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 3: Rehabilitated 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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Prof. Benjamin Unruh as a Public Figure in the Nazi Era

Professor Benjamin H. Unruh (1881-1959) was a relief and immigration leader, educator, leading churchman, and official representative of Russian Mennonites outside of the Soviet Union throughout the National Socialism era in Germany. Unruh’s biography is connected to the very beginnings of Mennonite Central Committee in 1920-1922 when he served as a key spokesperson in Germany for the famine-stricken Mennonites in South Russia. Some years later he again played the central role in the rescue of thousands of Mennonites from Moscow in 1929 and, along with MCC, their resettlement in Paraguay, Brazil, and Canada. Because of Unruh’s influence and deep connections with key German government agencies in Berlin, his home office in Karlsruhe, Germany, became a relief hub for Mennonites internationally. Unruh facilitated large-scale debt forgiveness for Mennonites in Paraguay and Brazil, and negotiated preferential consideration for Mennonite relief work to the Soviet Union during the Great Famin
Post a Comment
Read more

"Women Talking" -- and Canadian Mennonites

In March 2023 the film "Women Talking" won an Oscar for "Best adapted Screenplay." It was based on the novel of the same name by Mennonite Miriam Toews. The conservative Mennonites portrayed in the film are from the "Manitoba Colony" in Bolivia--with obvious Canadian connections. Now that many Canadians have seen the the film, Mennonites like me are being asked, "So how are you [in Markham-Stouffville, Waterloo or in St. Catharines] connected to that group?" Most would say, "We're not that type of Mennonite." And mostly that is a true answer, though unnuanced. Others will say, "Well, it is complex," but they can't quite unfold the complexity.  Below is my attempt to do just that. At the heart of the story are things that happened in Ukraine (at the time "New" or "South" Russia) over 200 years ago. It is not easy to rebuild the influence and contribution of "Russian Mennonite" women and th
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shift from Dutch to German, 1700s

Already in 1671, Mennonite Flemish Elder Georg Hansen in Danzig published his German-language catechism ( Glaubens-Bericht für die Jugend ) as preparation for youth seeking baptism. Though educational competencies varied, Hansen’s Glaubens-Bericht assumed that youth preparing for baptism had a stronger ability to read complex German than Dutch ( note 1 ). Popular Mennonite preacher Jacob Denner (1659–1746), originally from the Hamburg-Altona Mennonite Church, lived in Danzig for four years in the early 1700s. A first volume of his Dutch sermons was published in 1706 in Danzig and Amsterdam, and then in 1730 and 1751 he published two German collections. Untrained preachers would often read Denner’s sermons: “Those who preached German—which all Prussian preachers around 1750 did, with the exception of the Danzig preachers—had no sermons books from their co-religionists other than this one by Jacob Denner” ( note 2 ). In Danzig and the Vistula Delta region there were some differences
Post a Comment
Read more

Invitation to the Russian Consulate, Danzig, January 19, 1788

B elow is one of the most important original Mennonite artifacts I have seen. It concerns January 19. The two land scouts Jacob Höppner and Johann Bartsch had returned to Danzig from Russia on November 10, 1787 with the Russian Immigration Agent, Georg von Trappe. Soon thereafter, Trappe had copies of the royal decree and agreement (Gnadenbrief) printed for distribution in the Flemish and Frisian Mennonite congregations in Danzig and other locations, dated December 29, 1787 ( see pic ; note 1 ). After the flyer was handed out to congregants in Danzig after worship on January 13, 1788, city councilors made the most bitter accusations against church elders for allowing Trappe and the Russian Consulate to do this; something similar had happened before ( note 2 ). In the flyer Trappe boasted that land scouts Höppner and Bartsch met not only with Gregory Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s vice-regent and administrator of New Russia, but also with “the Most Gracious Russian Monarch” herse
Post a Comment
Read more

Plague and Pestilence in Danzig, 1709

Russian and Prussian Mennonites trace at least 200 years of their story through Danzig and Royal Prussia, where episodes of plague and pestilence were not unfamiliar ( note 1 ). Mennonites arrived primarily from the Low Countries and in large numbers in the middle of the 16th century—approximately 750 families or 3,000 refugees and settlers between 1527 and 1578 to Danzig and Royal Prussia ( note 2 ). At this time Danzig was undergoing tremendous demographic, cultural and economic transformation, almost tripling in population in less than 100 years. With 80% of Poland’s foreign trade handled through this port city ( note 3 ), Danzig saw the arrival of new people from across Europe, many looking to find work in the crammed and bustling city ( note 4 ). Maria Bogucka’s research on Danzig in this era brings the streets of the maritime city to life: “Sanitation facilities were inadequate … The level of personal hygiene was low. Most people lived close together: five or six to a room, sle
1 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

“First Arrival of German Troops in Halbstadt” (Volksfreund, April 20, 1918)

“ April 19, 1918 will always remain significant in the history of the Molotschna German Colony. That which until recently could hardly be imagined has occurred: the German military has arrived to free us from the despotism, rape and pillaging of barbarous people and to reestablish the order and security of life and property--something desperately necessary for our land. For this we give thanks above all to the One in whose hands the peoples and nations and also individuals rest. ...” ( Note 1 ) Mennonites greeted their “guests and liberators” with festivities that included baked goods (Zwieback), meats and even the German anthem “ Deutschland, Deutschland über alles "—all before the watchful eyes of their Russian /Ukrainian neighbours. The troops arrived by train; and to the shock of most present, three bound prisoners—all well-known bandits and terrorists—“were brought out of one of the railway cars without any prior notice, lined up and shot right in front of us” as an exampl
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