine entered the German Reich, prepared for full naturalization as German citizens in the next months.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast


---Notes---

Note 1: Albert Dahl, interview with author, July 26, 2017. See related post on the delousing process, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/delousingnaked-in-litzmannstadt-odz.html. 

Note 2: In Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, eds., The Third Reich Sourcebook (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 171. Cf. Maria Fiebrandt, Auslese für die Siedlergesellschaft. Die Einbeziehung Volksdeutscher in die NS-Erbgesundheitspolitik im Kontext der Umsiedlungen 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), e.g., 537. See the similar language used by German Mennonite leaders.

Note 3: Valdis O. Lumans, Hitler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 189.

Note 4: During the evacuation of 1944 there was less time for extensive racial examinations. “Many of us remember Litzmannstadt. We were X-rayed for tuberculosis purposes, but we cannot recall any blood work done there. It was a simple and relatively quick process” (Johanna Dyck, Letter to the editor, “Ukrainian survivors rebut ‘Aryan’ claims,” ‘Aryan’ claims,” Canadian Mennonite 20, no. 22 [November 7, 2016], 9–10; 10).

Note 5: See Heinrich Hamm, Letter to Franz Harder, Danzig, October 6, 1943, in “Auswanderung aus Preussen nach Russland 1787–1854 (Auszüge aus Hypotheken),” Beilageakten des Staatsarchivs Danzig, https://chortitza.org/AuswPr.htm.

Note 6: Harry Loewen, Reflections of a Soviet-born Canadian Mennonite (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2006), 70f.

Note 7: In Litzmannstadt from March 14 to 16, 1944, Greiser hosted the first conference of the Regional and District Leaders of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) Wartheland. In the addresses, the resettlement challenges were addressed; cf. “Die Parole: Alles für den Sieg,” Litzmannstädter Zeitung 27, no. 79 (March 19, 1944), 1. https://bc.wimbp.lodz.pl/dlibra/publication/31196/edition/29746/content. See Benjamin Unruh's report: “Bericht über Verhandlungen in Warthegau im März 1944” (March 30, 1944), 6b, Benjamin Unruh Collection, File Folder: Correspondence with Abraham Braun Correspondence, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof.

Note 8: Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), 11, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944,%20Goetz,%20Die%20Mennoniten/1944,%20Goetz,%20Die%20Mennoniten.pdf.

Note 9: Vereinigung der deutschen Mennonitengemeinden, Verfassung vom 11. Juni 1934 (Elbing: Kühn, 1936), 4, 5.

Note 10: In Catherine Epstein, Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 191, https://books.google.ca/books?id=Caa4rl8SHHwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=. At this point, about twenty-three percent of Warthegau’s population was German (ibid., 192). Cf. “Der millionste Deutsche im Wartheland angesiedelt,” Litzmannstädter Zeitung 27, no. 75 (March 15, 1944) 1. https://bc.wimbp.lodz.pl/dlibra/publication/31192/edition/29742/content.

Note 11: Cited in Aryeh L. Unger, The Totalitarian Party: Party and People in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) 174.

Note 12: Cf. Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944,%20Goetz,%20Die%20Mennoniten/1944,%20Goetz,%20Die%20Mennoniten.pdf.

Note 13: Valdis O. Lumans, “Reassessment of Volksdeutsche and Jews in the Volhynia-Galicia Narew Resettlement,” in The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Legacy, edited by Alan E. Steinweis and Daniel E. Rogers, 81–100 (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 95.

Note 14: Czesław Łuczak, “Chronicle: Records on the Situation of Poles in the Warte Land,” Instytut Zachodni (Poznań), Western Affairs 8, no. 1 (1967), 168–190; 170.

Note 15: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown, (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 73.

Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why study and write about Russian Mennonite history?

David G. Rempel’s credentials as an historian of the Russian Mennonite story are impeccable—he was a mentor to James Urry in the 1980s, for example, which says it all. In 1974 Rempel wrote an article on Mennonite historical work for an issue of the Mennonite Quarterly Review commemorating the arrival of Russian Mennonites to North America 100 years earlier ( note 1). In one section of the essay Rempel reflected on Mennonites’ general “lack of interest in their history,” and why they were so “exceedingly slow” in reflecting on their historic development in Russia with so little scholarly rigour. Rempel noted that he was not alone in this observation; some prominent Mennonites of his generation who had noted the same pointed an “extreme spirit of individualism” among Mennonites in Russia; the absence of Mennonite “authoritative voices,” both in and outside the church; the “relative indifference” of Mennonites to the past; “intellectual laziness” among many who do not wish to be distu...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonite Literacy in Polish-Prussia

At a Mennonite wedding in Deutsch Kazun in 1833 (pic), neither groom nor bride nor the witnesses could sign the wedding register. A Görtz, a Janzen, a Schröder—born a Görtzen – illiterate. “This act was read to the married couple and witnesses, but not signed because they were unable to write.” Similarly, with the certification of a Mennonite death in Culm (Chelmo), West Prussia, 1813-14: “This document was read and it was signed by us because the witnesses were illiterate.” Spouse and children were unable to read or write. Names like Gerz, Plenert, Kliewer, Kasper, Buller and others. 14 families of the 25 Mennonite deaths registered --or 56%--could not sign the paperwork ( note 1 ; pic ). This appears to be an anomaly. We know some pioneers to Russia were well educated. The letters of the land-scout to Russia, Johann Bartsch to his wife back home (1786-87) are eloquent, beautifully written and indicate a high level of literacy ( note 2 ). Even Klaas Reimer (b. 1770), the founder t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor), 1932-1933

