Skip to main content

Typhus Reports and Gratitude to the Führer: Black Sea German Resettler Camps, 1944

When thousands of Mennonites were evacuated from Molotschna to German-annexed Poland in 1944, they travelled the final leg by train to Litzmannstadt (Łódź), where they entered the Reich. After delousing and an initial screening, they took the train again to the districts in which they would be settled. Upon arrival the paramilitary SA helped them unload the wagons. Resettlers typically received bread and butter, coffee and a soup, and basic health care from the German Red Cross. Schools, firehalls or warehouses were used for refugees until the quarantine period expired. Their luggage was normally locked up for 21 days for delousing.

On Heinrich Himmler’s direct orders, the resettler camps were given the status of “convalescent camps,” which entitled resettlers to twenty percent more rations than average Germans (note 1)—and much more than Poles. In the camps the adults and youth were also fed a steady stream of political and racial lectures to fill their time, and provided with nationalistic newspapers and journals.

In the safety and leisure of the camps, the children processed their grief and trauma in their own way. My six-year-old mother remembers playing together with other girls outside one afternoon; each girl buried her doll in the dirt and together they enacted a funeral with much pretend-crying—just as they had witnessed earlier on the train trip.

The “Black Sea Germans,” as they were called, arrived in “fairly good health and with relatively good teeth,” according to medical reports. However lice, rickets and scabies, tuberculosis and trachoma were not uncommon. Rickets was very common among the youngest children because of the three-month trek, and almost all were undernourished and underdeveloped. Forty percent of the resettler hospitalizations were children with stubborn, feverish bronchitis (note 2). Typically, the resettlers could bathe once a week; tea and coffee were always available so that they would not drink the water.

Children aged two to fourteen were immunized with typhus-paratyphus-cholera vaccine (note 3). In some cases, vaccines for spotted-fever typhus, scarlet fever and diphtheria were also administered, especially where there was risk of epidemic (note 4).

Provisional hospital rooms were set up in each camp to isolate the sick under the personal care of local doctors, with multiple visits per week. Pharmaceuticals were available; very ill children were brought to city hospitals.

In a previous post I noted that Käthe Heinrichs age 15 from Franztal, Molotschna, was ill with typhus fever upon arriving in Warthegau in March 1944. German medical officials immediately hospitalized her. Family members feared she would die (note 5).

Between January 1 and May 25, 1944, the Warthegau accepted some 140,000 Russian Germans, with some 200 cases of Fleckfieber (note 6). "Spotted fever" was a highly infectious and potentially deadly form of typhus transmitted by lice, especially in places where large numbers of people lived in poor hygienic conditions.

A surviving medical file shows that almost ten percent of the Fleckfieber cases were among Mennonites connected with the village of Franztal (Molotschna).

One of the “Black Sea German nurses” reported that on the Ukrainian border, this group of Franztalers was billeted in a village “where typhus was prevalent. When they were to be transported to Germany, their wish to transport the sick separately could not be granted. The healthy and the sick were loaded together in one transport train.”

“In Lemberg and Litzmannstadt, patients with typhus were unloaded," and the rest went on to Pakosch/Hohensalza, Warthegau, Camp I. “The group arrived in a considerably lice-infested condition. Under these circumstances, the occurrence of typhus was inevitable.”

The files show the high priority German officials put in public health for the ethnic German resettlers. Horrible but true—the care was racially based. Wards for Poles were cleared and cleaned to care for the ethnic German resettlers (note 7).

The following reports are on the Franztal cases (note 8):

March 23, 1944 Report, Hohensalza

  • Maria Brauer, age 37 (Franztal; EWZ/GRanDMA #406409, born Dec. 30, 1907)
  • Elisa Becker, age 43 (Franzthal; EWZ/GRanDMA #173788, born Sudermann June 30, 1901)
  • Heinrich Dück, age 7 (Franztal; GRanDMA #318993; mother below)
  • Agathe Klassen, age 64 (no information on maiden name/ place of birth)
  • Lena Dück, age 14 (Franztal; GRanDMA #339928, born Sept. 15, 1929; mother below)

"Arrived ill on March 11, 1944. All were admitted to hospital in Strelno. Strict camp lockdown, delousing of the entire transport (200 persons plus luggage) at the Hohensalza army delousing facility and transfer to a second camp in Pakosch. Disinfection of the 1st reception camp."

March 25, 1944 Report Litzmannstadt

  • Lena Dück, age 34 (Lived in Franztal; “Brauer” EWZ/GRanDMA #406408)

"Became ill on March 3; Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi; Ethnic German Liaison Office) was notified in Litzmannstadt but further precautions could not be arranged."

March 30 Report (Mogilno)

  • Elisa [Luise] Becker, age 20 (Franztal; EWZ/ GRanDMA #1414187, born Oct. 4, 1923)

"Became sick during transport in Pakosch. On March 11 immediately transferred to district hospital in Strelno. Died short time later."

April 7, 1944, Report

  • Nikolai Pauls, age 14 (Franztal; EWZ/GRanDMA #1006253, born Aug. 3, 1929)
  • Peter Janzen, age 18 (Franztal; EWZ/ GRanDMA #1074285, born June 24, 1926)
  • Anna Pauls, age 7 (Franztal; EWZ)
  • Heinrich Harms, age 6 (Franztal; EWZ, GRanDMA #1231195, born Oct. 3, 1937)
  • Tina Ediger, age 14 (Franztal; EWZ, GRanDMA #1074904, born Sept. 19, 1929)
  • Tina Pauls, age 15 Franztal; EWZ, born Sept. 16, 1928 [likely GRanDMA #1006235])
  • Jacob Pauls, age 2½ (Franztal; EWZ, born Feb. 5, 1941)
  • Johann Harms, age 15 (Franztal; EWZ /GRanDMA #1231196, Oct. 5, 1930)

April 8, 1944 Report, Hohensalza, Regarding 8 further Fleckfieber cases in the Pakosch Camp, Mogilne District.

  • Contact infection from previously reported cases;
  • Lockdown of camp in place until further notice;
  • On-going inspections revealed no more lice infestations, so no further delousing was carried out;
  • Allegedly persons suspected of having typhus had already been unloaded from this transport in Litzmannstadt, without any measures being taken regarding the further transport.
  • Security guards were provided by the district commissar. A second general delousing took place on March 20, 1944; ongoing delousing is established at the site.
  • Sick are segregated in the Strelno Hospital; all suspected cases are admitted to a separate infirmary in Pakosch under the supervision of a German Red Cross nurse and constant care by the camp doctor.
  • 9 to 16 cases of the illness at the site since mid-March

April 18, 1944 Report, Hohensalza.

  • "10 more cases of typhus among Black Sea Germans, 2 of whom have died. ... The last suspected case was transferred 11 days ago from the camp to the infirmary for typhus patients established locally. There are still 8 cases in the infirmary, which … are probably mild cases of typhus."
  • One older woman, between 70 and 80 years old, is not expected to survive. ... The confirmed positive cases are isolated in the district hospital in Strelno.
  • Camp I is occupied by 210 persons; at present no sick or suspected sick persons in the camp. Remains under lockdown.
  • The residents are given opportunity to wash their clothes on a regular basis and to bathe once a week.
  • The disinfectors inspect the camp every 2nd day for lice … spot checks are made for lice infestation. Clothing lice were not found, not even in furs. No head lice were found either, only dead nits.

April 22, 1944 Report, Camp Pakosch

  • Liese Pauls, age 52 (Sparrau; likely EWZ/GRanDMA #34680, born March 18, 1888, Warkentin)
  • Maria Pauls, age 15 (Franztal, EWZ, born June 12, 1928; not in GRanDMA)
  • Lilli Papke, age 7 (Franztal, EWZ, born June 17, 1936)
  • David Abrams, age 17 (Franztal, EWZ / GRanDMA #1203946, born Feb 18, 1927)
  • Beuse [Boese?], Lina, age 15 (unclear)
  • Anna Janzen, age 32 (unclear)
  • Kornelius Pauls, age 18, also typhus (Franztal, EWZ /GRanDMA, #162858, born Aug. 6, 1926).
  • Tina Giesbrecht, age 17, also typhus (Franztal, EWZ / GRanDMA #1443517, born Dec. 22, 1926)

Four of the ill individuals above were admitted to an isolation room in Pakosch (location of refugee camp); five were brought to the district hospital in Strelno. They were infected by others in the group.”

After receiving exceptional medical care, they were ready to settle and become naturalized citizens of the German Reich. One younger mother in our larger family wrote an extended poem that captured the mood and ideological commitments of the resettlers, and new pride in citizenship. Here is a summary:

"[Occupation] Now they [German Mennonites] too could experience the benefit of civil rights. They who were once without protection had now come under the Führer’s care. [Evacuation/Trek] Suddenly one heard it ringing: the Führer’s voice calling us back into the Reich! He would not abandon them to the Bolshevik’s claws. The journey back was very arduous as only those involved can know. Without caskets, many children and old alike were buried on the along the way. Over six months they traveled, from homeland [motherland] to homeland [fatherland]. Exhausted and very tired this large flock arrived to its new abode. [Naturalization ceremony] By the Führer’s great flag everyone here today swears proudly to be loyal subjects—proud of the swastika banner." (Note 9)

Gertrude Bräul Penner's poetic history—freely written and without compulsion—was penned in April and early May 1944, in the same months as the EWZ Central Immigration Office (Einwandererzentralstelle) was naturalizing the Mennonite resettlers.

