Skip to main content

A-Cases and O-Cases. After the Trek, 1944

Some 35,000 Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine by the retreating Reich German military in 1943-44 applied for naturalization /citizenship once in German-annexed Poland (mostly Warthegau). The applications made through the “EWZ” (Einwandererzentralstelle) are easy to attain today (note 1). Much information may be new and useful for families; however just as much is disturbing, including the racial assessments, categorization, and separation of so-called “A-cases” from “O-cases.”

What are they? The EWZ files contain the application for naturalization made by the head of a family unit, the certificate of naturalization, and sometimes correspondence/ claims regarding property and possessions left behind in Ukraine. Each form contains information about the applicant’s spouse and children, as well as a genealogy listing parents and grandparents, and those of their spouse as well; racial background is calculated by percentage (!). Applicants were asked about their citizenship, their ethnic-national identification (Volkstumsbekenntnis), religion, language in the home, places of residence (and when), education, past affiliations with political parties, clubs, associations, military roles, honours, criminal prosecutions, and about relatives in the Reich. The applicant had to affirm their German-blood ancestry and the absence of any Jewish blood. Some applications include a handwritten brief autobiography and photo. The form includes the results of a mandatory “Health and Hereditary-Biological Examination" for health and purity of the “race.” A final "Opinion of the ethnic-nationality (Volkstums-) Expert” is given with the "naturalization and application placement decision"—either as an “A-case” or an “O-case” by Settlement Staff. A “desirability” index is also included for population increase; some Mennonite files have an official name change for the applicant or a child, from an “Old Testament” name to a “more acceptable” German name (note 2).

Valdis O. Lumans gives the “case decision” some context:

“A family passed through the examination gauntlet together, eventually receiving a composite evaluation. Families with farming backgrounds and positive racial and political evaluations were classified as O-cases (Ost [=east]), the elite of the resettlers, and assigned to the Warthegau as farmers to Germanize the Lebensraum [expanded territory that the German Reich believed Germans needed for their natural development].” (Note 3)

Lumans continues: "Those graded as less politically reliable, not German enough, of poorer racial stock, or unsuited for farming—including those with technical skills better utilized in the war industry than on a farm—became the A-cases (Altreich), designated to work inside the [old] Reich. Once classified, the resettlers awaited their final placement.” (Note 4)

As an example, two months after arriving in the Warthegau in March 1944, my grandmother and her children were assessed to be racially German and to have fully “preserved” the German language and culture. They were deemed an “O-case” for settlement in Warthegau. My mother’s 53-year-old aunt Katharina Bräul (#691296)—who had never married and who accompanied my grandmother (her sister-in-law) on the trek out of Ukraine—was deemed an “A-case” (note 5).

Mennonite leader Benjamin H. Unruh liked to remind officials that he was “unconditionally recognized” as the representative of the Mennonite resettler communities and congregations by the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood and Reichsführer-SS Himmler (note 6). As such, Unruh had access to all of the related offices and officials and was called upon to help settle the more difficult cases.

Himmler “regarded the O-cases as the elite and their placement in the Lebensraum as the highest honor. These S.S. builders of the new racial order assured the Volksdeutsche that their lives, in particular those of the O-cases, would assume great historical importance” (note 7). Accordingly, Unruh was also proud to report to the denominational Vereinigung executive that the Wartheland Nazi Party Governor (Gauleiter) Greiser had “firm intentions of giving land to farmers from the eastern zone, and he especially values Mennonite farmers” (note 8).

“There will be two groups of settlers, O-cases and A-cases. The one group, pure German, will be settled toward the east, but not the other group, for they must first become German. And that is also correct! For most mixed couples only speak Russian, the children too. If they were to come under the Russians again or in their proximity, Russian [language/culture] will become attractive. However if they are in the Reich and only amongst Germans, then they are compelled to become German, at least to make German their primary language.” (Note 9)

“A-cases” could include the elderly and infirm, but they were typically those who had lost their German identity and language, or those who had the language but who were “politically unreliable.” Not a few Mennonites in Ukraine had thrown their hats in with the Communist regime, for example. Unruh reported that the “denunciations” were a particularly difficult problem in the refugee camps, and that those accused by neighbours of collaboration with the Bolsheviks would be given “the opportunity to improve themselves; they will be naturalized for a probationary period, and if they do not prove themselves, then their fate will be severe” (note 10).

