Skip to main content

Spiritual Snapshot of Liberated Mennonites in Ukraine: German Mennonite Theo Glück, 1942-43

Nazi German forces in Ukraine found Mennonites depleted and broken—physically, mentally, socially and spiritually—from Stalinist repression.

“Every individual initiative in them has been killed or stifled, because to be an individual is to be suspect, in danger of being reported. They hesitate to express any private opinions, fearing … spies are still at work” (note 1).

The 1942 Commando Dr. Stumpp village reports confirm an almost complete breakdown of social life. “Because of the many frictions on the collective [farm], each became weary and wary (überdrüssig) of the other.” “After collectivization, neighbours no longer wished to see their neighbours.” “If a few people got together, they were politically suspect. No one trusted each other anymore.” “Life on the collective farm embittered people, and they began to hate each other. Each lived for himself alone, in dreary brooding, without hope of a better future” and “happy if on a Sunday he can stay away from the community for a few hours and finally be alone to himself” (note 2).

Mennonite memoirs confirm the same:

  • Abram Reimer: “Everybody watched his tongue, we Mennonites even more than the Russians (note 3).
  • Katie Friesen: “We lived in fear of those who would take what little we had left. … not even neighbours and friends could be trusted. One never knew when one would become a scapegoat for the purposes of the state” (note 4).
  • Victor Janzen: “[Y]ou did not know anymore whom you could trust. … Many a wound, inflicted in those days, is not quite healed even today” (note 5).
  • Helene Dueck: “Honesty, diligence, brotherly love and willingness to help disappeared more and more. Everyone tried to get by in a selfish way, especially in the famine years when everything edible was scarce and thousands died of hunger. Many collaborated with the godless regime. They even betrayed their friends and relatives to save their lives. ... no one could be trusted. A wife often did not know what her husband was thinking, and the husband did not trust his own wife. Children would inform on their parents, and were praised for it at school. One did not know what was right and what was wrong, what was legal and what was illegal” (note 6).

When I lived in Europe two decades ago I met Theo Glück—already 90 years old. In WW2 he was chief paymaster in the Nazi German Airforce stationed for a year at Dnepropetrovsk—between Easter 1942 and 1943—and had good connections with recently liberated Soviet Mennonites. When I met him, he was a long-retired German Mennonite minister and peace activist (note 7).

During the war in 1944 Glück wrote about his encounters with Soviet Mennonites, as a type of plea to his Mennonite contemporaries to open their hearts to these co-religionists. 35,000 had now been evacuated from Ukraine to Warthegau (German-annexed Poland) together with a million other ethnic Germans. Those “who got to know the Mennonite settlements in the East recognized with astonishment and respect the high morals and unshakable character of these valuable people” (note 8).

In this diary-report Glück notes that in Dnepropetrovsk he met socially with a small group of Mennonite young adults who also worked for the occupying German forces. He writes that he was impressed with the questions they posed, with their genuine curiosity about Mennonite congregations in Germany, and about German Mennonite views on the state, church, as well as education. He observed that the Bible was not read regularly in many homes, and that “the old Christian custom of table grace had not yet become common practice again”—even a year after German liberation. The young adults did not know the basic tenants of the Christian faith, let alone the Bible, its books and concepts, or how to interpret it—something Glück and his circle of German Mennonite youth had pursued passionately and at a high level for years, especially in their circular letter (Rundbriefe) writing groups (note 9). While these Soviet Mennonites knew they were “Mennonite,” they had no idea what that meant or how it was unique.

Because of Glück’s piety and rootedness in the church, the Soviet Mennonites asked him about God; they wanted to believe in God’s existence—despite, or in spite, of their atheist education, he wrote. But these youth understood God as something distant, not as a personally present being. Their bitter life experiences brought out the larger existential questions, Glück noted: If God exists, then why this war and why is there suffering and evil in the world?

While they were quite able to explain intellectually the differences between Bolshevism and National Socialism, Glück tried to emphasize to them that Christian faith as “attachment to God” was something altogether different from a worldview. Glück also took efforts to explain the spiritual and intellectual developments in Germany since the Great War. “All of this was completely new to them. Some things seemed unbelievable to them at first; many things excited them.” Notably at this point Glück held faith in God and in the Nazi German leader close together.

Glück was aware that under Stalin Mennonites could not speak of their faith but felt that their “practical Christianity” explicitly communicated their religious attitude and religious thinking. Glück praised the parents and grandparents whose faith withstood the years of intimidation and atheistic propaganda and, despite much human weakness, “passed” the test.

Again, in his report Glück pointed to their “practical Christianity”—a term preferred by the Nazi regime—though employed differently.

