Retrieving the “Lost Generation”: Heinrich Bräul, 1924-1945

Tens of thousands of Mennonites died prematurely in the 1930s and -40s under Stalin and Hitler. It is a loss to families and the larger Mennonite community not to record or learn from their stories. Without the dignity of a funeral or obituary, the risk that they become “dust in the wind” is real.

This is an obituary for my uncle. His is a difficult story; though he died a soldier around his twenty-first birthday, I want to piece that together with a few more episodes of his life in such a way, that his story can spur further thought about the larger Mennonite story in the twentieth century.

Heinrich Franz Bräul was born in 1924 in Marienthal, Molotschna. He was six when their small farm was collectivized. Their church in Pordenau—literally across the ditch that separated their yard from the neighbouring village—was shuttered in 1933 when he was nine. His younger brother Walter recalled their father’s determination to teach the children some scripture in the home on Sundays, but the fear of repression and reprisal was real. That same year at the height of the famine Heinrich’s sister Annie was born. With poor nutrition, she died days shy of her first birthday. The casket photograph shows a gaunt but generally healthy family in 1934, including Heinrich. We know his cousins in Schardau survived because of some aid from North America.Fear marked their family life; this peaked in 1937 with the Stalin purge. Many men were arrested, never to return. In November 1937, age 13, Heinrich witnessed the arrest of his father in their home and, unbeknownst to him, his father was shot a few weeks later.

His schooling was with communist teachers and their learning materials were explicitly anti-religious. For a time, the boys were in boarding school in Alexanderthal, about seven kilometers west of Marienthal. They were rebellious, especially after their fathers were taken. They knew they were deemed enemies of the state and acted accordingly. “We did whatever we could to cause trouble,” Walter recalled with a mix of pride and sadness in his lost youth (note 1). 

They had access to a very limited number of books. Each village administration office or hall had a “Red Cultural Corner” (Rote Ecke) with mostly communist literature in the Russian language. Joy in reading propaganda was limited, and there were only a few classics or novels. Heinrich’s cousin Hans Rehan recalled that they “were trained to be very patriotic for the Soviet Union” (note 2). All schoolchildren were required to participate in military drills and learn to march, handle guns and shoot. The youth did not play sports; “there is no place for them to socialize” and with lack of clothing and fear of spies “they lack all incentive to gather” (note 3).

Heinrich was seventeen when he and his brother Franz were sent to dig tank traps to impede the advancing German troops in early October 1941. His family and neighbours were rounded up ahead of the arrival; Soviet police on horseback came to each house, knocked on the window, and told the families to bake and cook and be prepared to evacuate the next evening. As they travelled across the steppe to the nearest train station at Nelgovka, German planes swooped over them so close that one could “count the pilot’s teeth,” as one Marienthaler recalled (note 4). The evacuees had to wait on an open field through the night. Heinrich’s sister recalled how her other brothers gathered the larger pieces of sheet metal for shelter from the station and grain elevator that had just been blown up (note 5).

Soon after the rail tracks were bombed, an advance group of three “finely dressed” German soldiers on motorcycles and side-cars arrived—“they looked to us as if they had arrived out of another world—so self-confident,” and they “greeted and addressed us as ‘comrades,’” Marienthaler Albert Dahl recalled—(a few years younger than Heinrich). “The soldiers were very good to us—our happiest hour,” Dahl commented (note 6). 

The German armies won the day. Heinrich and brother Franz returned to their village, and their family found a ransacked house and a German-allied Bulgarian officer with his horse in their living room!

After the first months of German occupation much changed—including a first traditional Christmas without fear. The entire ethnic German settlement area around the Molotschna River was renamed “Halbstadt” and placed under the control of the SS. The German population received priority health care, food, and clothing.

After five months of occupation and only weeks after Heinrich’s eighteenth birthday, on March 14, 1942, the newly appointed mayors informed villagers of the need for young volunteers from each village to train over three months as self-defense units. In the Gnadenfeld district of sixteen villages, about 150 of the “most suitable men” were recruited, including Heinrich and his older brother Franz Jr., their cousin Aron Bräul Jr., and Marienthal friend Heinrich Rempel (note 7). Those who volunteered did so “immediately and with pride,” Albert Dahl recalled, though they had little choice he thought. The Gnadenfeld squadron was not as large as the others because its surrounding villages had fewer men—“most had been taken by the Soviets” (note 8). They were housed in the former high school residence, and handed over to a lieutenant and two sergeants from the German forces for leadership and training (note 9).

On most Sundays, Heinrich with his brother, cousin, and friends were free to go home to Marienthal (with weapons), twenty-one kilometres south of Gnadenfeld (note 10). One night when the Gnadenfeld unit was on furlough, the entire contingent with horses and equipment stayed in Marienthal, and Heinrich and his brother Franz were responsible for the logistics. Their younger brother Walter, then fourteen-years old, remembered being awestruck by the event and by their strong and beautiful horses. All the young boys “were fascinated with anything to do with the soldiers and war—from rifles and weapons to motorcycles, tanks and trucks going through” (note 11).

After three months of training, the First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment was sworn in at a solemn evening ceremony in Halbstadt in June 1942. The men pledged to fight and if necessary sacrifice their lives for Führer, Volk and Fatherland. Eighty years later it is hard to fully understand or to judge. Heinrich had been schooled with a Marxist worldview and terrorized by Stalin, and now retrained in a National Socialist worldview under a regime that honoured them and their families—all before his nineteenth birthday.

With the visit of Reichminister-SS Himmler in October 1942, the entire cavalry regiment was absorbed into the Waffen-SS (more in another post).

One year later, with the evacuation of ethnic Germans from Ukraine in September 1943, Heinrich’s regiment was deployed to accompany the refugee wagons along the escape route. In the first two weeks Heinrich’s sister Lenchen became very ill, and with their Aunt Tina she arrived in Alexanderstadt where Heinrich with brother Franz were now stationed. Lenchen died here on September 28, 1943, only fifteen days after leaving Marienthal. She was eight years old. 

Heinrich borrowed a bicycle from his cavalry unit and received permission to leave Alexanderstadt to find and inform his mother and siblings that Lenchen had died. He rode about a hundred kilometres through day and night, according to bother Walter. Franz, the eldest in the family, stayed back and made a casket for his sister. Because temperatures were still very warm even into October, they had put Lenchen in a cellar morgue until the family could gather. Most of the young soldiers from the Gnadenfeld squadron attended the funeral.

One of the key tasks of the cavalry regiment along the next stages of the trek was to ensure order, help repair broken wheels of stranded wagons, exchange exhausted horses with fresh ones from peasants (note 12), find proper provisions and lodging for the night, and especially to protect the refugees from attacks by resistance fighters who sought to tie down the German military effort and disrupt communications. This non-traditional, protective role was considered a less “honourable” form of combat by more specialized units, and usually left to the Volksdeutsche units. The forests “were infested with partisans” (note 13), while most of the young Molotschna cavalry members had never even seen a forest before.

At the end of the long trek, but before transport to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau), Heinrich’s mother became very ill. Late one evening in January with a high fever, headache and severe toothache, she was told that another person would be assigned to share their small space in the Ukrainian household. Helene was upset and protested that there was no room left to share. And then the new billet walked through the door: it was Heinrich! Walter remembers how his mother’s pains “disappeared at once.” Heinrich was able to stay with them for a short furlough.

In these days Helene saw one of the other young Mennonite lads in the visiting cavalry squadron treating the Ukrainian hosts with disdain. Helene knew this person since he was born and was angry; she pulled Heinrich aside and told him in no uncertain terms that these were kind people and he and the others were to be respectful to their hosts (note 14). Moreover she reminded Heinrich not to forget to pray. For a moment Heinrich was offered a moral lifeline out of the terrible world in which he was so deeply implicated.

The Molotschna-based First Ethnic German (Volksdeutsche) Cavalry Regiment was partially dismantled in April 1944 upon arrival in Krakow, about 40 kilometres from where they had crossed the Ukrainian-Polish border (note 15). One hundred and eighty from this number were sent to Warsaw as part of the SS Cavalry Division “Florian Geyer.” The group stayed in Warsaw for ten days in May 1944, and was then sent in box cars through Moravia and Pressburg (Bratislava) to the division’s new headquarters at Frankenstadt (Baja) on the Danube. They were housed in Szeged, near the present Hungarian border to Serbia and Croatia (note 16).

The larger “Florian Geyer” division had approximately 13,000 men in 1944; forty percent of the division was comprised of soldiers from various ethnic German groups outside the Reich. The division had three regiments and each regiment had six squadrons.

At this point, “our morale was still very high,” as Hans Fast recalled, and “no one thought that within a year almost all of us would be wiped out” (note 17). Throughout the summer they were focused on training and slept outside in tents with occasional leave on Sundays.

