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 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

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state.  Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval .  The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 )...
Post a Comment
Read more