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Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland

After the 1943-44 portion of the Great Trek ended with settlement of some 35,000 Mennonites in German-annexed Poland, the Gnadenfeld area trek members were scattered in resettler camps (Umsiedler-Lager) around Exin (Kcynia) and the Altburgund District administrative centre of Dietfurt (Żnin), including the hamlets of Kiefernrode (Słupowiec), Schwarzerde (Malice), Schmiedebach, etc. (note 1). Until World War I, the area was part of the German-Prussian Province of Posen, about 170 kilometres south-west of Danzig (Gdańsk) and about 400 kilometres east of Berlin.

Almost all ethnic German resettlers from Ukraine arrived through Litzmannstadt (Łódź), one of two entrance points from the east into new German province of “Warthegau” (note 2). Here thousands were cleansed, deloused and processed daily.

Some Gnadenfeld group members were brought to Janowitz (Janowiec), near Hermannsbad in the District of Hohensalza for quarantine. Here fresh straw was laid out on the floor for approximately 70 refugees to sleep on; one classroom was used to lock up the luggage, and another served as a dining hall.

“It felt so good to stretch out and rest our weary bodies, even if it was on a bed of straw on the floor. Our sleeping quarters were quite cramped, but we thanked God that we were safe, warm and well fed. … For the first while we were under quarantine and could not leave the premises except to go to the common bath-house for our weekly bath. So we spent a lot of time on our straw beds relaxing.” (Note 3)

On Himmler’s direct orders, the resettler camps were given the status of “convalescent camps,” which entitled residents to receive twenty percent more rations than average Germans (note 4). Besides lice, rickets and scabies were common, as well as tuberculosis and trachoma; Black Sea Germans received immediate and superior care (note 5).

As ethnic Germans from the east arrived, Poles were systematically removed from their homes in a scheme of racialized colonization. It evacuation orders it is referred to as the "Black Sea German Special Operation." This was the experience of our family (and it makes my mother feel terrible to this day; note 6). My grandmother with four children under 17 was first in a resettler camp in the hamlet of Schwarzerde (“Black Earth), 2.8 km. east of Exin (population of 372 in 1941; note 7), and then given a small farm in Waldtal (Laskownica), 12 km. north-west of Exin (sometime between early May and early July).

If not deported, many Polish families were required to vacate their homes and live with relatives or other Polish families. In the District of Hohensalza the chief medical officer reported that in April 1944 “2,817 Russian-Germans were settled in the district ... and were accommodated on the estates or in apartments that were partly vacated by Poles. Evacuation from Poland did not take place” (note 8).

My mother was six years-old at this time. Her single aunt Tante Tina was put in the nearby town of Exin, where she was a cook for enslaved Polish workers. When she became a naturalized citizen in Dietfurt, she was given a lower biological-cultural value ranking (“A-Case” vs. “O-Case”) than her extended family members (note 9).

I have written a number of posts previously about this period (note 10). Recently Polish archives have posted some photos and documents from around Exin during this period. It helps to “ground” the Mennonite stories and to give them context.

In Exin--when my 16-year-old uncle Walter Bräul was required to report for military service in 1944--he felt that no good soldier should be without a girlfriend. Before leaving for training, he asked one of the girls from "the trek" (in the Schmiedebach Camp) on a date to see a movie in Exin (note 11). Katie Friesen, another teenager at the time, recalled an excursion from their temporary shelter in search for relatives near Exin.

“It was already getting dark and we still had not reached our destination so we started to get a bit apprehensive. We knew that the Polish people disliked the Germans. ... It took quite a bit of courage to go to the first house and inquire whether or not people lived in the village.” (Note 12)

The “dislike” was not for nothing. Repeatedly Russian Mennonite memoirs from this period record shock at the treatment of non-Germans.

If Poles were not deported, it was only to keep them as farm labourers or in critical manufacturing (munitions) roles. Below are 1944 plans for the construction of 24 worker homes (Behelfsheimen) or “Polish barracks” (Polenbaracken) on the edge Exin (note 13). One March 1944 memo notes explicitly that these barracks would free up living space in Exin for Black Sea German and other German families impacted by recent air raids (see pic). In an April 29, 1944 memo, Exin was to build 159 such worker barracks for its Polish workers.




The larger archival file available online also contains multiple photos from a nearby prisoner of war camp (Szubin, Stalag-Oflag 21B), where French soldiers had recently been housed.

Mennonites were prepared to settle into this racially colonized world of Warthegau for the long-haul (Canada had been the preferred destination since the 1920s). The SS-directed Ethnic German Liaison Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle) appointed Prof. Benjamin Unruh with a stipend (note 14) to order and regulate Mennonite church life in Warthegau. In these same months, Unruh completed draft articles of incorporation for the new “Conference of Mennonite Congregations of German Nationality in the Province of Wartheland” and part of the Vereinigung (Union) of German Mennonite Congregations of the German Reich"—to be approved by authorities (note 15). 

Unruh’s vision for a new united Mennonite community sought to be Anabaptist and forward looking, but one in which equal dignity or shared Christian responsibility, charity and service with Poles or Jews in German-annexed Poland was wholly absent. Unruh’s vision for Mennonites in Warthegau was consistent with Volk- and state outcomes for strengthening “German blood” and expanding and rooting German life to the “soil.” 