“One weekend we were invited to visit a village of merry Swabians. Each family was assigned one soldier … They were fine people, wine-growers. … In the evening there was a dance, and things got very lively. Because we Mennonites didn’t dance, I had never learned to do so. My excuse was that I had sprained my foot. Liese Kirsch felt very sorry for me.” (Note 18)

Many of these young Mennonites became members of the 2nd Squadron Armoured Vehicle Reconnaissance Unit No. 8 attached to the 8th Cavalry-Division Florian Geyer (note 19).

By late summer of 1944 the unit was deemed battle ready and transported to an area near Hermannstadt in the Germanic Siebenbürger Sachsen region in Transylvania, Romania, where the Red Army was making in-roads. Reconnaissance or “scouting” units rarely engaged in open battle but operated ahead of the main division—sometimes twenty to forty kilometres into “enemy territory”—to collect data and information to determine the actions and intensions of the opposing army. Hans Fast talked about their work:

“I usually had tracer bullets with me, and in the evening I would always set fire to a haystack in the village. The village would then be completely lit up, and every movement by the Russians would be clearly visible.  … [Another] night a scouting party of six men was organized … and off we went through the no man’s land into the village. We surrounded the target house and quickly searched it, but the Russians had changed their position. … Our mission was complete, and so we returned safely to our company.” (Note 20)

Heinrich and brother Franz were placed in the same reconnaissance unit. Whereas Franz was a medic, Heinrich drove an amphibious all-wheel-drive vehicle or Schwimmwagen (note 21). On one event around the middle of September 1944, as Hans Fast recalled, forty small amphibious vehicles took the division “over hill and dale,” with four men and equipment per vehicle. They managed to take a key hill at 1 AM with few casualties on their side, though they were outnumbered one to ten. All of the next day, however, “the Russians paid us back dearly with their artillery.” After two weeks, only about twenty-five of the original 150 men remained: “half had been killed and the other half wounded. … I felt as though we were a flock of sheep being brought to the slaughterhouse” (note 22). Heinrich’s cousin Aron Bräul, who survived the war and later the time as a POW in the Soviet Union, recalled that Heinrich always seemed to be incredibly resourceful and was often able to get good food and dry clothing to the men in his unit under extremely dangerous conditions.

On September 27, 1944 brother Franz was wounded in the historically German village of Lechnitz (Lechinta), Romania. In these weeks Heinrich and Franz remained with their unit as the Soviets roared through Romania to the Hungarian border (note 23). The “Florian Geyer” division was ordered to hold the Romanian-Hungarian border. “We soldiers knew now that our moment of truth had come and that our situation was hopeless but no one showed it. We sang our songs and did our duty just as if things were at their best. … The enemy concentrated his artillery fire on us … Even old soldiers claimed not to have experienced such heavy fire” (note 24). One comrade from Heinrich’s home village, Heinrich H. Rempel, died in the Romanian battle on October 23, 1944 (note 25).

The Soviet Red Army continued its assault, reaching the outskirts of Budapest in November 1944, and by December the 8th Cavalry Division was locked into Budapest where it suffered very heavy losses. The last correspondence by Heinrich to family members was in December 1944 (see card to his youngest sibling, my mother).

Heinrich Bräul died in the Battle of Budapest. If he reached the age of twenty-one on February 11, 1945, it was the most hopeless of birthdays imaginable. On that day the survivors of his division attempted a last-ditch breakout through the encircling Red Army lines. Budapest had been surrounded for months and the German army was virtually without supplies. Fewer than 200 men from a division which once boasted 13,000 survived to fight the final two months (note 26). Roughly 800,000 German soldiers fought in Hungary between 1944 and 1945, and 54,000 German soldiers lost their lives in and around Budapest. The largest military cemetery is in Budaörs where over 14,000 fallen German soldiers lie. There are a further fifteen smaller German military cemeteries in Hungary with a total of 35,000 graves.

Heinrich’s brother Franz survived but would die prematurely in a Soviet POW camp. Fast notes that their “brave young division commander, Joachim Rumohr, who was thirty-four at the time, was badly wounded and took his own life” (note 27).

Above I have attempted to give a face to one Russian Mennonite, German soldier--my uncle. I still struggle with the task of how he should be remembered. Barely given the time to grow up, and tragically like his brothers with no experience of any period of life that could be called normal, they were plucked from their family and villages and thrown into ideological extremes and brutal warfare. No doubt grave sins were committed by these young men systematically trained by the SS before they were extinguished in the abyss of the Russian Front. 

