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 length; higher quality with background music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VzkxGBCrdk.

Longer: "Material Nr. 1574," https://archiv-akh.de/filme?utf-8=%E2%9C%93&q=halbstadt#1.

Below is my translation of the film description (slightly edited):

"In the summer of 1943, film footage was shot in and around Halbstadt [central village and new name for Molotschna as a whole] to document the state of development and the deployment of the 'First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment' [three 'Mennonite' squadrons of ca. 750, plus one 'Lutheran/Catholic German' squadron]. After a long search, we were able to find the complete film reels (total running time over two hours) intact in a Ukrainian collection and acquire them for our archive.

According to the Nazis, the fertile area around Halbstadt was to be developed into a model settlement under German leadership, the goal of which was to secure the food supply for the Reich German population.

Shortly after the recordings were made, the inhabitants of Halbstadt were evacuated to the so-called Warthegau [German-annexed Poland]. Here they [two-thirds; 23,000] were overrun by the Red Army at the end of the war and deported back to Siberia and Kazakhstan.

With 57 villages, the Halbstadt Colony [=Molotschna] was the largest settlement founded by Mennonite settlers from West Prussia on the territory of present-day Ukraine ...

After the occupation of Halbstadt by the Wehrmacht [German Army; Oct. 1941] the so-called "Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment" was organized [March 1942] with volunteers [often with significant pressure]. The regiment was subordinate to the SS [part of Waffen-SS on Oct. 31, 1942]. One of [the squadrons] was based in Halbstadt [others in Prischib, Waldheim and Gnadenfeld; by this point combined at Tokmak]. The regiment had about ... [800-plus] cavalry, and was housed in an [munitions ?] factory in Tokmak. The men were assigned to harvesting operations [Fall 1941], partisan operations, and local security operations. In October 1943 [actually Spring 1944, after the Trek], the regiment was transferred en masse to [other divisions in Poland] ..."

[My notes in square brackets—ANF]

For more on the "First Ethnic German Waffen-SS Cavalry Regiment," see my post (forthcoming).

--Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Molotschna: The Final Months, Summer 1943,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 9, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/molotschna-final-months-summer-1943.html.

Comments

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 ...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog