Skip to main content

The Executioner of Dnepropetrovsk, 1937-38

Naum Turbovsky likely killed more Mennonites than anyone in the longer history of the Anabaptist-Mennonite movement.

This is an emotionally difficult post to write because one of those men was my grandfather, Franz Bräul, born 1896. In 2019, I received the translation of his 30-page arrest, trial and execution file. To this point my mother never knew her father's fate.

Naum Turbovsky's signature is on Bräul's execution order. Bräul was shot on December 11, 1937. Together with my grandfather's NKVD/ KGB file, I have the files of eight others arrested with him. Turbovsky's file is available online.

Days before he signed the execution papers for those in this group, Turbovsky was given an award for the security of his prison and for his method of isolating and transferring prisoners to their interrogation—all of which “greatly contributed to the success of the investigations over the enemies of the people,” namely “military-fascist conspirators, spies and saboteurs.” Turbovsky’s commendation notes that he had “personally executed 2,100” convicted prisoners, for which he received the Order of the Red Star (note 1).

In the largely Mennonite settlement of Molotschna (Ukraine) some 1,800 arrests occurred between Fall 1936 and December 1938 in a population of 20,000 people. Peter Letkemann has determined that the arrest ratio among Mennonites "was at least four times higher than the national average" as revealed in KGB statistics (note 2).

Much happened in 1937 and the tensions between Germany and the Soviet Union were stretched to the breaking point. Soviet Ukraine closed the German consulates in Kharkov and Odessa on November 15.

On November 28, “Black Raven” NKVD cars visited 13 families in the Marienthal-Pordenau-Schardau-Elisabethtal cluster of villages.

The 13 arrested (note 3) were: David M. Balzer (IV, 24f.); Jakob H. Barg (II, 40); Franz H. Bräul (II, 81); David J. Dick (II, 214); Heinrich F. Dick (IV, 194); Jakob J. Friesen (IV, 610); Heinrich D. Hildebrandt (II, 163f.); Franz A. Isaak (II, 290f.); Peter J. Martens(II, 430); Johann H. Peters (II, 517f.); Gerhard A. Regier (IV, 495); Heinrich J. Tessmann (III, 639); Heinrich G. Wall (II, 95f.) 

The median age of those arrested was 39; all were German-Mennonite and old enough to remember pre-revolutionary Russia and young enough to stir trouble.

On November 30, the Bräul home was searched by a local inspector of the Rot-Front Rayon Office and one item—a “personal book”—was confiscated (note 4).

Three more locals were arrested, and in the next days 11 others in nearby Mennonite villages. These men together with two arrested a few days earlier were transported from their local cell in Waldheim, Molotschna to the city of Dnepropetrovsk, 175 kilometres north, via Melitopol.

November 30 to December 3: Paperwork was created for each case with upwards of 30 pages per file, including a largely falsified confession (Q & A)—written in someone else's hand. The shaky signature on the bottom of most pages—my grandfather's file for example—suggest they signed under duress. The torture inflicted in these larger regional prisons is well documented (note 5).

December 3: These 27 men, together with two other Mennonites were tried by the NKVD troika (tribunal) in Dnepropetrovsk.

The charge laid against each was the same: “conducted counter-revolutionary nationalist propaganda”—a criminal offence under Article 54-10 of the Ukrainian Soviet Criminal Code. By 1937, the article had come to include a broad range of activities which might have a counter-revolutionary motive (note 6). Each of these men was found guilty.

December 11: All but three were executed by shooting in the city of Dnepropetrovsk. Three were given arguably more lenient, 10-year sentences. One of those died in prison on September 14, 1942 (no place given), and another died in a correctional labour camp in north-eastern Siberia on April 30, 1942.

Meanwhile on December 3 with a large empty jail cell in Waldheim, Molotschna, the Black Raven had made its rounds again with 34 more arrests, and each under the same charge. The men in this group came from 20 different villages all situated in the eastern half of the Molotschna.

Almost all of the ministers were long exiled or killed; churches had been shuttered four to five years earlier.

