Skip to main content

Easter and Molotschna's First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment of the Waffen-SS, 1942

For the two years of German occupation, 1941-43, the Molotschna Settlement area—renamed “Halbstadt” after its largest village—was under S.S. (Schutzstaffel) control. During this time, new National Socialist ceremonies and liturgies were introduced to the Mennonites in Ukraine, including Easter.

Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler named Halbstadt with its surrounding 144 villages a district commando. SS-Storm Unit Leader (Sturmbannführer) Hermann Roßner was appointed the Special Command R[ussia] leader for Halbstadt.

Halbstadt had Waffen-SS doctors, a Waffen-SS pharmacist team and pharmacy, hospital equipment from the medical offices of the Waffen-SS and soon a Waffen-SS cavalry self-defense regiment of some 500-plus Mennonite young men (note 1).Two of my uncles became members of the cavalry unit; a later, long-time lay minister in my home congregation was in the regiment as well.

SS-celebrations for “Easter” were deliberately non-religious and anti-Christian, though careful not to tread heavily on the sensibilities of ethnic Germans. While the SS-rituals were not really substitute religious or mystical practices, they developed and performed powerful liturgical practices steeped in (apparent) ancient Germanic feasts and German Volk practice.

Notably the psychological-spiritual care of Waffen-SS soldiers as well as their ceremonies were without field chaplains; this did not go unnoticed. “There were no pastors [chaplains] in the S.S. formations as there were in the regular army units,” as one former member noted (note 2).

Arguably all of these young men were broken. Mennonite congregational life in Ukraine—including worship, mutual aid, and faith instruction—had been systematically dismantled by 1933. Almost all cavalry members were born in the post-revolutionary Bolshevik era. Church elders, ministers, deacons and—by 1938—the majority of middle-aged Mennonite men had been exiled or executed. Most Mennonites who joined the cavalry had lost their fathers, had seen their mothers terrorized, overworked and largely removed from the home, and had been encouraged by teachers to distrust their “German” Mennonite neighbours and elders with pre-revolutionary memories or perspectives.

As young teens they survived the famine and lived in extreme material poverty (note 3). Cavalry members carried a distant memory of Mennonite church piety; as young children almost all would have learned simple prayers and children’s hymns, and many would have memorized some Bible stories (note 4). But none of the cavalry members would have had the ability, tools, leisure, memory or guidance needed to reflect biblically or theologically as Mennonites on war, Nazism and its ideology.

Commanders of SS-cavalry units filled the vacuum.

They were coached and even ordered by the Brigadeführer to become father, teacher, commander and chaplain to their soldiers. Surviving 1943 correspondence from two Brigadeführer commanders of the 8th SS-Cavalry Division “Florian Geyer”—to which the Mennonite squadron members would later belong—offers clear instructions for commanders working with ethnic German SS-Cavalry men.

SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Freitag was a meticulous coach to his commanders. In one of his special reminders in April 1943, Freitag wrote each of his unit commanders that Reichführer-SS Himmler “attaches the greatest importance” to “constant ideological instruction” and that unit commanders and staff “must always work for the welfare of the mind and soul of their men” (note 5).

“The unit leaders must be a constant influence on our men is crucial if the troops are to be fully reliable” (note 6). A good commander will be concerned to strengthen the self-confidence of the ethnic German, and “to bring them to the point where one can appeal more and more to their honour.”

Freitag required his unit leaders, for example, to plan for lectures, readings and lessons on the same weekly timetable as other aspects of soldiering was taught (note 7). Freitag required a unified curriculum that would hold the SS together.

Here are his recommendations for Easter with ethnic German cavalry men (note 8).

