Skip to main content

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 German Girls, after the completion of school at age 14. Applicants had to be fit—physically, genetically (Aryan), and mentally (notes 4); both Walter and Käthe Heinrichs were steered toward the “elite” tracks.

For Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) boys, Hitler-Jugend was obligatory, and a prerequisite for any future roles in civil (Volks-) society. For Walter, HJ began with the compulsory labour service unit (Arbeitsdienst) and pre-military camp (Wehrertüchtigungslager). The latter included rifle training and trench digging (note 5). Already in Ukraine, the HJ organization enticed Mennonite boys with opportunities for sport, collegiality, shooting exercises, theoretical and practical training under the leadership of a reserve officer, at no cost with a small stipend, decent lodging and food more “plentiful than mother’s cooking pot” (note 6). The HJ camp at Posen/Warthegau stressed the importance of camaraderie and taught boys, e.g., how to fight in pairs in the trenches. Practice included entering an “enemy” trench in the darkness and throwing out whomever they encountered. Because Walter did this well and without fear, he was encouraged to sign up for the officers training track when he turned 16 in April.

Käthe Heinrichs arrived in Warthegau with typhus, but after a recovery she entered preparatory training for the Landjahr in May and then entered the Landjahr and Landdienst schooling program in August 9, 1944, together with Käthe Rempel (note 7). Their Landjahr school was in Scharfenort, Kreis Samter. Here they learnt “to cook, to do laundry, to iron clothing and bedding, to clean, and to do garden work." They apprenticed in the mornings at different farmsteads or estates, and then would change groups every two weeks. Fitness training was part of the program, and here she learnt to swim and dive. “As long as it was warm in the fall, we had swimming once a week in the afternoons. We also learnt to dive into the water from a diving board at a height of three meters … for this I had to go to Poznan to use the indoor pool, because it was already too cold outside” (note 7).

The regime was grooming these 15-year-olds to be elite farming families and communities for Germany’s eastern borders at war’s end. The vision called for a genetically healthy German peasant stock in fortified agricultural villages along Warthegau’s border. Accordingly, Warthegau’s emblem was the plough and sword, Mennonite resettlement in Warthegau, and perhaps later again back to Ukraine, was to help fulfill this plan. “This future, too, can only be a soldierly future. … Only a soldierly generation proud of its military will know how to preserve the heritage of the victory. When these young people will one day live as soldier-farmers (Wehrbauern) in the German East on their own land, we will no longer have to worry about our German future” (note 8). The Wehrbauer ideal—a plough in one hand and the sharpened sword in the other (note 9)—was introduced in HJ and in the Landjahr programs in Warthegau.


Already in 1939, a memorandum by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) Office of Racial Policy indicated their expectation that large numbers of ethnic Germans from Canada and “primarily Mennonites” from Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Mexico would also desire to “return home” and could be settled in the newly annexed eastern German territory. Ethnic German resettlers would be given generous space as “soldier-farmers” (Wehrbauern) to freely allow their "natural mastery (Herrentum) to enfold," and Poles would be forced off their land to serve exclusively as labourers and servants of the ruling German racial class. The Party memo was optimistic that a next generation of Mennonites would gradually grow out of their narrow “confessionally-conditioned way of life and no longer be distinguishable from the larger German population” (note 10).

Hitler’s evolving vision was for an agricultural renaissance of armed German soldier-farmers on the eastern front prepared to defend the land at all times, to teach the next generation, and to keep the racial order. “The Wartheland is a living rampart in the German East, but also a farming province and province of front-line soldiers …Germany's largest agricultural province is only secure if, in addition to the plow, the sword also remains sharpened” (note 11).

Here is a curious interim report by the Landjahr national director upon her visit to a camp with girls who started April 1, 1944:

“The Black Sea German girls [Mennonites would be included in this group]seem willing to work and eager to learn. Nevertheless, the educational work turns out to be extremely difficult, as they have a completely different attitude to work than our German girls.

