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

The End of Schardau (and other Molotschna villages), 1941

My grandmother was four-years old when her parents moved from Petershagen, Molotschna to Schardau in 1908. This story is larger than that of Schardau, but tells how this village and many others in Molotschna were evacuated by Stalin days before the arrival of German troops in 1941. -ANF The bridge across the Dnieper at Chortitza was destroyed by retreating Soviet troops on August 18, 1941 and the hydroelectric dam completed near Einlage in 1932 was also dynamited by NKVD personnel—killing at least 20,000 locals downstream, and forcing the Germans to cross further south at Nikopol. For the next six-and-a-half weeks, the old Mennonite settlement area of Chortitza was continuously shelled by Soviet troops from Zaporozhje on the east side of the river ( note 1 ). The majority of Russian Germans in Crimea and Ukraine paid dearly for Germany’s Blitzkrieg and plans for racially-based population resettlements. As early as August 3, 1941, the Supreme Command of the Soviet Forces received noti...
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

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

On Becoming the Quiet in the Land

They are fair questions: “What happened to the firebrands of the Reformation? How did the movement become so withdrawn--even "dour and unexciting,” according to one historian? Mennonites originally referred to themselves as the “quiet in the land” in contrast to the militant--definitely more exciting--militant revolutionaries of Münster ( note 1 ), and identification with Psalm 35:19f.: “Let not my enemies gloat over me … For they do not speak peace, but they devise deceitful schemes against those who live quietly in the land.” How did Mennonites become the “quiet in the land” in Royal Prussia? Minority non-citizen groups in Poland like Jews, Scots, Huguenots or the much smaller body of Mennonites did not enjoy full political or economic rights as citizens. Ecclesial and civil laws left linguistic or religious minorities vulnerable to extortion. Such groups sought to negotiate a Privilegium or charter with the king, which set out a legal basis for some protections of life an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mennonite-Designed Mosque on the Molotschna

The “Peter J. Braun Archive" is a mammoth 78 reel microfilm collection of Russian Mennonite materials from 1803 to 1920 -- and largely still untapped by researchers ( note 1 ). In the files of Philipp Wiebe, son-in-law and heir to Johann Cornies, is a blueprint for a mosque ( pic ) as well as another file entitled “Akkerman Mosque Construction Accounts, 1850-1859” ( note 2 ). The Molotschna Mennonites were settlers on traditional Nogai lands; their Nogai neighbours were a nomadic, Muslim Tartar group. In 1825, Cornies wrote a significant anthropological report on the Nogai at the request of the Guardianship Committee, based largely on his engagements with these neighbours on Molotschna’s southern border ( note 3 ). Building upon these experiences and relationships, in 1835 Cornies founded the Nogai agricultural colony “Akkerman” outside the southern border of the Molotschna Colony. Akkerman was a projection of Cornies’ ideal Mennonite village outlined in exacting detail, with un...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Tinkelstein Family of Chortitza-Rosenthal (Ukraine)

Chortitza was the first Mennonite settlement in "New Russia" (later Ukraine), est. 1789. The last Mennonites left in 1943 ( note 1 ). During the Stalin years in Ukraine (after 1928), marriage with Jewish neighbours—especially among better educated Mennonites in cities—had become somewhat more common. When the Germans arrived mid-August 1941, however, it meant certain death for the Jewish partner and usually for the children of those marriages. A family friend, Peter Harder, died in 2022 at age 96. Peter was born in Osterwick to a teacher and grew up in Chortitza. As a 16-year-old in 1942, Peter was compelled by occupying German forces to participate in the war effort. Ukrainians and Russians (prisoners of war?) were used by the Germans to rebuild the massive dam at Einlage near Zaporizhzhia, and Peter was engaged as a translator. In the next year he changed focus and started teachers college, which included significant Nazi indoctrination. In 2017 I interviewed Peter Ha...
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

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Formidable Fräulein Marga Bräul (1919–2011)

Fräulein Bräul left an indelible mark on two generations of high school students in the Mennonite Colony of Fernheim, Paraguay. Former students and acquaintances recall that Marga Bräul demanded the highest effort and achievements of her students, colleagues and of herself—the kind of teacher you either love or hate but will never forget! In March 1947, Marga was offered a position at the Fernheim Secondary School ( Zentralschule ). A recent refugee to Paraguay from war-torn Europe, she taught mathematics, physics, and chemistry. In 1952, she was the only female faculty member ( note 1 ). Marga wedded a strong commitment to academics with a passion for quality arts and crafts. She provided extensive extra-curricular instruction to students in handiwork and was especially renowned for her artwork—which included painting and woodworking— end of year art exhibits with students, theatre sets, and festival decorations. Marga’s pedagogical philosophy was holistic; she told Mennonite ed...
Post a Comment
Read more