Skip to main content

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 had a list of 3,000 emigrants finalized with exit visas who were prepared to leave. The previous year Janz had persuaded authorities in Kharkiv that a limited group emigration of “starving people” and “undesirables” (i.e., the formerly wealthy) would “substantially benefit” the rural areas and enable economic to begin (note 2).

The door was open but the plan still required capital. In Spring 1923 the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization reduced its goal of capitalization to $1 million and made the corporation a non-profit charitable organization (note 3). Still there was little appetite in southern Manitoba and in the USA. In May 1923 H. H. Ewert (conference leader in Gretna, MB; school principal and inspector) recommended letting the 3,000 applicants come that summer on the Canadian Pacific Railway credit, and the rest could come to Mexico later where land and settlement costs would be cheaper (note 4). David Toews and the Canadian Board of Colonization however pushed ahead.

MCC’s executive secretary and treasurer Levi Mumaw could report in 1923 that “43,000 out of the total 95,000 Mennonites in Russia have [already] registered themselves as anxious to leave at the earliest opportunity” (note 5). On the ground the selection process for who could leave in 1923 (and later) and who would need to wait was not transparent. It did however require health exams, and a family had to have the skills to farm in Canada, and references. Some form of community vote was also necessary (note 6).

“Dr. Buettner wants to have a look at all the prospective emigrants. … The Americans [sic] only want people who are able to work. Every emigrating family must therefore not only have two special references, but also the vote of the community. If 75 percent vouch for the family, it goes; if less, it has to stay behind. Five families have been struck from the list in this way.” (Note 7)

On June 22, 1923 the first group left Chortitza for Alexandrovsk, and on July 13 David Toews received a cable from England that the group had left Southampton on the Empress of France for Canada.

But in the midst of that larger good news story, many families were shocked at Riga when another medical examination by Canadian doctors became unavoidable. Hundreds failed and learnt that they could not proceed--and could in fact be turned back.

On August 2, B.B. Janz sent an urgent cable via German diplomatic mail to Benjamin Unruh in Germany informing him of the “catastrophe” at the over-capacity facilities in Riga; Janz feared the whole emigration movement was again at risk.

Unruh had a reputation for moving mountains. In cooperation with the Deutsche Mennoniten-Hilfe (note 8), Unruh convinced the German government to allow 1,500 Mennonite transmigrants to be housed at Lechfeld (Bavaria) to receive medical care until they were ready to proceed to Canada (note 9). German Mennonites had already been actively hosting “refugees” (vs. transmigrants) who had escaped via Crimea and Constantinople and were in Lechfeld since 1921.

The Mennonite Church’s Gospel Herald reported on September 13:

“Of the full quota of 3,000, as per the contract with the CPR Co. about 400 were rejected after they left Russia and could not be admitted into Canada. Therefore arrangements were made to care for them at Lechfeld, Germany, to which place they were sent. There are no available funds there to provide them with necessary food and clothing. An appeal has been sent by Bro. D. M. Hofer, a former worker in Russian Relief who is now in Germany, that we set apart some funds for their care for the present in Germany. Arrangements have been made to forward $1,000 at once and call for further donations for the work.” (Note 10)

A few months later Unruh wrote: “Of the 255 people in Lechfeld, we were able to move 232, and of the refugees (we distinguish them from the transmigrants) about 150. There is a lot of work, you can imagine. ..." (note 11).

In November 1923 Levi Mumaw reported that “there are about 420 Russian refugees on the Lechfeld in Germany who are depending on American Mennonites for support. They are awaiting permission to emigrate to Canada but may be detained there for the winter” (note 12).

Some years later Unruh recalled: In 1923, out of 3,000 emigrants, no less than 657 who had been deferred by Canadian doctors in Riga and Southampton were taken to the Lechfeld camp and treated there for their final emigration to Canada” (note 13).

It was clear that tens of thousands more Mennonites wished to leave. With the first group safely in Canada, B.B. Janz wrote Unruh: “the people have had enough. Now after they have seen a few leave they only want to depart. … The people are not concerned about the precious articles they leave behind, even if they must depart poor and naked” (note 14).

A year later in 1924 the Gospel Herald reported that the CMBofC signed a new contract April 14, 1924 with the CPR for another 5,000 immigrants and “after considerable difficulty two physicians entered Russia in order to make the necessary physical examinations before the prospective immigrants embarked. On their way to Russia these doctors stopped at Lechfeld to examine those who are detained there. 27 of these were given a clean bill of health. 68 are still remaining in Lechfeld” (note 15).

Between July 1923 and summer of 1926 when the Lecheld transit camp closed, Peter Letkemann estimates that “thousands” of Mennonite transmigrants from the USSR to Canada were temporarily housed at the camp (note 16).

As Mennonites celebrate 100 years since the release and settlements of thousands, it is important to recall not only that thousands more had wished to leave but could not, but that hundred who made it as far as Riga were almost turned back if not for the supportive role of the Germany and the support at the Lechfeld transit camp.

        ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: Cf. Benjamin H. Unruh to District Advisor (Gebietsreferent) for Latin America, [Ernst G.] Kienitz, Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland, December 3, 1938 (B. H. Unruh Nachlaß, Box 3, File 18; undated fragment, pp. 3-5, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof (hereafter MFStW). Note: Missing 2 pages are in File 13, December 3, 1938, Unruh to Volksbund f. d. Deutschtum im Ausland.