Mennonites from Ukraine arrived in Warthegau without church records of births, deaths, baptisms and marriages. A high priority for Unruh and his team of Prussian congregational historians was to do verify their German blood purity as a requirement for naturalization (note 16). And with the encouragement of the highest levels of government, Unruh could report to co-religionists with confidence that the dream was now finally being realized, and that Paraguayan, Brazilian, and maybe even Canadian Mennonites would soon be able to return to the German Reich (note 17).

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See map of Altburgund District, https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/167966/edition/170631/content. For more general maps of Wartheland and Hohensalza Rolf Jehke, Territoriale Veränderungen in Deutschland und deutsch verwalteten Gebieten 1874–1945, http://territorial.de/wart/karten.htm. For aerial photos of Kcynia (Exin), see https://kcynia.pl/galeria/gmina-kcynia-z-lotu-ptaka.html. Detailed 1940 maps: Exin, map no. 3070, https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/23216/edition/31954/content?ref=struct&fbclid=IwAR3aXxCOdDKN89CqNAzf0aLs4o0_Vj1luXivcT6znFa0j4Mi7QvdebIZtI8; Malitz (Schwarzerde), map no. 2971, https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/22709/edition/31392/content?ref=struct&fbclid=IwAR1CKCXUE_mX4xl0eRhzSEK4c2T_Na__zgQ82kGKCUXh_sWm9Xe3BRmZj7Q; Waldtal and Kiefernrode (Slupowo Abbau), map no. 2970, https://kpbc.umk.pl/dlibra/publication/22685/edition/31388/content?fbclid=IwAR1920Ik8leZ5BNsOnhgRvPCyYAsGLl73LmA2RHt4-D6hoI3Jvwn7CJxSRU. 

Note 2: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/litzmanstadt-odz-entering-reich-1943-44.html.

Note 3: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 74f.

Note 4: Cf. 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), 193. See also See the "Dienstanweisung über Aufnahme in den Lagern und Organisation der Lager, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle Einsatzstab Litzmannstandt," Bundes Archiv R 59-99, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/487b22f5-592e-4949-a9c7-3c125e539400/.

Note 5: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/typhus-reports-and-gratitude-to-fuhrer.html.

Note 6: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/wartheland-mennonite-resettlers-and.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/first-christmas-for-black-sea-germans.html.

Note 7: Cf. Einwandererzentralstelle (EWZ) files A3342-EWZ50-A073 1946 (Helene Bräul) and A3342-EWZ50-A073 2044 (Katharina Bräul). For 1941 populations of Schwarzerde (Malice /Malitz) or Waldtal (300), see Warthegau telephone book https://archive.org/details/Verschiedene-Adressbuecher/Deutsches%20Reichs%20Ostgebiete%20Adressbuch-%201941/page/n313/mode/2up.

Note 8: May 5, 1944, State Health Office Hohensalza Report, 15, no. 19, from Transport Niemców znad Morza Czarnego na teren Kraju Warty [Transport of Germans from the Black Sea to the Wartheland], from Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives Poland), 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1979, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049368. For other archival materials documenting the forced evacuation of Poles in the Posen area to make housing available to Black Sea Germans, see: https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/1261490.

Note 9: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-cases-and-o-cases-after-trek-1944.html.

Note 10: See links in notes above, as well as the following: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/removal-of-old-testament-names-after.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/warthegau-nazism-and-two-15-year-old.html.

Note 11: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/queen-elizabeth-ii-and-aunt-adina.html.

Note 12: K. Friesen, Into the Unknown, 74.

Note 13: “Bau von Behelfsheimen in Altburgund (Szubin). Polenbaracken,” 1944, Archiwum Państwowe w Poznaniu, Fonds Namiestnik Rzeszy w Okręgu Kraju Warty – Poznań, reference code, 53/299/0/9/3273, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/jednostka/-/jednostka/1050707.

Note 14: Cf. Dr. Gerhard Wolfrum to Benjamin H. Unruh, letter, September 29, 1943. From Benjamin H. Unruh Personalakte, S499, Schrank 2a, Fach 24, Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe, Universitätsarchiv Karlsruhe (copy at Mennonite Library and Archives – Bethel College).

Note 15: Benjamin H. Unruh to Vereinigung Executive, “Zur Einigungsfrage,” January 26, 1944; and “Zur Tauffrage: Ergänzung I zur Einigungsfrage,” January 31, 1944. From Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof (MFSt), Benjamin Unruh Collection, folder “Correspondence with Abraham Braun, 1930, 1940, 1944–45.”

Note 16: See previous post (forthcoming).

Note 17: Benjamin H. Unruh to Emil Händiges, Jan. 22, 1943, 1b, letter, file folder 1943, Vereinigung Collection, MFSt. See Karl Götz, Das Schwarzmeerdeutschtum: Die Mennoniten (Posen: NS-Druck Wartheland, 1944), Bundesarchiv BA R 187/267a, https://chortitza.org/pdf/0v772.pdf.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Life in Exin, 1944: German-Occupied Poland,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), July 27, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/life-in-exin-1944-german-occupied-poland.html. 



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