The camp leader reported that it was very difficult to train the girls to be companionable and eager to do their work. In Russia they are used to being assigned a certain amount of work that they either do quickly or very slowly. If they work faster, they can use the spare time for themselves. Furthermore, they only do the work that has been assigned to them and explained in detail. Any additional work that may arise ... is not done because it is not ordered. This kind of attitude toward the performance of work, which runs counter to our German attitude ..., is very difficult for the Black Sea German girls to get used to. In addition, there is a certain distrust that the girls have in principle towards the orders of Germans. They are only slowly being convinced that they are treated on an equal footing with the German girls.

Another difficulty arises from the fact that the girls are used to different foods than we eat here in Germany. Vegetables or salads are foreign to them, and they are only used to eating a limited variety of fruit.

Linguistically, they try to speak perfect German. They have a very poor command of proper spelling, and no grammatical knowledge whatsoever. Elementary arithmetic skills are also poor. However with firm, purposeful and understanding guidance, the Black Sea German girls will adapt well to our way of life. The Black Sea Germans will need a very long time to acclimatize, however." (Note 12)

As Walter and Käthe were starting their training, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler gave a speech to his officers (July 1944) noting that Germany’s goal must be to push “the German national border at least 500 km eastwards from the border of 1939. It is necessary to settle this area with Germanic sons and Germanic families, so that a planted garden of Germanic blood is created, so that we continue to be an agricultural people” (note 13).


Already during German occupation of Ukraine, the Volksdeutsche were reminded time and again that this was a righteous battle for German freedom, German blood, and German living space—so that Germans will never again be brought to their knees in hunger like after the Great War (note 14).

The Nazi German racially-based ideals were failures on all levels. In different ways Hitler’s bizarre plans cost the lives not only of millions of Jews, Poles and other peoples, but also of three of Walter’s brothers and a sister (all siblings to my mother). Young Käthe Heinrichs fell into the hands of advancing Soviet troops, and her misery took on whole new dimensions for the next two decades. 

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Katharina Heinrichs Esau (#1407884, born August 18, 1928), “So bleibt es nicht. Erinnerungen aus meiner Kindheit [bis 1945],” 2002. In author’s possession. Katharina Heinrichs (Esau) was born August 18, 1928.

Note 2: “Von der Molotschna bis zur Warthe,” Ostdeutscher Beobachter 6, no. 71 (March 12, 1944), 5, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125852/edition/134988/content.

Note 3: February 25, 1944, Governor for Reichgau Wartheland, Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche. Der Reichsstatthalter im Reichsgau Wartheland Posen (GK 62) / Namiestnik Rzeszy w Okręgu Kraju Warty. From NAC, 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1978, 140, no. 145, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049367.

Note 4: August 4, 1944, State Health Office Eichenbrück, Transport of Germans from the Black Sea to the Wartheland (Transport Niemców znad Morza Czarnego na teren Kraju Warty), 318, no. 327. From Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives Poland), 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1979, https://szukajwarchiwach.pl/53/299/0/2.2/1979/.

Note 5: “Randbemerkungen,” Deutsche Ukraine-Zeitung (DUZ) 1, no. 100 (May 19, 1942), 2, https://libraria.ua/en/all-titles/group/875/.

Note 6: "Besuch in einem Wehr-Ertüchtigungslager unserer HJ," Litzmannstädter Zeitung 27, no. 338 (December 22, 1944), 3, https://bc.wimbp.lodz.pl/dlibra/publication/31689/edition/30230/content. The article provides a very good description of the schooling. See also articles in papers available in the Molotschna during German occupation: “Schule für künftige Soldaten: Warum Wehrertüchtigungslager,” DUZ 1, no. 255 (November 15, 1942), 8, https://libraria.ua/en/all-titles/group/875/; cf. also“300.000 lernen Schilaufen,” Ukraine Post, no. 19 (May 15, 1943), 5f., https://libraria.ua/en/all-titles/group/878/.

Note 7: Landjahr pics from Wir erleben das Landjahr. Ein Bildbericht von dem Landjahrleben, 4th ed., edited by Walter Höfft (Braunschweig: Appelhans, 1941), 85.