“Organization of celebrations. The special feast days and holidays of the German people are not intended to give the men days off duty merely as a change from their daily routine, but to celebrate them in a German-cultural-popular (volkstümliche) manner. This is true, first of all, of Easter and May Day, which are fast approaching ... To the extent that the customs and traditions that our ancestors used to observe on [this] feast in earlier centuries have already been forgotten, they should be revived. It should be pointed out that in the ethnic German settlement areas the old customs and traditions at Easter and May were still particularly well preserved and cultivated. Our men, and first and foremost again the ethnic Germans, expect to be spoken to about the meaning and significance of these festivals. The unit leaders therefore have to deal with these problems.

Easter. The time of spring, with all the hope and joy of a new beginning, holds many old customs, some misunderstood, some deliberately falsified, from the world of our Germanic ancestors. Easter, the feast of the resurrection of life, falls on the first Sunday after the spring full moon ... that Easter was a Germanic feast and was appropriated only by the Christian church for reasons of expediency. ...

The Easter egg, ancient symbol of life renewal, as the shell of young, new life, is an integral part of Easter.

The church was not able to eradicate the old Germanic customs. Instead, another meaning was attributed to them. Easter was made into the Jewish "Passover" festival. The awakening of nature became the resurrection of the crucified founder of the church.

In this context it must be said that the church among the ethnic Germans is to be addressed as a Volks- (peoples’) church, which has earned great merit for the preservation of German peoplehood (Volkstum). This also explains in part why our ethnic Germans are still very attached to their church.

But this is no reason not to speak openly about these questions with the ethnic Germans; rather, it is an obligation of the unit leader to deal with these questions thoroughly and until the men are convinced of the correctness of our position.”This rethinking of Easter and other Christian celebrations was also happening with the young women and men training to become teachers in the Mennonite/ethnic German village schools. Helene Dueck was in the SS-run pedagogical school led by a longtime "friend of Mennonites," S.S. Storm Unit Leader Karl Götz. Dueck recalled: “I hardly knew what Easter was” (note 9).

In January 1944 Götz advised S.S. superiors in a confidential report that, in his opinion, Mennonite leaders in Germany would be able to guide the Russian Mennonites over time toward an appropriate and “thoroughly German religiosity.”

“For the Russian Mennonites … the Lord God (Herrgott) or the divine as such remained as most essential to their religious feeling. For the most part, all Christian-dogmatic aspects have faded. … With astute guidance regarding worldview, the Mennonites in particular—but also the rest of the German Russians—will be led away from dogmatic-confessional matters to a clear and thoroughly German religiosity (Gottgläubigkeit). Their desire is for the divine, for awe before the Almighty, the inconceivable, the sublime. Mennonite leaders are now working to lead the world of Mennonitism (Mennonitentum) toward this German god-believing, religious attitude.” (Note 10)

Decades later in Canada I sometimes shared a joint German/English service—something that happened at Easter, for example—with the lay minister noted above. He was in the same regiment as my uncles who did not survive. He was a student of Karl Götz, as was a great aunt and the parents of multiple friends. He was quite the disciplinarian in our Saturday morning German School; he also baptized my father. He has long passed, but his son and I remain good friends. He is one member of the “lost generation” (note 11) who was “found”.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Hermann Roßner to Wolfgang Vopersal, November 2, 1983, letter, Bundesarchiv (Freiburg) MA, N/756, 151/a. See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/retrieving-lost-generation-heinrich.html.

Note 2: Eduard Allert [pseud., Abram Reimer], “The Lost Generation,” in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz, 9–128 (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982), 71f.

Note 3: See my essay, “A new Examination of the ‘Great Terror’ in Molotschna, 1937–38,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 95, no. 4 (October 2021), 415–458, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1031.

Note 4: Cf. e.g., Harry Loewen, ed., Road to Freedom: Mennonites Escape the Land of Suffering (Kitchener, ON: Pandora, 2000), 99f.

Note 5: S.S. Brigadeführer Fritz Freitag, “Special Instructions for the Working Area of Abt VI No.1,” to SS-Kav. Division VI, April 22, 1943, Bundesarchiv (Freiburg) MA RS/3/8, 73/b.