In 2008 the Canadian Parliament passed an act declaring the fourth Saturday in November as “Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (‘Holodomor’) Memorial Day” ( note 1 ). Southern Ukraine was arguably the worst affected region of the famine of 1932–33, where 30,000 to 40,000 Mennonites lived ( note 2 ). The number of famine-related deaths in Ukraine during this period are conservatively estimated at 3.5 million ( note 3 ). In the early 1930s Stalin feared growing “Ukrainian nationalism” and the possibility of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ). He was also suspicious of ethnic Poles and Germans—like Mennonites—in Ukraine, convinced of the “existence of an organized counter-revolutionary insurgent underground” in support of Ukrainian national independence ( note 5 ). Ukraine was targeted with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of Ukrainian nationalism and resistance, and this included Ukraine’s Mennonites (viewed simply as “Germans”). Various causes combined to bring on w...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...
Post a Comment
Read more

1871: "Mennonite Tough Luck"

In 1868, a delegation of Prussian Mennonite elders met with Prussian Crown Prince Frederick in Berlin. The topic was universal conscription--now also for Mennonites. They were informed that “what has happened here is coming soon to Russia as well” ( note 1 ). In Berlin the secret was already out. Three years later this political cartoon appeared in a satirical Berlin newspaper. It captures the predicament of Russian Mennonites (some enticed in recent decades from Prussia), with the announcement of a new policy of compulsory, universal military service. “‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire—or: Mennonite tough luck.’ The Mennonites, who immigrated to Russia in order to avoid becoming soldiers in Prussia, are now subject to newly introduced compulsory military service.” ( Note 2 ) The man caught in between looks more like a Prussian than Russian Mennonite—but that’s beside the point. With the “Great Reforms” of the 1860s (including emancipation of serfs) the fundamentals were c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation. In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name ( note 1 ).  On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers ( Zahlen ) from the church hymnal” ( note 2 ). Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote: “Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flo...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Between Monarchs" a lot can happen (like revolt). A Mennonite "Accession" Prayer for the Monarch

It is surprising for many to learn that Russian Mennonites sang the Russian national anthem "God save the Tsar" in special worship services ... frequently! We have a "Mennonite prayer" and sermon sample for the accession of the monarch ( Thronbesteigung ) or its anniversary, with closing prayer-- and another Mennonite sampler of a coronation ( Krönung ) prayer, sermon and closing prayer ( note 1 ). After 70 years with one monarch, the manual is made for a time like this--try sharing it with your Canadian Mennonite pastor ;) Technically there is no “between” monarchs: “The Queen is Dead. Long live the King!” But there is much that happens or can happen before the coronation of the new monarch. Including revolt. Mennonites in Molotschna had hosted Tsar Alexander I shortly before his death in 1825. Upon his death in December, Alexander's brother and heir Constantine declined succession, and prior to the coronation of the next brother Nicholas, some 3,000 rebel (mos...
Post a Comment
Read more

Russia: A Refuge for all True Christians Living in the Last Days

If only it were so. It was not only a fringe group of Russian Mennonites who believed that they were living the Last Days. This view was widely shared--though rejected by the minority conservative Kleine Gemeinde. In 1820 upon the recommendation of Rudnerweide (Frisian) Elder Franz Görz, the progressive and influential Mennonite leader Johann Cornies asked the Mennonite Tobias Voth (b. 1791) of Graudenz, Prussia to come and lead his Agricultural Association’s private high school in Ohrloff, in the Russian Mennonite colony of Molotschna. Voth understood this as nothing less than a divine call upon his life ( note 1; pic 3 ). In Ohrloff Voth grew not only a secondary school, but also a community lending library, book clubs, as well as mission prayer meetings, and Bible study evenings. Voth was the son of a Mennonite minister and his wife was raised Lutheran ( note 2 ). For some years, Voth had been strongly influenced by the warm, Pietist devotional fiction writings of Johann Heinrich Ju...
Post a Comment
Read more

Eduard Wüst: A “Second Menno”?

Arguably the most significant outside religious influence on Mennonite s in the 19th century was the revivalist preaching of Eduard Wüst, a university-trained Württemberg Pietist minister installed by the separatist Evangelical Brethren Church in New Russia in 1843 ( note 1 ). With the end-time prophesies of a previous generation of Pietists (and many Mennonites) coming to naught, Wüst introduced Germans in this area of New Russia to the “New Pietism” and its more individualistic, emotional conversion experience and sermons on the free grace of God centred on the cross of Christ ( note 2 ). Wüst’s 1851 Christmas sermon series give a good picture of what was changing ( note 3 ). His core agenda was to dispel gloom (which maybe could describe more traditional Mennonites) and induce Christian joy. This is the root impulse of the Mennonite Brethren beginnings years later in 1860. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) ...
Post a Comment
Read more