Note 8: “Berufssoldaten von morgen,” DUZ 2, no. 38 (February 14, 1943), 8, https://libraria.ua/en/numbers/875/32166/.

Note 9: E.g., Litzmannstädter Zeitung (March 18, 1944), 6, http://bc.wimbp.lodz.pl/dlibra/publication?id=31097&tab=3.

Note 10: E. Wetzel and G. Hecht, NSDAP Office of Racial Policy, November 25, 1939, “Denkschrift: Die Frage der Behandlung der Bevölkerung der ehemaligen polnischen Gebiete nach rassenpolitischen Gesichtspunkten,” in Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik: die Zusammenarbeit von Wehrmacht, Wirtschaft und SS (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1991), 122f; 124.

Note 11: “27 July 1941,” Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–1944: His Private Conversations, 3rd ed., translated by N. Cameron and R. H. Stevens (New York: Enigma, 2008), 15; cf. also 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), 212; cf. also “Landwirtschaft im Ostraum,” DUZ 1, no. 253 (November 13, 1942) 4; “Heimatdank für den Soldaten,” DUZ 2, no. 256 (October 31, 1943), 8, https://libraria.ua/en/numbers/875/32144/.

Note 12: Beschulung russlanddeutscher Jugendlichen, October 21, 1944, APP 53/299/0, series 3.5, file 2650, 27f., no. 30f.

Note 13: "Rede Himmlers vor dem Offizierkorps einer Grenadierdivision auf dem Truppenübungsplatz Bitsch am 26. Juli 1944," in Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg, 113.

Note 14: DUZ 1, no. 216 (October 1, 1942) 3; “Landwirtschaft im Ostraum,” DUZ 1, no. 253 (November 13, 1942), 4, https://libraria.ua/en/all-titles/group/875/.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Warthegau, Nazism and two 15-year-olds, 1944,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), May 12, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/warthegau-nazism-and-two-15-year-old.html.

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...
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

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 ...
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

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 Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...
Post a Comment
Read more

1921: Formation of the “Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine”

Famine was imminent; unprecedented drought; taxes and requisitions exceeded what was harvested; some villages had no horses; extortion and arrests were widespread; many men were disenfranchised and barred from village affairs (see note 1 ). Lenin responded with the 1921 “New Economic Policy” (NEP), which allowed for a degree of market flexibility within the context of socialism to ward off complete economic collapse. A fixed-tax was imposed, grain quotas were eased, farmers were allowed a small amount of land and could sell excess produce at free-market prices after taxes had been paid. Much was in the air. In secret talks, Soviet Trade Commissar Leonid Krasin told the head of the Eastern Section in the German Foreign Office, Gustav Behrendt, that the USSR was “prepared—just like Catherine the Great of old—to call hundreds of thousands of German colonists into the land and transfer them to large, closed complexes for settlement,” especially in Turkestan and the North Caucasus, be...
Post a Comment
Read more

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

Molotschna Elder Heinrich Dirks and tensions with Mennonite Brethren

Russian Mennonites were not always kind to each other—and nowhere is this seen better than in the tensions between “old” Mennonites and the “separatist” Mennonite Brethren, who had their beginnings in Gnadenfeld, Molotschna in 1860. Heinrich Dirks (1842-1915) was the first Russian Mennonite overseas missionary and later long-time Gnadenfeld, Molotschna ( note 1 ). Everything about Dirks’ life suggests that he would have joined the Brethren in 1860. He too was influenced by the "powerful and gripping” conversionist ministry of Eduard Wüst in his youth. Dirks was a young adult in the Gnadenfeld congregation in South Russia where the Mennonite Brethren /separatist movement began. Shortly thereafter, he was trained in the German pietist Barmen Mission School (1863-67), and famously travelled to Sumatra (Indonesia) where he started a mission outpost and school. The Mennonite Brethren too would later connect the global mission imperative with the impending return of Christ as did Dirk...
Post a Comment
Read more