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) 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).

When 35,000 Mennonites were evacuated from Ukraine, Benjamin Unruh—who Himmler called the Moses of the Mennonites--travelled, called and telegraphed on a VoMi stipend to gather and provide pastoral, logistical and political support for the Mennonites refugees, for example (note 4).

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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History of the Russian Mennonites

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