In recent years, a number of voices have cautioned against the use of the “martyr” category for telling the Mennonite story generally and this one in particular. The arrests and death arose from multiple factors, mostly political. Specifically, they were ethnic "Germans” who lived too close to the USSR’s western borders.

Yet from the Soviet perspective, Mennonites were certainly among the most radical in their attachments to anti-Soviet values, most unresponsive or opposed to the new worldview—despite many exceptions—and they stubbornly identified with their extensive web of international connections (note 7).

The Soviets equated their high religiosity and strict adherence to Christian precepts generally with their cultural Teutonic (German) background (note 8) and saw those “cultural” characteristics as evidence of their flagrant, collective counter-revolutionary disposition.

In 1937, Naum Turbovsky and my grandfather Franz Bräul were both forty-one years old. Both were raised in a closely-knit, religious-ethnic community in Ukraine—Bräul a German Mennonite, Turbovsky a Jew. Both remembered life before the Revolution and both were common people. In 1918, Turbovsky fought in the Red Army against Denikin’s forces, and Bräul was accused of taking up arms with the White Army and Denikin. Both apparently fought against the anarchist Nestor Makhno. Both came from a large family, and each had siblings in North America.

While there is so much more to process and write, minimally, perhaps, we can agree that Anabaptist-Mennonite history cannot be written without the name Naum Turbovsky, the executioner of Dnepropetrovsk. The task is not to forget, but also to forgive—lest we become bitter.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

For a larger reflection on these events, see: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "A new examination of the 'Great Terror' in Molotschna, 1937-38," Mennonite Quarterly Review 95, no. 4 (2021), 415-458, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/bitstream/handle/20.500.12730/1571/Neufeldt-Fast_Arnold_2022a.pdf.

See also related posts: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/purge-sampler-arrests-of-kliewer.html

Note 1: Dmitry Voltchek, “Лично расстрелял 2100 человек. История палача и его жертвы” [Personally shot 2,100 People. The Story of the Executioner and his Victims]. Радио Свобода [Radio Liberty]. https://www.svoboda.org/a/29591642.html. Cf. also Turbovsky’s complete NKVD/ KGB file (Ukrainian): https://nkvd.memo.ru/index.php/%D0%A2%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9,_%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%83%D0%BC_%D0%A6%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87; and https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1w4-z93FqafQhogV9qATactGjP1rrszeH.

Note 2: Peter Letkemann, “Mennonites in the Soviet Inferno, 1929–1941,” Mennonite Historian 24, no. 4 (1998) 7. More recent documents indicate 1,575,000 people were arrested and sentenced in the Great Terror of 1937–38, of which 800,000 were executed (Nicholas Wert, “Mechanism of a Mass Crime: The Great Terror in the Soviet Union,” in The Spector of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, edited by Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003] 217f.).

Note 3Rehabilitated History: Zaporizhia Region. Books I–VI (Zaporizhia: Dniprovskij Metalurg, 2004–2013) [РЕАБІЛІТОВАНІ ІСТОРІЄЮ: Запорізька область], http://www.reabit.org.ua/books/zp/See the Mennonite extraction list: "Verbannte Mennoniten im Gebiet Saporoshje," https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Sapor.pdf.

Note 4: “Search Record,” in "Case no. 314: On Accusation of Bräul, Franz Heinrichovich with Crime Stipulated in Article 54-10 of the Criminal Code of Ukrainian SSR,” People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Department of National Security. From State Archives of the Zaporizhzhia Region, Collection 5747, Inventory 3, File 4595. Translation by Olga Shmakina. In author’s possession.

Note 5: Cf. esp. Lynne Viola, Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Note 6: Sarah Davies, “The Crime of Anti-Soviet Agitation in the Soviet Union in the 1930s,” Cahiers du monde russe 9, 1–2 (1998) 149–167.

Note 7: See for example an assessment and report of the “Agitation and Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine” in May 1925," in John B. Toews and Paul Toews, eds., Union of Citizens of Dutch Lineage in Ukraine (1922–1927). Mennonite and Soviet Documents, translated by J. B. Toews, O. Shmakina, and W. Regehr (Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 2011) 269-271, https://archive.org/details/unionofcitizenso0000unse.