It was not unusual for already-traumatized families to become “splintered.” “A-case” Mennonites were normally settled at a distance from their “O-case” family members—or worse ("Abl" = Ablehnung, rejection). Unruh tried to get them placed near German Mennonite communities in the Old Reich, or better: to keep families together. “A whole series of cases, which were very difficult, have found their best settlement. A Mennonite man and woman have been appointed to a position at the EWZ Litzmannstadt, which is significant. The EWZ asked me to make submissions a little later on the matter of the A-cases ...” (note 11).

Unruh wrote to the denominational executive in July 1944:

"We will ask that the A-cases be reduced as far as possible by allowing the ‘splinter families’ and the infirm to join the O-cases as much as possible. The EWZ, however, is more skeptical about such an action. We should rather make a petition to the VoMi (Ethnic German Liason Office) and ask that the A-cases be settled together and, if possible, in the vicinity of our co-religionists. I think that both possibilities should be considered. ... The hereditary-biological cases, as we were told in the EWZ, could not be settled in Warthegau. As for the mixed [-race] cases, all our people are of the opinion that they should be placed in the Old Reich [for German-ization].” (Note 12)

There is nothing in my great-aunt Tina Bräul’s EWZ application file that indicates why she was assessed differently than all the others in her clan—a brother, an adult niece, cousins, in-laws. But she was allowed to stay in Warthegau near family in the town of Exin where she cooked for Polish labourers.

Those deemed “biological-genetically weak” were removed from families. Another aunt by marriage was worried that her mother could be “eliminated” if hospitalized because of her epilepsy (note 13). Albert Dahl of Marienthal remembered that some of their Mennonites simply “disappeared” upon arrival in Warthegau—the handicapped and mentally weak (note 14). This was consistent with the Racial Policy of the Reich, which assumed that the “rise and fall of a people’s culture depends above all on the maintenance, care, and purity of its valuable racial inheritance” (note 15).

None of this was inconsequential for Unruh’s application to the state to have the proposed “Mennonite Church (Gemeindekirche) in Wartheland” statutes /constitution approved. It would be a racially defined church without Christian responsibility, charity and service with Poles or Jews.

“The Volk-community of Greater Germany has cast its eye on us as experienced Mennonite farmers. They want to put our people to work when the victory is won. For our part we will need an unbroken Volk-community too. We are too devout not to know that it [the Volk-community] must be sustained and consecrated by Christian faith, not merely—but that too!—by [German] blood. … This is our historical duty in this historical hour!” (Note 16)

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. Mennonite Extractions/ Index of Mennonites Appearing in the Einwandererzentrallestelle (EWZ) Files," 1943-44, https://www.mennonitegenealogy.com/russia/EWZ_Mennonite_Extractions_Alphabetized.pdf. Note: Women are listed by maiden name. A file can be requested from the Mennonite Historical Society of British Columbia, genealogy@mhsbc.com 

Note 2: See Babette Heusterberg, “Personenbezogene Unterlagen aus der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus,” HEROLD-Jahrbuch, Neue Folge (Neustadt a.d. Aisch: Degener, 2000), 147-186, https://www.bundesarchiv.de/DE/Content/Publikationen/Aufsaetze/aufsatz-heusterberg-persbez-unterlagen-ns-zeit.pdf. On A-Cases and O-Cases, as well as hereditary-biological conditions, see also: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einwandererzentralstelle. For “determination of fit and desirability” for population growth (a Roman numeral, I to IV stamped on the form), as well as the pressure placed on families to eliminate their “Old Testament given names,” “especially among Mennonites,” see previous post (forthcoming).

Note 3: 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 (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 94, https://books.google.ca/books?id=RZ7igJKC6YQC&lpg=PA94&dq=A-case%20volksdeutsche%20litzmannstadt&pg=PA94#v=snippet&q=A-cases&f=false.

Note 4: Lumans, “Reassessment of Volksdeutsche and Jews,” 94.

Note 5: Helene Thiessen Bräul, #A3342-EWZ50-A073(GRanDMA ##466431); Katharina Bräul, #A3342-EWZ50-A073 (GRanDMA #691296). Einwandererzentrale (Central Immigration Office), National Archives Collection Microfilm Publication A3342, Series EWZ, Washington, DC.

Note 6: Benjamin H. Unruh to Vereinigung Executive, “Vollbericht über die Lagerbesuche,” (January 7, 1944), 2b. From: Benjamin Unruh Collection, “Correspondence with Abraham Braun, 1930, 1940, 1944–45,” Vereinigung 1944, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof (MFW). See also my essay “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 (condensed in Intersections: MCC Practice and Theory Quarterly 9, no. 4 (Fall 2021), 17–27, https://mcc.org/media/resources/10441).

Note 7: Lumans, “Reassessment of Volksdeutsche and Jews,” 94.

Note 8: B. H. Unruh, “Bericht über Verhandlungen in Warthegau im März 1944” (March 30, 1944), 6b, Unruh-Braun Correspondence, MFW.

Note 9: B. H. Unruh, “Lagerbericht,” 3b.

Note 10: B. H. Unruh to Vereinigung Executive, “Vollbericht über die Lagerbesuche,” (January 7, 1944), 5b, Unruh-Braun Correspondence, MFW.

Note 11: B. H, Unruh to Vereinigung Executive, “Kurzbericht” (November 21, 1944), 1b, Vereinigung Collection 1944, MFW.

Note 12: B. H. Unruh to Vereinigung Executive, “Mein Bericht über meine zweite Reise in den Warthegau” (July 17, 1944), Vereinigung Collection 1944, MFW.

Note 13: Katharine Bräul Fast, interview with author, July 26, 2017.

Note 14: Albert Dahl, interview with author, July 26, 2017.

Note 15: In Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, eds., The Third Reich Sourcebook (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 171.

Note 16: “Zur Tauffrage: Ergänzung I zur Einigungsfrage,” (January 31, 1944), 6b, from Unruh-Braun Correspondence, MFW, See also: “Satzung der Mennonitischen Gemeindekirche im Wartheland” (March 1944 Submission), from Vereinigung Collection, File Folder 1944, MFW. 

Newspaper scan: Eugen Petrull, “Von der Molotschna bis zur Warthe—160,000 Schwarzmeer- und Shitomir-deutsche kommen ins Wartheland,” Ostdeutscher Beobachter 6, no. 71 (March 12, 1944), 5, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125852/edition/134988/content.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "A-Cases and O-Cases. After the Trek, 1944," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 23, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/p/a-cases-and-o-cases-after-trek-1944.html.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...

Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-old Mennonites, 1944

Katharina Esau offered me a home away from home when I was a student in Germany in the 1980s. The Soviet Union released her and her family in 1972. Käthe Heinrichs—her maiden name (b. Aug. 18, 1928)—and my Uncle Walter Bräul were classmates in Gnadenfeld during Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and experienced the Gnadenfeld group “trek” as 15-year-olds together. Before she passed, she wrote her story ( note 1 )—and I had opportunity to interview my uncle. Käthe and Walter both arrived in Warthegau—German annexed Poland—in March 1944 ( note 2 ), and the Reich had a plan for their lives. In February 1944, the Governor of Warthegau ordered the Hitler Youth (HJ) organization to “care for Black Sea German youth” ( note 3 ). Youth were examined for the Hitler Youth, but also for suitability for elite tracks like the one-year Landjahr (farm year and service) program. The highly politicized training of the Landjahr was available for young people in Hitler Youth and its counterpart the League of G...

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...

Mennonites and the Crimean War (1853-56)

Martin Klaassen was traveling through the Molotschna Mennonite Colony when the Crimean War broke out in 1853 ( note 1 ). His diary notes that the following hymn was sung before the sermon: December 1853 . With regards to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey, the song, No: 723 “O Lord, the clouds of war are threatening now, above our heads we see them roll” was sung before the sermon” ( note 2 ). As the war effort grew, thousands of troops came through Molotschna: January 14, 1854 . Today our colony has received billets: in Halbstadt about 1,000 soldiers. It is said that Joh. Neufelds have offered liquor ( Branntwein ), naturally without charge. The soldiers are supposed to have marched in with jubilant singing and much hilarity. They had been very happy for the wonderful reception they got, and promised to accomplish great things. In March, England and France also declared war on Russia. March 26, 1854 . At noon today there was suddenly a military transport at ...