Note 6: Freitag, to SS Cav. Division, Ia/VI, April 5, 1943 (Special Instructions for weltanschauliche Erziehung), Bundesarchiv (Freiburg) MA, RS/3/8, 80.

Note 7: Freitag, SS-Kav. Division IIa, Divisions-Tagesbefehl Nr. 10/43, March 22, 1943, Bundesarchiv (Freiburg) MA, RS/3/8, 72.

Note 8: Freitag, "Special Instructions … to SS-Kav. Division VI, April 22, 1943.”

Note 9: Helene Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 148, https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/page/148/mode/2up?q=ostern.

Note 10: Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), 11f., Bundesarchiv 187/267a, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944, or https://chortitza.org/pdf/0v772.pdf. On Götz and the booklet (in translation), see Benjamin Goossen, “‘A Small World Power’: How the Nazi Regime Viewed Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 92, no. 2 (2018), 173–206, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goossen/files/goossen_a_small_world_power_2018.pdf.

Note 11: Cf. Allert [pseud., Abram Reimer], “The Lost Generation.”

Photos: SS Brigadeführer Fritz Freitag, Bundesarchiv https://www.bild.bundesarchiv.de/dba/de/search/?topicid=dcx-thes_bestand_774u70q3f7q68r0nd48&sort=DateCreated+DESC&page=8; Time Magazine, April 13, 1942, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,766503,00.html; Mennonite soldiers, Bundesarchiv (Freiburg), BA MA, N/756, 151/a (Vopersal file). 

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Easter and Molotschna's First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment of the Waffen-SS, 1942,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 10, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/easter-and-molotschnas-first-ethnic.html.

Print Friendly and PDF

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 2 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 In a few short months the American government will start to fulfill its campaign promises to round up and deport undocumented immigrants. The responsible cabinet members have already been appointed. By early Spring 2025, Mennonite pastors/leaders who supported Trump will need to speak to and address the matter in their congregations. It will be difficult to find words. How might they prepare? Sometimes a template from the past is helpful. To that end, I offer my summary of a text by retired Mennonite pastor and conference leader Gustav Kraemer. (There is a nice entry on him in the Mennonite Encyclopedia,  GAMEO ). My summary is faithful to the German original, 1938. With only a few minor changes, it could be useful for the coming year. Adaptations are mostly in square brackets, with the key at the bottom of the post. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement!  In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...
Post a Comment
Read more

High Crimes and Misdemeanors: Mennonite Murders, Infanticide, Rapes and more

To outsiders, the Mennonite reality in South Russia appeared almost utopian—with their “mild and peaceful ethos.” While it is easy to find examples of all the "holy virtues" of the Mennonite community, only when we are honest about both good deeds and misdemeanors does the Russian Mennonite tradition have something authentic to offer—or not. Rudnerweide was one of a few Molotschna villages with a Mennonite brewery and tavern , which in turn brought with it life-style lapses that would burden the local elder. For example, on January 21, 1835, the Rudnerweide Village Office reported that Johann Cornies’s sheep farm manager Heinrich Reimer, as well as Peter Friesen and an employed Russian shepherd, came into the village “under the influence of brandy,” and: "…at the tavern kept by Aron Wiens, they ordered half a quart of brandy and shouted loudly as they drank, banged their glasses on the table. The tavern keeper objected asking them to settle down, but they refused and...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Flight to Moscow 1929

In 1926, my grandfather’s sister Justina Fast (b. 1896) and her husband Peter Görzen moved from Krassikow, Neu Samara (Soviet Union) to village no. 5 Dejewka, Orenburg. “We thought we would live our lives here with our children secure in the hands of God. But the times were becoming turbulent,” Justina recalled. In May 1929 they travelled back to Krassikow for Pentecost to visit with her mother, brothers and their families. But when they returned to their home, she writes, “… a large quota of grain was demanded of us. But we had nothing, and the harvest was not yet in. Then we heard that many were planning to move to Canada, including my three siblings with my mother, and my husband's three sisters too. My husband decided to go to Moscow first to see if it was possible and what was required for emigration. We made the decision to leave when the harvest was complete. At that time so many people were leaving [for Moscow], and early in September we sold everything we had. Only the b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Simple Refugee Wedding: My grandparents (1931)

