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) or SS- "Ethnic
German Liaison Office" oversaw the support for ethnic Germans in its
regions. SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Roßner, for example, was the VoMi official
responsible for the supplies, schools, hospitals, clothing etc. for the predominantly Mennonite Molotschna
(“Halbstadt”) settlement. Over the war years Roßner met several times with the
representative of Russian Mennonites in Germany, Benjamin Unruh—in
Litzmannstadt, in the home of Unruh’s daughter and son-in-law in Berlin, as
well as in Unruh’s home in Karlsruhe.
VoMi officials arranged for Himmler to visit Mennonites in
Molotschna, and then later with Benjamin Unruh in a secret location in Germany.
“I have been in Ukraine [October 1942] and I have observed the people there for
myself. Your Mennonites are the best,” Himmler—the second most powerful leader
in Nazi Germany told Unruh. Unruh “sat immediately to the right of Himmler and
dined with him” (note 1).
Based on his Molotschna visit, Himmler “approved of the
behaviour and attitude of the Mennonites” (note 2). The two spoke about a
return and settlement of Russian Mennonites—from South and North America--to
Ukraine, the election of an elders for Chortitza and Molotschna, and a possible
compensation on the basis of their property in 1914 (note 3).
The VoMi was responsible for the safe and orderly evacuation
of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans from the Soviet Union in 1943-44 and
their “homecoming” and naturalization in larger Germany.
After the war, Unruh testified at the war crimes tribunal in
support of SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz, the head of the Ethnic German
Liaison Office (VoMi)—who claimed his only role was to enhance the welfare of
ethnic Germans (note 5).
Amidst the told and untold horrors of the Nazi German
regime, why did they show this unfailing kindness to the Mennonites of Ukraine?
Eric Steinhart writes that the invasion of the Soviet Union
in 1941 was
“... singularly important to the Third Reich’s plan to
transform Europe and ultimately, perhaps the globe. … Nazi planners believed
that this territory would become an asset to Germany only if the region’s
millions of Slavs and Jews disappeared.”
“Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, … the
VoMi took charge of the country’s remaining Volksdeutsche [ethnic Germans] …
Himmler dispatched Sonderkommando R (Special Comand R[ussia]), a special VoMi
unit to mobilize ethnic Germans in conquered Soviet territory as the
demographic seeds of future ‘Germanization’ … in the occupied territories of
the Soviet Union.” (Note 6)
In a forthcoming post these two sides will be displayed concretely
with correspondence and writing in support of Mennonites by VoMi SS-Obersturmführer
Dr. Hermann Wolfrum (note 7).
---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast
---Notes---
Note 1: Diether Götz Lichdi, Mennoniten im Dritten Reich. Dokumentation
und Deutung (Weierhof/Pfalz: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1977), 140f., https://archive.org/details/mennonitenimdrit0000lich/.
For more on Unruh see Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Benjamin Unruh, MCC
[Mennonite Central Committee] and National Socialism,” Mennonite Quarterly
Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022), 157–205, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1571.
Note 2: Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten
(Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), 11, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944;
also Horst Gerlach, “Mennonites, the Molotschna, and the Volksdeutsche
Mittelstelle in the Second World War,” translated by John D. Thiesen, Mennonite
Life 41, no. 3 (1986), 8, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1986sep.pdf.
Note 3: Benjamin Unruh to S.S. Obergruppenführer Werner
Lorenz, July 29, 1943, letter, from Mennonitsche Forschungsstelle Weierhof,
Vereinigung Collection, folder 1943.
Note 4: SS-Obersturmführer Gerhard Wolfrum (VoMi) to Benjamin H. Unruh, 29 September
1943, 159/343, from Technische Universitätsarchiv Karlsruhe, S499, Schrank 2a,
Fach 24. Copies acquired by archivist John Thiesen, Mennonite Library and
Archives—Bethel College, June 2021.
Note 5: Defense testimony by Benjamin H. von Unruh for Werner
Lorenz and Heinz Brueckner, December 17, 1947. The RuSHA Case. U.S. National
Archives Collection of World War II War Crimes Records, Case VIII, Record Group
238, mimeographed testimony, 2714–2730; SA 1, file 184, from Mennonite Library
and Archives --Bethel College, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/sa_1_184/.
Note 6: Eric C. Steinhart, The Holocaust and the
Germanization of Ukraine (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 4; see
his doctoral thesis “Creating Killers: The Nazification of the Black Sea
Germans and the Holocaust in Southern Ukraine, 1941–1944.” PhD dissertation,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2010, https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/indexablecontent/uuid:cbc90aec-ecd8-497a-b823-c7778ef9401b.
Note 7: See forthcoming post.
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