Glück connected Mennonite faith and Germanness, convinced that it was their quiet faith that had allowed them to preserve their Germanness—something which the Nazi occupying forces praised. "Practical Christianity" as it has taken shape in the character and life of their own parents, their grandparents, etc., had had a deep formative and communal impact on the Mennonite youth, in his judgement. For him it was incontrovertible proof that their faith was the real reason why Black Sea Mennonites were most successful—according to official reports—in preserving their “Germanness” (95% compared to 50 to 60% among German Catholics in the same region). Their ardent love for the German homeland and the German people is not disconnected from the faith that lives in their hearts, according to Glück.


A long-time observer of Mennonites abroad, and most recently principal of two ethnic German teachers’ colleges in the Ukraine Karl Götz, advised SS superiors in a confidential report that, in his opinion, Mennonite leaders in Germany would be able to guide the Russian Mennonites over time toward an appropriate and “thoroughly German religiosity (Gottgläubigkeit). Their desire is for the divine, for awe before the Almighty, the inconceivable, the sublime. Mennonite leaders are now working to lead the world of Mennonitism (Mennonitentum) toward this German god-believing, religious attitude” (note 10).

These "spiritual snapshots" of Mennonites in Ukraine by a German Mennonite—himself wandering in their own toxic ideological fog—are important reminders of the world from which some Russian Mennonites emerged 80 or so years ago.

Notably after the war, Glück inspired new generations of Mennonite to embrace a global Anabaptist vision as advocates for peace and nonviolence.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photos: Search WWW on Herbert List, pictures of occupied Ukraine. On List's work during this period, see: https://www.libraryhist.com/2022/09/herbert-lists-pictures-from-german.html.

Note 1: Anonymous, “Zwischen Odessa and Perekop in den ersten Monaten des deusche-russischen Krieges,” Mennonitisches Jahrbuch 1949, cited in Anne Konrad, Red Quarter Moon: A Search for Family in the Shadow of Stalin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 151.

Note 2: “Adelsheim (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 348b [4] (the Hochfeld, Neuhorst, and Nikolaifeld village reports also use the term “überdrüssig” to describe relationships within their respective village); “Blumengart (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 484b [4]; “Chortitza Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 7b [4]; “Katharinovka (Borosenko) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (g), 2b [4]; “Kronstal (Chortitza) Dorfbericht,” sec. VII (f), 443b [4]. From Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, prepared for the German Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, 1942. In Bundesarchiv Koblenz, BArch R6 GSK, files 620 to 633; 702 to 709; copies posted in State Electronic Archive of Ukraine, https://tsdea.aewrchives.gov.ua/deutsch/.

Note 3: Eduard Allert (pseud), “The Lost Generation," in The Lost Generation and other Stories, edited by Gerhard Lohrenz, 9–128 (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1982), 30. Cf. fuller German original: Eduard [Abram] Reimer, unpublished memoir (n.d.), from Mennonite Heritage Archive, Gerhard Lohrenz Fonds, 60, no. 63, vol. 3333.

Note 4: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 29.

Note 5: Victor Janzen, From the Dniepr to the Paraguay River (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1995), 27.

Note 6: Helene Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 16f., https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/mode/2up.

Note 7: “Glück, Theo (Theodor),” MennLex V, https://www.mennlex.de/doku.php?id=art:glueck_theo.

Note 8: Theo Glück, “Bei den Mennoniten in der Ukraine. Aus einer Niederschrift im Jahre 1944,” Mennonitischer Gemeinde-Kalender (1956), 26–32, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/newspapers/Christlicher%20Gemeinde-Kalender/1951-1970/DSCF7522.JPG.

Note 9: Cf. Imanuel Baumann, “Die ‘Mennonitische Jugend-Rundbrief-Gemeinschaft’ und die nationalsozialistische ‘Machtergreifung,’” in Mennoniten in der NS-Zeit. Stimmen, Lebenssituationen, Erfahrungen, edited by Astrid von Schlachta, 90–107 (Bolanden-WLieierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 2017); for samples, see Mitteilungen des Mennonitischen Jugend-Rund-Briefes, Group 12, Round 2, from Mennonite Library and Archives- Bethel College, MS 165, box 48, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_165/box%2048%20Rundbriefe/.

Note 10: Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), 11f. From BA R 187/267a, Bundesarchiv Berlin; copies in multiple places, including https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1944 and https://chortitza.org/pdf/0v772.pdf. On Götz and the booklet (with translation), see Benjamin Goossen, “‘A Small World Power’: How the Nazi Regime Viewed Mennonites,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 92, no. 2 (2018), 173–206, https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/goossen/files/goossen_a_small_world_power_2018.pdf.

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Spiritual Snapshot of Liberated Mennonites in Ukraine: German Mennonite Theo Glück, 1943-43," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 11, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/spiritual-snapshot-of-liberated.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...
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

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...
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

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

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
Post a Comment
Read more

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...
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

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 G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...
Post a Comment
Read more