In many of these EWZ files resettler Mennonite women signed with "Heil Hitler!"--perhaps strategically, perhaps as a formality, but perhaps with the enthusiasm of captured in Penner’s poem (note 10). The poem suggests that not a few Mennonites directed their feelings of gratitude and hope not just toward God, but also and explicitly toward the Führer and the Swastika with all it represented.

Diaries and primary source documents like these fill out the otherwise selective recollections of memoirs—the things people "want" to remember and pass on. Primary documents allow us to understand our Mennonites of this era more fully—their physical and mental health, their strengths and temptations, and their experiences and conversions. That too is legacy.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast 

---Notes---

Note 1: Valdis O. Lumans, Hitler’s Auxiliaries: The Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and the German National Minorities of Europe, 1933–1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 193.

Note 2: Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche. Der Reichsstatthalter im Reichsgau Wartheland Posen (GK 62) / Namiestnik Rzeszy w Okręgu Kraju Warty, no. 100; see nos. 76, 109. From Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives Poland; NAC), 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1978. https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049367.

Note 3: Unterbringung 89, 97, 34.

Note 4: Unterbringung, nos. 101 and 46.

Note 5: See previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/warthegau-nazism-and-two-15-year-old.html.

Note 6: Unterbringung, 254.

Note 7: Transport Niemców znad Morza Czarnego na teren Kraju Warty [Transport of Germans from the Black Sea to the Wartheland], no. 136. From NAC, 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1979, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049368.

Note 8: From: Meldung über Fleckfiebererkrankung in Lagern der Schwarzmeerdeutschen, 1944. Namiestnik Rzeszy w Okręgu Kraju Warty – Poznań, 53/299/0/2.2/2003. From Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049392. GRanDMA numbers =Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry, California Mennonite Historical Society; EWZ =Einwandererzentralstelle naturalization files).

Note 9 (and pic): Poem completed May 5, 1944 in Sassenfeld, Dietfurt, Warthegau. In "Gertrude Penner Diary" (1944), from Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College. https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/sa_1_201.pdf.

Note 10: Sample Einwandererzentrale (Central Immigration Office =EWZ) files: These two examples are from: EWZ50-A056, 1282 to 1306: Sara/ Agatha Penner, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pschn21.pdf; and EWZ50-A0Not56-0800 to 0820: Margarethe Janzen (nee Penner), https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/pschn19.pdf. National Archives Collection Microfilm Publication A3342, Series EWZ. Washington, DC.

(Sample newspaper clips) “Der Ring eines langen Weges schließt sich. Im Reichsgau Wartheland grüßt die Schwarzmeerdeutschen die alte deutsche Heimat,” Ostdeutscher Beobachter 6, no. 74 (March 15, 1944), 3, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125855/edition/134991/content. Also: “Schwarzmeerdeutsche kehren heim,” Ostdeutscher Beobachter 6, no. 34 (February 4, 1944), 3, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125675/edition/134951/content.

For context:

Esau, Katharina Heinrichs. “So bleibt es nicht. Erinnerungen aus meiner Kindheit [bis 1945].” 2002. In author’s possession.

Friesen, Katie. Into the Unknown. Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986.

Neufeld, Jacob A. Path of Thorns: Soviet Mennonite Life under Communist and Nazi Rule. Edited by H. L. Dyck, translated by H. L. Dyck and S. Dyck. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Typhus Reports and Gratitude to the Führer: Black Sea German Resettler Camps, 1944," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 25,  2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/typhus-reports-and-gratitude-to-fuhrer.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps ( Umsiedler-Lager ) around Exin ( Kcynia ) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt ( Żnin ), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode ( Słupowiec ), Schwarzerde ( Malice ), Schmiedebach, etc. ( note 1) . Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig ( Gdańsk ) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin. Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” ( note 2) . Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily. Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec) , near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for ...
Post a Comment
Read more

More Royal News! Mennonites give gifts of “Oxen, Butter, Ducks, Hens & Cheese” to new King (1772)