In the confusion of the times and without fathers or agents of memory as role models and guides, many lost their direction, and impossible things were done. Survivors were the first to admit that they were “the lost generation.” Did Heinrich remember to pray, the way his mother—my grandmother—would teach me decades later? I have little doubt that authentic, profound faith could be born here with nothing more than Christ’s own last words, uttered while hanging half-dead on a wooden military cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (note 28). 

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Interview with author.

Note 2: Johann Rehan, “Etwas aus der Vergangenheit” (1992/1995), 6. In author’s possession.

Note 3: “Gnadental (Barotow), May 1942,” VII.f., p. 4 (269b); “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” R6/623, file 182. State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.aewrchives.gov.ua/deutsch/.

Note 4: Selma Kornelsen Hooge and Anna Goossen Kornelsen, Life Before Canada (Abbotsford, BC: Self-published, 2018), 50.

Note 5: Hooge and Kornelsen tell the same story (Life Before Canada, 52).

Note 6: Albert Dahl, interview with author, July 26, 2017.

Note 7: Cf. Eduard [Abram] Reimer, Memoir, pp. 58f. Unpublished (n.d.). From Mennonite Heritage Archives, Gerhard Lohrenz Fonds, 60, no. 63, vol. 3333. See partial English translation under pseudonym Eduard [Jacob] Allert, “The Lost Generation,” in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz, 9–128 (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982). On Heinrich Rempel, see Hooge and Kornelsen, Life Before Canada, 57. For reference to Aron Aron Bräul, cf. the Einwandererzentralstelle (EWZ) file for Katharina Unruh Bräul, A3342-EWZ50-A073 2002.

Note 8: Reimer, Memoir, p. 60.

Note 9: Walter Jansen and Linda Jansen. Our Stories, translated and edited by Walfried Jansen (Winnipeg, MB, 2010), 42. From Mennonite Heritage Archives, Walter and Linda Jansen Fonds, 1946–2009, vol. 5477–5478, 5691.For the Gnadenfeld unit, Jansen mentions SS Senior Storm Leader Wendorf, SS Lieutenant Batlehner and SS Senior Squad Leader Buss (ibid., 43).

Note 10: Cf. Jacob A. Neufeld, Tiefenwege: Erfahrungen und Erlebnisse von Russland-Mennoniten in zwei Jahrzehnten bis 1949 (Virgil, ON: Niagara, 1958), 100; also Allert, “Lost Generation,” 51. See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/easter-and-molotschnas-first-ethnic.html. 

Note 11: Hooge and Kornelsen, Life Before Canada, 57.

Note 12: Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 70.

Note 13: David MacKenzie and Michael W. Curran, Russia and the USSR in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997), 273.

Note 14: Katharine Bräul Fast, interview with author, January 28, 2007.

Note 15: Cf. Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 75.

Note 16: Cf. Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 70; 75. Fast gives the final destination as the nearby city of Szegzad.

Note 17: Cf. Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 75.

Note 18: Cf. Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 77.

Note 19: Cf. Charles Trang, Florian Geyer Division (Heimdal: Casemate, 2001). This was originally a non-elite unit for anti-partisan warfare in the rear areas of the German Army, yet one which when thrust into “frontline service against the regular Soviet Army, proved itself, imbued with the S.S. ethos, to be more than equal to its adversaries,” as one reviewer writes. Further it notes that as the years went by, and with the influx of young Reichsdeutsche volunteers and Volksdeutsche conscripts trained in German arms, “the unit turned itself into a first rate, horse drawn unit with reputation and prowess to match.”

Note 20: Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 78.

Note 21: This information comes from his brother Walter Bräul. For a complete description and photographs of the German military Schwimmwagen, see for example Chris Bishop, ed., “Schwimmwagen,” The Encyclopedia of Weapons of World War II (New York: MetroBooks, 2002), 72.

Note 22: Cf. Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 79.

Note 23: For a detailed first-hand account by fellow Mennonite soldier, cf. Allert, “The Lost Generation,” ch. 6.

Note 24: Allert, “Lost Generation,” 74.

Note 25: Hooge and Kornelsen, Life Before Canada, 57; GRanDMA #741446.

Note 26: Cf. Allert, “The Lost Generation,” ch. 7. A standard work on German army units of this period is Georg Tessin, Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS im Zweiten Weltkrieg 1939–1945 (Osnabrück: Biblio, 1973).

Note 27: Fast and Fast, Two Lives, One Faith, 82.

Note 28: Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46.

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To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Retrieving the 'Lost Generation': Heinrich Bräul, 1924-1945," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 18, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/retrieving-lost-generation-heinrich.html.