My father was born less than a year after these 1931 wedding photos. Jacob Fast and Helen Janzen had been in Paraguay less than 8 months—see the MCC telegram—and tragedy had already struck both refugees families. Jacob’s first wife and a daughter became victims of the epidemic that ravaged the new colony of Fernheim in those first months. He was now a widower at age 39—with an infant and other children without a mother. Helene was single and 29 years old. Her mother too had died from the same epidemic; her father was partially crippled. They had come from southern Ukrainian community of Spat, Crimea; Fast was from Ural Mountains area in Russia where South Russian Mennonites had created a “daughter colony” a generation earlier.   Each had siblings who fled to Moscow in 1929 with them and who were accepted by Canada in 1930. My grandparents however were rejected—she was a single woman with frail parents; he was a man with an ill child. Perhaps in contexts like these the falli...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does it cost to settle a Refugee? Basic without Medical Care (1930)

In January 1930, the Mennonite Central Committee was scrambling to get 3,885 Mennonites out of Germany and settled somewhere fast. These refugees had fled via Moscow in December 1929, and Germany was willing only to serve as first transit stop ( note 1 ). Canada was very reluctant to take any German-speaking Mennonites—the Great Depression had begun and a negative memory of war resistance still lingered. In the end Canada took 1,344 Mennonites and the USA took none born in Russia. Paraguay was the next best option ( note 2 ). The German government preferred Brazil, but Brazil would not guarantee freedom from military service, which was a problem for American Mennonite financiers. There were already some conservative "cousins" from Manitoba in Paraguay who had negotiated with the government and learned through trial and error how to survive in the "Green Hell" of the Paraguayan Chaco. MCC with the assistance of a German aid organization purchased and distribute...
Post a Comment
Read more

Russian and Prussian Mennonite Participants in “Racial-Science,” 1930

I n December 1929, some 3,885 Soviet Mennonites plus 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists and seven Adventists were assisted by Germany to flee the Soviet Union. They entered German transit camps before resettlement in Canada, Brazil and Paraguay ( note 1 ) In the camps Russian Mennonites participated in a racial-biological study to measure their hereditary characteristics and “racial” composition and “blood purity” in comparison to Danzig-West Prussian, genetic cousins. In Germany in the last century, anthropological and medical research was horribly misused for the pseudo-scientific work referred to as “racial studies” (Rassenkunde). The discipline pre-dated Nazi Germany to describe apparent human differences and ultimately “to justify political, social and cultural inequality” ( note 2 ). But by 1935 a program of “racial hygiene” and eugenics was implemented with an “understanding that purity of the German Blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Creating a Spiritual Tradition: Nine Core Texts

Just before Mennonite immigration to Russia, Prussian leaders were feverishly translating the tradition from Dutch to German. In addition to the translations, a few other key pieces were also written and together these texts shaped the Russian Mennonite tradition. 1. In 1765 certain core writings of Menno Simons were selected, edited for brevity and focus, and translated into a first German edition by Johannes Deknatel ( note 1 ). 2. Hymnals: In 1780, Danzig Flemish Elder Hans van Steen with supporting ministers published (translated): A Spiritual Hymnal for General Edification, in which, besides David’s Psalms, a collection of specially selected old and new songs can be found . The Flemish had “always” worshiped in Dutch and as late as 1752 they had ordered 3,000 Dutch hymnals from Amsterdam. Two-thirds of the hymns in the Danzig hymnal were adopted from the Lutheran and Reformed tradition This was the second unique Mennonite hymnal in “the language of the land”; in 1767 Elbing an...
Post a Comment
Read more