Note 8: A. A. Herman, “Repression as an integral part of the Bolshevik policy regime,” Symposium on Repression against Russian Germans in the Soviet Union in the Context of the Soviet National Policy, Moscow, http://www.memo.ru/history/nem.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "The Executioner of Dnepropetrovsk, 1937-38," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 12, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-executioner-of-dnepropetrovsk-1937.html.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

1923 Mennonite immigrants "kept behind": Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp

An important part of the larger 1923 immigration story includes the chapter of the hundreds who were held back at Riga and Southampton and taken to the Lechfeld (Bavaria) transit camp for medical care. “Germany generously and magnanimously helped our organizations, on my intercession, to overcome the manifold difficulties connected with such a ( Volksbewegung ) movement of people in such critical times,” Benjamin H. Unruh wrote some years later ( note 1 ). Just as the first group of Russländer Mennonites set foot in Canada 100 years ago this month, the North American relief effort in the USSR was also winding down (August 1923). The famine relief work in 1921 and 1922 had found broad support in the North American Mennonite community. However excitement about a larger immigration of Russian Mennonites to North America was muted, and a new call to action could not forge the same level of cooperation across Mennonite groups. The plan required huge money guarantees. In USSR B.B. Janz h...

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 ...

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...

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 ...

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...

Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina Neufeld Bräul

This month (April 2023) we celebrated my aunt’s 97th birthday—Adina Neufeld Bräul. Queen Elizabeth II and Aunt Adina were born within hours of each other, April 20-21, 1926. She once told me—in somewhat different words—that this makes her wonder about God’s providence … In 1944 in German-annexed Poland, my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service. His first thought: no good soldier should be without a girlfriend! Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" on a date to see a movie in Exin. Seven years later they would marry in Paraguay. Adina and her mother and sister were on the same trek or group (Gnadenfeld/ Molotschna) out of Ukraine as Walter and my mother (in the 2023 photo). Adina’s most terrible memory of the trek was when their wagon almost tipped over into a deep ravine. She was 17—a year older than Walter—and it was Walter’s 17-year-old brother Peter who literally jumped from his wagon to physically stop ...

A Traveler's Impressions of the Molotschna, 1927

In November 1927, Susanna Toews of Ohrloff, Molotschna wrote to her brother Gerhard in Canada, "Father is sleeping and the sisters are reading, even though they have read the stuff ten times. . .. Twice a week we get Das Neue Dorf . We read the most important material the first evening and then father reads the rest of it the next day" ( note 1 ). A youth in Friedensruh, Molotschna reported to the communist youth paper Die Saat in 1928, that their village receives 13 copies of Das Neue Dorf , 6 copies of Die Saat , one of the Moscow-based Deutsche Zentral-Zeitung , 16 copies of Die Trompete, 2 copies of Neuland , and some Russian papers as well. On average, 2 papers per household--all communist papers. A Mennonite-based monthly agricultural journal, “The Practical Agriculturalist” ( Der praktische Landwirt ) had been approved for publication in Ukraine in 1924 but was shut down in December 1926. Government authorities in Ukraine were exasperated to see a “significant a...

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...

Flemish Anabaptists and Witch Hunts

Political leaders have long used the term "witch hunt"--and there is an historical connection to Mennonites. Anabaptists and so-called “witches” were arrested and tried for related reasons in the Low Countries in the 1500s: namely, as a means to divert God’s wrath. The late-Medievals feared that heresy—in this case ana-baptism and the challenge to other sacraments—invited the wrath of God, and was an instrument for the devil’s own hellish apocalyptic assault. The assumption: the devil's tactics to destroy Christendom included the use of both heretics and sorcerers. Gary Waite writes convincingly that both were seen as “polluting” the community and thus both had to be "excised." "This fear of pollution, or scandalizing God or the saints, also explains why small numbers of peaceable Mennonites were so harshly treated during the second half of the sixteenth century. Plagues, fires, and economic and social crises were often blamed on the presence of even a smal...

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 ...