“Removal of Old Testament Names” after the Trek, 1944

Or: How my Aunt Sara became an “Else”

I remember as a young adult hearing for the first time that my Aunt Sara’s name was officially “Else”. I was stunned to hear that story. No one had ever told us that!

After the “trek” out of Ukraine and upon naturalization as a German citizen in 1944, my 13-year-old Aunt Sara’s name was changed to “Else.” There are many similar examples. Another Mennonite Sara changed her “Jewish-sounding” name to “Agatha;” one Mennonite boy with the name David was given “the sturdy German” name “Albert;” an “Isaak” took the name “Georg;” and an “Abraham” the name “Gerhard” (note 1). Hundreds of Mennonites (minimally) had their “Old Testament names” changed upon naturalization.

With the annexation of western Poland in 1939, Nazi Germany began to remove Poles and Jews and to settle the new territory of Warthegau with "Germans". Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had said: “I want to create a blond province here” (note 2). In 1943-44 most of the 35,000 Mennonites from Ukraine were settled here as part of the plan to “Germanize” the rural areas. The Central Bureau for Immigration (Einwandererzentralstelle, EWZ) under Himmler with its “racial experts” was responsible for the racial evaluation and naturalization new resettlers.

My grandmother’s EWZ file includes the official form for changing the first name of the applicant, or a child of the applicant. Our family arrived in Warthegau on March 7 and completed their naturalization applications two months later. Changing her daughter Sara's first name is not something my grandmother would have done without some pressure or “coaching.” Her mother’s name was Sara, her sister’s name was Sara, and her daughter too was named Sara.

Recently I located the related document from the Chief of the Security Police and of the Security Service, Central Bureau for Immigration (EWZ):

Directive No. 4/44, “Regarding the Elimination of Old Testament and Communist Given Names in the Registration of Ethnic Germans from Russia,” March 13, 1944 (note 3).

The directive was written a week after the arrival of my grandmother’s family together with thousands more from Molotschna. Their many "undesired" Old Testament names had clearly caused a problem; Mennonites are mentioned twice in the directive.

“In Bible-believing resettler circles, especially among Mennonites, biblical first names are common, such as: Aaron, Abraham, … Benjamin, David, … Isaac, Jonathan, … Samuel. First names like: Elizabeth, … Maria, Michael, … may, however, be considered to have been Germanized, or rather still common for the time being.

It is desirable that these purely … Jewish-sounding first names, which are not to be considered as Germanized, be changed when [the resettlers] are registered by the Immigration Central Office. However, a forced change is to be avoided in consideration of religious feeling, especially among the Mennonites.

The head of the registration office must therefore point out to the head of the family unit that these … Jewish first names are undesirable in Germany and that the change is not only in the general interest, but also in the interest of the resettled person. If the resettler does not have a second first name, the first name of a German grandfather or grandmother is to be used in place of the undesirable first names in order to strengthen the clan consciousness, but the choice of the first name is to be left up to the resettler. It is to be made certain that only good German first names are selected. If the head of the family does not express a wish, the head of the registration office must make an appropriate suggestion.”

First, it is noteworthy that the Nazi regime recognized Mennonites—after years of religious repression under Stalin—not only as "Bible-believing" and as a unique Christian group, but also as one with significant "religious feeling." Even Nazi officials did not want to push too hard, too fast.

Second, it is important to see how names were politicized; there was a sanctioned list of first names for Jews in Nazi Germany as well. In cases where Jews had forenames other than those allowed, as of August 1938 they were required to adopt a second name for passports and identity papers; for women it was “Sarah” and for men “Israel” (note 4).

A list of recommended common German first names was distributed to offices in Warthegau in May as an addendum to the March directive, “so that German given names can be suggested to the resettlers when necessary” (note 5).

This is how my Aunt Sarah became “Else”.

What is the generational impact? No one called my aunt "Else" after the war though that remained her official name. Of my grandmother’s fourteen grandchildren, curiously, all but two of the names appear on the list of "recommended German given names": Arnold, Eduard, Elfrieda, Elvira, Erwin, Gerlinde, Hans, Harold, Helga, Ingrid, Reinhold and Waldemar. But there is no "Sara".

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. EWZ files for Helene Bräul (daughter Sara/Else), A3342-EWZ50-A073, 1946; Sara (Agatha) Penner, A3342-EWZ50-A056, 1282; see Dorothy Siebert, Whatever it takes, 2nd ed. (Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 2004), 35; cf. Doris L. Bergen, “Mourning, Mass Death and Gray Zone: The Ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe and World War II,” in Symbolic Loss: The Ambiguity of Mourning and Loss at Century’s End, edited by Peter Homans (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2000), 172 (names altered); Abraham (Gerhard) Arendt, A3342-EWZ50-A015, 716.

Note 2: Chef des Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamtes-SS Günther Pancke to Himmler, December 20, 1939, letter, Bundesarchiv NS 2/60, Blatt 4, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/d90b9bc3-f8d2-441d-af46-36a23b3a5d11/; also reported by SS-Sturmbannführer Künzel, December 12, 1939, Blatt 16. In this context Künzel quotes Hitler extensively on racial value from his Mein Kampf (1931, pp. 448f.).

Note 3: SS-Obersturmbannführer von Malsen, "Anordnung Nr. 4/44, Betr.: Beseitigung alttestamentarischer und kommunistischer Vornamen bei der Erfassung der Volksdeutschen aus Rußland (March 13, 1944)," from Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 69/401, pp. 81 to 81b, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/07e0520a-72c1-47bc-9084-966c35d84fa8/.

Note 4: For example, cf., https://www.lbi.org/1938projekt/detail/israel-and-sara/; https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-nazis-used-personal-names-to-spawn-the-holocaust-1.5818120.

Note 5: Regierungsrat Hahn, Addendum to “Anordnung Nr. 4/44, Betr.: Beseitigung alttestamentarischer und kommunistischer Vornamen (May 26, 1944)," idem, 82 to 82b.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fas.t, “‘Removal of Old Testament Names’ after the Trek, 1944,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 23, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/removal-of-old-testament-names-after.html.

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