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Mennonites: Highly Attractive and Desired Seedlings, 1943-44

Mennonites can appreciate an orderly garden, but SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler’s vision of a racial garden for annexed Poland—i.e., for Germanic peoples alone—was criminal and murderous. The new Warthegau province was to be a “Pflanzgarten (nursery) of pure Germanic blood,” with plants of “singular and decisive racial value” (note 1). "Lesser types" were to be pulled out to make space for this expansion of German living space. And all new plants brought in would be carefully screened for their characteristics and purity.

Racial selection meant life and privilege for ethnic Germans, and loss of rights, deportation for many, and in some cases (and for all Jews) death. In Himmler's mind, Mennonites were deemed among the most highly desired of these "seedlings" (see below).

A few of the phrases above are from a speech Himmler gave in Posen on October 24, 1943, a few kilometers away from resettler camps in Warthegau where many from Molotschna would settle five months later. At that time (March 1943) the one-millionth ethnic German from the east was welcomed to Warthegau (note 2).

Notably the morning after Himmler’s speech, thousands of kilometers away the “Great Trek” started up again from the west side of the Dnieper (Alexanderstadt) along the Bug River, which flows south-east from Poland, through Ukraine. The next two months would be harrowing; survivors recall that the “danger was so very near” as they were evacuated “almost under the cannon-fire of the Russians” (note 3); no one knew that they were Himmler’s favoured variety.

Himmler’s speech that week worked with broadly agreed assumptions (not only in Germany; not only in the Nazi era) that there are “racial types,” that the “Nordic race” was a superior type of Herrenmensch—born to rule over so-called lesser races—and that one could speak scientifically of racial health, its improvement or decomposition, e.g., with children of mixed race or hereditary diseases, etc. (note 4).

This was not the first time Mennonites had encountered this. Already before Hitler had seized power, Mennonites fleeing over Moscow 1929-1930 not only had their weight, height and build measured, but also skull shape, eye and hair colour, forehead, eye-brow line, nose (base, width, tip and prominence), ear length and width, and chin shape—all to determine German racial purity (note 5).

This pseudo-science had become truth in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, and the SS racial experts were its priests. In his Posen speech Himmler was confident “that the world must be viewed through this lens of race, and that from this foundation of racial knowledge its problems can be solved.”

Notably the ethnic German “plants” arriving from the USSR via Litzmannstadt were, according to EWZ "racial experts," not of equal value—some needing much more significant “training” and shaping or grafting, like a tree in a nursery, using Himmler’s analogy.

Recently I found files in the German Federal Archives online that included reports by and on the quality of work by these racial experts at Litzmannstadt and an assessment of the quality of their work for the year 1944.

The writer SS-Untersturmführer Godzik was cranky; the war was going badly. It had been a year of upheaval and chaos with the arrival of some 250,000 "Black Sea Germans" refugees—all to be assessed and, if approved (O-cases; note 6), “replanted“ in Warthegau. It was a massive task for the EWZ at Litzmannstadt to receive, delouse, register, assess and resettle. A sister organization was responsible for the removal of Poles too as needed (note 7).

Competing state and Party agencies were confused given the loss of good leaders (Halbstadt’s SS leader Roßner is specifically mentioned), evolving policies, and uncertainty of who does what. The report writer is perturbed about the inconsistent quality of background checks and the incompetency of many involved. All were overworked and as a result far too many individuals of “mixed racial” marriages were added for "planting"—people who were not sufficiently German—and impacting the vision and quality of the garden state.

His assessment of ethnic Germans Lutherans and Catholics from Ukraine is telling. These are compared with the Mennonites—the most highly praised plant for propagation in Warthegau’s garden in his broader experience.

“During my one year of work in Litzmannstadt I had the opportunity to become acquainted with all the ethnic groups from the southern part of Russia [Ukraine] and from Poland, so that, after having worked in the northern and central part myself, I want to be certain to add a brief description of the individual groups to the report. The best that we were able to save from Russia in terms of blood and attitude (Haltung) are the Mennonites, most of whom were resettled in West Prussia and others in Warthegau. The very fact that among them about 90% remained pure (i.e., not mixed with foreign blood) and linguistically almost exclusively German (Plattdeutsch) speaks in their favour. Particularly noteworthy is the unwavering will to live even under the most difficult conditions. This is evidenced well by their very high number of children. Their Old Testament first names and also surnames, such as Isaac, Esau, Benjamin, Sarah, and so on, were exchanged with good German names. Through conversations with their leader (Führer), Prof. Benjamin Unruh, I was able to gain an even deeper impression of this strongly Nordic ethnic group. With about 120 surnames the entire ethnic group is captured (erfaßt), who gave shape to settlements in Zaporozhye, Halbstadt, Melitopol, the Volga Region and partly in the Caucasus as well.

The Protestant ethnic Germans from Eastern Volhynia cannot prove the same abundance of children, have entered into more intermarriages in percentage and are not as racially valuable as the Mennonites. Nevertheless, they represent an asset to the German Reich. Exceptions are the Lutheran villages of … and the two Catholic villages …, which have remained almost pure, but married so closely related that this created significant biological issues. The Swabians from Transnistria are the most valuable among the Lutherans, but they lack in the number of children. They have remained almost untouched by Bolshevization.

The Catholics from the area of Odessa, Dnipropetrovsk, Vosnosensk are descendants of the Swabians and Palatines (Pfälzer), who have a very large proportion of mixed marriages and are racially the most worthless.

The assessment of the Volga Germans is skewed by the fact that almost exclusively the young people of this group appear and are so strongly Bolshevized that one is led to wrong conclusions [in assessment for naturalization]. The majority of them arrive with a Russian girl whom they claim to have married. They need special training and supervision from the Party and the state.” (Note 8)

This Party bureaucrat and the entire bureaucracy welcoming, registering and resettling the Mennonites shared fully the worldview articulated in Himmler’s speech a year earlier.

Using this lens, the report writer's evaluation of Mennonites was similar to Himmler's. When Himmler—a "chief gardener” and architect of the Holocaust—met Mennonite leader Benjamin Unruh secretly over New Years (1942/43), he jokingly greeted Unruh as the “Mennonite Pope.” As Unruh’s children recall him telling the story, Himmler even brought greetings from Unruh’s friends in Molotschna (Himmler visited in October 1942), including the aged and famed Mennonite midwife Frau Berg, who had delivered more than 8,000 ethnic German babies—impressive especially for Himmler (note 9)!

Himmler said to Unruh: "Splendid people, these Mennonites! They are the best! I would naturalize them all without exception even without an ancestral passport!" Unruh replied, "The Mennonites owe this condition to their ecclesiastical discipline (Zucht; can also be translated as breeding!). There has hardly been any intermarriage with the Russians!"

Surprisingly—but maybe not—Unruh, who could always captivate a crowd, proceeded to lecture Himmler on the ancient Frisian ethnic German customs—like not swearing oaths, which Mennonites have preserved! (note 10).

It was a delightful time over two days for both Himmler and the Mennonite “pope” (some accounts say the “Mennonite Moses”). Unruh was proud to have secured some special considerations for his Mennonites from Himmler; it would make them thrive and be attractive for other Mennonites to come to Warthegau from Paraguay, Brazil and maybe Canada (the ones measured and above!) after the war had ended. By mid-year 1944 Unruh's draft constitution (Satzungen) for a new thriving Mennonite church in this racial garden was ready for state and Party approval. And all of this matched Himmler's purposes as well: Mennonites were among the pure and rare “plants” he sought for the colonization of a healthy, vibrant Germanic racial garden, and help fulfill a critical part of his grand and ultimately horrific vision for Europe.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Photo: Children at "Lebensborn," German Reich, understood as a "well-spring" of a future generation of "racially valuable" children (as deemed by SS), https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lebensborn-program.

Note 1: Audio recording of speech in Posen, Warthegau by Heinrich Himmler: Rede des Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler anlässlich des ‘Tages der Freiheit’ am 24. Oktober 1943 in Posen,” 1:22:36ff.; 1:24:14ff., https://archive.org/details/19431024HeinrichHimmlerUndArthurGreiserRedeAmTagDerFreiheitInPosen92m59s. See also Ostdeutscher Beobachter 5, no. 295 (October 25, 1943), 1, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/125379/edition/134554/content.

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

Note 3: Gerhard Lohrenz, Lose Blätter, Teil III (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1976), 108. On the “Trek,” see previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/last-days-of-mennonite-life-on.html.

Note 4: Himmler, Rede, October 24, 1943: “Nordic” (41:05ff.); “Herrenmensch” (1:08:18). For this entire theme Isabel Heinemann article has been helpful: “Towards an ‘Ethnic reconstruction’ of occupied Europe: SS plans and racial policies,” Annali dell'Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 27 (2001), 498; this entire article has been helpful for my reflections on this theme; https://heyjoe.fbk.eu/index.php/anisig/article/view/2226/2226. On Mennonites as a specially pure “Nordic race,” see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/russian-german-frisians-rebranding.html.

Note 5: Friedrich Keiter, Rußlanddeutsche Bauern und ihre Stammesgenossen in Deutschland. Untersuchungen zur spezielen und allgemeinen Rassenkunde (Jena: Fischer, 1934), 33, https://chortitza.org/Pis/RusBauer.pdf.

Note 6: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/a-cases-and-o-cases-after-trek-1944.html.

Note 7: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/wartheland-mennonite-resettlers-and.html.

Note 8: SS-Untersturmführer Godzik, “Monatsbericht über die Überprüfungsarbeiten im Warthegau, Dezember 1944,” with idem, “Jahresbericht Überprüfungsarbeiten in Litzmannstadt. Beauftragt von der Volksdeutschenmittelstelle bei der EWZ,” in Bundesarchiv R 59/88, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/ff10bcb5-3e63-4e0a-ab33-7988251c7709/. The Report includes: “Betrachtungen über die aus Rußland zurückgeführten Volksgruppen.” On removal of Old Testament names, see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/removal-of-old-testament-names-after.html.

Note 9: Reconstruction of wording by Benjamin H. Unruh’s children, as their father had told the story, 31.12.42 / 01.01.43, Box 2, file 7, 1919-1957, Unruh Collection, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof. On Benjamin Unruh, see my previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2022/09/prof-benjamin-unruh-and-mccs.html; also my longer essay, "Benjamin Unruh, MCC and National Socialism," Mennonite Quarterly Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022), 157–205, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/1571. On midwife Helene Berg, see previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/motherhood-of-people-halbstadt-midwife.html.

Note 10: On the embrace of Frisian ancestral background, see previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/russian-german-frisians-rebranding.html.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mennonites: Highly Attractive and Desired Seedlings," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), August 20, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonites-highly-attractive-and.html.

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