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

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

Mennonites in Danzig's Suburbs: Maps and Illustrations

Mennonites first settled in the Danzig suburb of Schottland (lit: "Scotland"; “Stare-Szkoty”; also “Alt-Schottland”) in the mid-1500s. “Danzig” is the oldest and most important Mennonite congregation in Prussia. Menno Simons visited Schottland and Dirk Phillips was its first elder and lived here for a time. Two centuries later the number of families from the suburbs of Danzig that immigrated to Russia was not large: Stolzenberg 5, Schidlitz 3, Alt-Schottland 2, Ohra 1, Langfuhr 1, Emaus 1, Nobel 1, and Krampetz 2 ( map 1 ). However most Russian Mennonites had at least some connection to the Danzig church—whether Frisian or Flemish—if not in the 1700s, then in 1600s. Map 2  is from 1615; a larger number of Mennonites had been in Schottland at this point for more than four decades. Its buildings are not rural but look very Dutch urban/suburban in style. These were weavers, merchants and craftsmen, and since the 17th century they lived side-by-side with a larger number of Jews a...
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 ...
1 comment
Read more

Why Danzig and Poland?

In the late 16th century, Poland became a haven for a variety of non-conformists which included Jews, Anti-Trinitarians from Italy and Bohemia, Quakers and Calvinists from Great Britain, south German Schwenkfelders, Eastern Orthodox, Armenian, and Greek Catholic Christians, some Muslim Tatars, as well as other peaceful sectarians like the Dutch and Flemish Anabaptists. Unlike the Low Countries and most of western Europe, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was a “state without stakes,” and as such fittingly described as “God’s playground” ( note 1 ). In the view of 17th-century Dutch dramatist Joost van den Vondel, it was “the ‘Promised Land,’ where the refugee could forget all his sorrow and enjoy the richness of the land” ( note 2 ). Over the next two centuries an important strand of Mennonite life and spirituality evolved into a mature tradition in this relatively hospitable context ( note 3 ). Anabaptists from the Low Countries began to arrive in Danzig and region as early as 15...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fraktur (or Gothic) font and Kurrent- (or Sütterlin) handwriting: Nazi ban, 1941

In the middle of the war on January 1, 1942, the Winnipeg-based Mennonitische Rundschau published a new issue without the familiar Fraktur script masthead ( note 1 ). One might speculate on the reasons, but a year earlier Hitler banned the use of the font in the Reich . The Rundschau did not exactly follow all orders from Berlin—the rest of the paper was in Fraktur (sometimes referred to as "Gothic"); when the war ended in 1945, the Rundschau reintroduced the Fraktur font for its masthead. It wasn’t until the 1960s that an issue might have a page or title here or there with the “normal” or Latin font, even though post-war Germany was no longer using Fraktur . By 1973 only the Rundschau masthead is left in Fraktur , and that is only removed in December 1992. Attached is a copy of Nazi Party Secretary Martin Bormann's official letter dated January 3, 1941, which prohibited the use of Fraktur fonts "by order of the Führer. " Why? It was a Jewish invention, apparent...
1 comment
Read more

The Beginnings: Some Basics

The sixteenth-century ancestors of Russian Mennonites were largely Anabaptists from the Low Countries. Because their new vision of church called for voluntary membership marked by adult baptism upon confession of faith, they became one of the most persecuted groups of the Protestant Reformation ( note 1 ). For a millennium re-baptism ( a na -baptism) had been considered a heresy punishable by death ( note 2 ), and again in 1529 the Imperial Diet of Speyer called for the “brutal” punishment for those who did not recognize infant baptism. Many of the earliest Anabaptist cells were found in Belgium and The Netherlands--part of the larger Habsburg Empire ruled after 1555 by “the Most Catholic of Kings,” Philip II of Spain. The North Sea port cities of the Low Countries had some limited freedoms and were places for both commercial and cultural exchange; ships arrived daily not only from other Hanseatic League like Danzig, but also from Florence, Venice and Genoa, the Americas and the Far Ea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ideas for Educational Reform, 1832

After four decades in Russia, the president of the Guardianship Committee for Foreign Colonists, Andrei Fadeev, considered only eight of 116 Mennonite teachers in the two larger regions of Katerynoslav and Tauria—which included the Molotschna—fit to teach ( note 1 ). Jakob Bräul’s Rudnerweide schoolhouse was given the same status as Heinrich Heese’s Ohrloff Agricultural Society School with regard to policies and “especially for the teaching of Russian” ( note 2 ). Fadeev triggered great angst when by “imperial decree” he distributed a book to church elders written by German Mennonite Abraham Hunzinger on the modernization of Mennonite schools and church. It was a friendly gesture and poke. The Molotschna was already a tinderbox, and this spark introduced by a state official to strengthen the community ignited a fire in the colony. Fadeev wrote to Johann Cornies on January 12, 1832: “Most valued Cornies ... I advise you to acquire and read a booklet sent to your church leaders f...
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

Russo-Japanese War and the Mennonite Response, 1904-05

In February 1904, Russia declared war on Japan and Mennonite congregations sent the Tsar messages of loyalty, love and prayers. The large Lichtenau-Petershagen-Schönsee congregation in the Mennonite Molotschna Colony in today’s Ukraine led by 80-year-old Elder (Bishop) Jakob Töws expressed its “deep loyalty and love for the throne and the Fatherland” ( note 1 ). Similarly, the Mennonite Chortitza congregation declared that Mennonites bow “humbly before the Imperial Majesty with most faithful love and devotion,” and “together with all faithful subjects send their most passionate prayers and supplications to the Most High, that He may extend his mighty hand over the beloved Tsar and the Russian people, and that peace may soon be returned” ( note 2 ). The Einlage Mennonite Brethren congregation offered a similar statement, “inspired by feelings of boundless dedication to the Sovereign Fatherland,” with “passionate prayers” for the Tsar and Fatherland, based on 1 Timothy 2:1–4 ( note 3 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

When Singing becomes Urgent: Survival and Salvation through Music

Singing: survival and salvation 1) Language change, 1767, Danzig : Flemish Elder Hans van Steen published A Spiritual Hymnal for General Edification, designed also for private and family settings to “awaken devotion and edification,” and in particular for the youth—that they may “not use it out of mere habit, but rather for the true uplifting of the heart” ( note 1 ). 2) Revivalism, 1850s . The influence of Eduard Wüst--revivalist minister installed by nearby separatist Evangelical Brethren--on the Mennonites was “boundless,” according to State Councillor E. H. Busch. “Satan is not entitled to present his own as the most joyful.” His people “sing, jump, leap ( hüpfen ) and dance,” while the Christian appears “cheerless and stooped over. … Why, when one opens a song book, are hymns about the cross and affliction chosen almost instinctively instead of songs of praise and thanksgiving? Isn’t the devil also having his fun in all of this?” Mennonite Brethren historian P.M. Friesen called ...
Post a Comment
Read more