Note 2: John B. Toews, The Lost Fatherland: The Story of the Mennonite Emigration from Soviet Russia, 1921–1927 (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1967), 132f.; 140; https://archive.org/details/lostfatherlandst0000toew. Cf. “Minutes of the Union Board Meeting, May 7–8, 1924” in John B. Toews and Paul Toews, 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), 215f.; also “Resolution of the Verband on emigration, Feb. 26–28, 1925,” ibid., 220f., https://archive.org/details/unionofcitizenso0000unse.

Note 3: Cf. David Toews to W. H. Ewert, May 1, 1923, letter, from Mennonite Library and Archives, Bethel College (MLA-B), MS 6, folder “General Correspondence 1922, May to September,” https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/024%20General%20correspondence%201922%20May-September/183.jpg.

Note 4: H. H. Ewert to Wilhelm J. Ewert, May 18, 1923, letter, from MLA-B, MS 6, folder “General Correspondence 1923, January to June,” https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_6/026%20General%20correspondence%201923%20January-June/140.jpg.

Note 5: Gospel Herald 16, no. 33 (November 15, 1923), 680, https://archive.org/details/gospelherald192316kauf/page/680/mode/2up.

Note 6: James Urry, “After the rooster crowed: Some issues concerning the interpretation of Mennonite/ Bolshevik relations during the early Soviet period,” Journal of Mennonite Studies 13 (1995), 45 n.9, https://jms.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/jms/article/view/442.

Note 7: Diary of Anna Baerg, 1916–1924, translated and edited by Gerald Peters (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC Publications, 1985), 112.

Note 8: On Lechfeld, see: Harold Bender’s article on “Lechfeld” in GAMEO, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Lechfeld_(Freistaat_Bayern,_Germany); Peter Letkemann, “Mennonite Refugee Camps in Germany, 1921-1951: Part I – Lager Lechfeld,” Mennonite Historian 38, no. 3, 2012, https://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/38.3.MHSep12.pdf; Peter Letkemann, “The Mennonite Refugee Effort in Lager Lechfeld, 1921-1926: Beating Swords into Plowshares?,” Mennonite Quarterly Review, 90, no. 3 (July 2016), 277-306; also Deutsche Mennoniten-Hilfe, ihre Entstehung und Arbeitsgebiete (Oberursel, 1924), 24-28, https://mla.bethelks.edu/gmsources/books/1924,%20Deutsche%20Mennonitenhilfe/. For articles in the Mennonitische Rundschau that reference Lechfeld, see: https://archive.org/details/pub_die-mennonitische-rundschau?tab=collection&query=lechfeld&sin=TXT&sort=date.

Note 9: Cf. also Benjamin H. Unruh, Memorandum to Military Government at Buchen/Baden, July 20, 1945, https://mla.bethelks.edu/archives/ms_295/folder_14/SKMBT_C35107061313230_0005.jpg; also Mennonitische Rundschau 46, no. 49 (December 5, 1923), 10, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1923-12-05_46_49/page/10/mode/2up?q=lechfeld.

Note 10: Gospel Herald 16, no. 24 (September 13, 1923), 504, https://archive.org/details/gospelherald192316kauf/page/504/mode/2up.

Note 11: Mennonitische Rundschau 46, no. 49 (December 5, 1923), 10, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1923-12-05_46_49/page/10/mode/2up?q=lechfeld.

Note 12: Gospel Herald 16, no. 33 (November 15, 1923), 680, https://archive.org/details/gospelherald192316kauf/page/680/mode/2up.

Note 13: Cf. Unruh to Kienitz, Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland.

Note 14: Cited in J. Toews, Lost Fatherland, 138.

Note 15: The Mennonite 39, no. 34, August 28, 1924, 8, https://archive.org/details/mennonite39unse_0/page/n142/mode/1up?q=lechfeld.

Note 16: Cf. Letkemann, “The Mennonite Refugee Effort in Lager Lechfeld,” 305.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “1923 Mennonite immigrants 'kept behind': Lechtfeld (Bavaria) transit camp,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 26, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/1923-mennonite-immigrants-kept-behind.html.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

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 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

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

Stalin’s Purge (1937-38) and Mennonite Suffering: 8 theses

1. Millions died under Stalin One of the more recent studies on the Stalin-era estimates that more than 28.7 million people suffered in the northern prisons and slave camps of the Gulag and 2.75 million people died there during Stalin’s reign ( note 1 ). To this number must be added the “close to a million political executions, the millions who died in transit to the Gulag, and some six to seven million who died of starvation during the early 1930s” ( note 2 ). The mass deportation of workers and peasants provided millions of forced labourers in the Arctic and Siberia. George K. Epp calculated that approximately one-third of Mennonites in the Soviet Union—at least 30,000—died due to exposure, beatings, overwork, disease, starvation or shootings ( note 3 ). 2. Mennonites in Ukraine suffered together with their Ukrainian neighbours Moscow was fearful of “losing Ukraine” ( note 4 ) and specifically targeted it with a “lengthy schooling” designed to ruthlessly break the threat of U...
Post a 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

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 ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
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