What do Mennonites offer a new king? The ritual ceremonies of homage to a new European king—as we see on TV these days--are ancient. Exactly 250 years yesterday, Frederick the Great became king over Mennonites in the Vistula River Delta where most of our ancestors lived. Here is how that played out. On May 31, 1772, Heinrich Donner was elected elder of the Orlofferfelde Mennonite Church, 25 km north of Marienburg Castle in Polish-Prussia; thankfully he kept a diary ( note 1 ). Only a few months later the weak Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth collapsed and was partitioned by powerful, land-hungry neighbours: Austria, Prussia and Catherine the Great’s empire. In the preceding decades Mennonites had lived with significant autonomy, felt secure under the Polish crown and could appeal to the king for protection . Now some 2,638 Mennonite families were under Prussian rule. Frederick II took possession of his new lands on September 13, and then invited four persons of nobility plus clergy from ...
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

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

From USSR to Cherrywood Station: Mennonites winter in Markham-Stouffville, 1924

On September 26, 1924, 126 Russian Mennonite passengers disembarked the S. S. Melita at Quebec City ( note 1 ). They were among some 20,000 Mennonites who could immigrate to Canada from the Soviet Union in the 1920s. A number of these families received train cards to Cherrywood (Pickering) and Locust Hill (Markham) stations, where they were received by Markham area Mennonites. The Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization (CMBC) registration forms record each family's travel dates as well as their "first place of arrival" in Canada. The attached artifacts—a few pages from the financial records booklet kept by Markham-Stouffville treasurer J. L. Grove, plus some correspondence—profile concretely the level of support of this community north-east of Toronto for co-religionists fleeing the Soviet Union. Mennonites in Ontario had been well informed of the relief needs in Russia since 1921 and plans for mass immigration ( note 2 ). In April 1924 the local Stouffville Tribune ...
Post a Comment
Read more

“The way is finally open”—Russian Mennonite Immigration, 1922-23

In a highly secretive meeting in Ohrloff, Molotschna on February 7, 1922, leaders took a decision to work to remove the entire Mennonite population of some 100,000 people out of the USSR—if at all possible ( note 1 ). B.B. Janz (Ohrloff) and Bishop David Toews (Rosthern, SK) are remembered as the immigration leaders who made it possible to bring some 20,000 Mennonites from the Soviet Union to Canada in the 1920s ( note 2 ). But behind those final numbers were multiple problems. In August 1922, an appeal was made by leaders to churches in Canada and the USA: “The way is finally open, for at least 3,000 persons who have received permission to leave Russia … Two ships of the Canadian Pacific Railway are ready to sail from England to Odessa as soon as the cholera quarantine is lifted. These Russian [Mennonite] refugees are practically without clothing … .” ( Note 3 ) Notably at this point B. B. Janz was also writing Toews, saying that he was utterly exhausted and was preparing to ...
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

A-Cases and O-Cases. After the Trek, 1944

Some 35,000 Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine by the retreating Reich German military in 1943-44 applied for naturalization /citizenship once in German-annexed Poland (mostly Warthegau). The applications made through the “EWZ” ( Einwandererzentralstelle ) are easy to attain today ( note 1 ). Much information may be new and useful for families; however just as much is disturbing, including the racial assessments, categorization, and separation of so-called “A-cases” from “O-cases.” What are they?  The EWZ files contain the application for naturalization made by the head of a family unit, the certificate of naturalization, and sometimes correspondence/ claims regarding property and possessions left behind in Ukraine. Each form contains information about the applicant’s spouse and children, as well as a genealogy listing parents and grandparents, and those of their spouse as well; racial background is calculated by percentage (!). Applicants were asked about their citizenship, their e...
Post a Comment
Read more

“German Days” on the Prairie, 1930s

Recently an acquaintance shared a photo from a Saskatchewan picnic, likely from the late 1930s. Twenty-seven individuals, children, parents and grandparents, are dressed in festive but comfortable clothing. The group includes her grandparents—both children of Mennonites who came to the US from Russia in the 1870s—and other relatives and friends. In the middle of the photograph, spread out like a picnic blanket, is a large swastika flag with the iron cross—the symbol of the German veterans’ association ( Deutscher Reichskriegerbund ; note 1 ); a young boy holds one corner of the flag. There are good reasons to think that this photo was taken at “German Day” ( Deutscher Tag ) celebrations, which were held annually in the 1930s in each prairie province. Saskatchewan German Day rallies rotated annually between Regina and Saskatoon, between seeding and harvest time. Its first gathering was in 1930 which drew some 4,000 attendees ( note 2 ). In 1932, six months before Hitler’s seizure of pow...
Post a Comment
Read more

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia.  Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...
Post a Comment
Read more