Outrage in Canada: Ukrainian in Waffen-SS honoured in Parliament. Mennonite Connections

As an historic peace church, Russian Mennonite congregations in Canada never celebrated “their veterans” who had volunteered with the Waffen-SS or Wehrmacht in complex times; hundreds did however volunteer to protect and defend their corner of Ukraine from a new era of Moscow-based Bolshevism. Some later self-identified as "The Lost Generation." German Prussian Mennonites in contrast understood that heritage differently and celebrated the “Heroes' Day Memorial” service anually until 1945. After 1945 Germany appropriately renamed their remembrance day as Volkstrauertag—the People’s Day of Mourning (note 1). Many descendents live in Canada.

A parallel Ukrainian story made the news in Canada in September 2023. The Speaker of the House of Commons invited a 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian war veteran to a joint session of Parliament for the visit and address by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on September 22.

Without good vetting by the Speaker, the guest was lauded as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero” and given a standing ovation in Parliament with President Zelensky present. On that weekend, news circulated that the man had served in the “14th Waffen-SS Grenedier Division ‘Galicia.’”

In 1943-44 thousands of Ukrainians volunteered for this all-Ukrainian Waffen-SS division under German command; many later immigrated to Canada. Theirs too was a fight against Moscow-based Soviet repression. And with the genocidal famine of the 1930s fresh in their minds, they hoped their chances for Ukrainian statehood were stronger under Hitler than Stalin. Decades later Ukrainian-Canadians have been divided on how to remember those who collaborated or cooperated with the Nazi Germany; notably members of this unit have been regularly celebrated as Ukrainian heroes (note 2).

After this information became public, on September 27 the Canadian Prime Minister apologized to the world on behalf of Parliament for an incident he called a “horrendous violation” of the memory of those murdered in the Holocaust (note 3).

Coincidentally this year McGill-Queen’s University Press published a volume on this SS division written by Myroslav Shkandrij, Professor Emeritus of Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba (note 4); Shkandrij’s father had been a member of the division. The volume seeks to explore the “difficult space between one genocidal regime and another;” it has been well summarized in connection to the scandal by Justin Ling (note 5).

Shkandrij concludes in this way: “The force’s controversial, complex, and long story presents contemporaries with a range of lessons and challenges, and obliges them to consider how a previous generation reacted when trapped in the maelstrom of war.”

In previous posts, I have shared materials about the 500+ Mennonite young men in the Molotschna district (Ukraine) who under German occupation volunteered (or were pressured) for a self-defence unit, which morphed into the First Ethnic German Waffen-SS Cavalry regiment (note 6).

The other large, predominantly Mennonite Chortitza district in Ukraine had not been under the authority and jurisdiction of the SS, so their youth did not share that story until they were resettled in German-annexed Poland in 1943-44. There the SS Operations Commander for the Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans (VoMi) in Gau Danzig-West Prussia reported favourably on the Chortitza Mennonites in February 1944:

“Especially the resettlers from the recent ‘Operation Chortitza,’ above all those born in 1915 [29 yrs. old] and younger wanted—already in December [1943] almost without exception—to voluntarily present themselves to the supplementary unit of the Waffen-SS for an acceptance examination. This shows the success of the ideological training on the part of the [resettler] camp leaders, who have to carry this out on an ongoing basis by order of the operational command.” (Note 7)

None other than Mennonite Professor Benjamin Unruh (see previous posts) was praised by SS leadership as one of the most valued, invited speakers in the camps in December. This is the same context—i.e., towards the end of the war with the German retreat out of Ukraine—in which the 98-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian man noted above volunteered as an eighteen-year-old for the all-Ukrainian SS division.

Shkandrij’s book is a large tome. He is a Manitoban and took opportunity to mention at least one ethnic Mennonite connection, namely, the much-hated Heinrich Wiens, born in Molotschna, a one-time student of Unruhs, who left for Danzig in 1930. Wiens joined the Nazi Party and the SS in 1931, returned to Molotschna in 1941 with the German invasion, and actively participated in the killing of Jews, Roma and Soviet activists (note 8). Notably in 1943-44 Wiens also had some responsibility for the all-Ukrainian Waffen-SS divison as well, and was feared and despised by its members, according to Shkandrij.

The invitation and praise of a member of the Waffen-SS in the Canadian House of Commons was a terrible error and deeply embarrassing for all involved. Mennonites share much in common with Ukrainian Canadians, including this very dark, confusing chapter of human history in which so many were trapped. Indeed, it offers “a range of lessons and challenges” when considering how a previous generation “reacted when trapped in the maelstrom of war” (Shkandrij).

While the war criminals like Wiens typically did not survive the war, some of the young Mennonite SS "volunteers" did. Dozens found their way to Canada, including a handful in my childhood congregation, and even more, the surviving mothers and sisters (like my mother) of the fallen. The story in the news recalled the complex, troubled baggage of many Canadian Mennonite congregations and families who struggled quietly to turn the page and recover a more robust peace church identity.

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Note 1: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/07/day-of-commemoration-for-heroes.html.

Note 2: For example, on Remembrance Day 2010, “Paul Grod, President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, in the name of 1.2 million Ukrainian-Canadians, paid tribute to the veterans of the Waffen-SS Galizien” (https://web.archive.org/web/20230530015707/https://www.ucc.ca/2010/11/11/ukrainian-community-honours-veterans-on-remembrance-day/) as Per Anders Rudling recounts critically in his essay: “‘They Defended Ukraine’: The 14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (Galizische Nr. 1) Revisited,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 25, no. 3 (2012), 329-368; 330. -https://www.academia.edu/1908894/_They_Defended_Ukraine_The_14_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_der_SS_Galizische_Nr_1_Revisited_The_Journal_of_Slavic_Military_Studies_25_3_2012_329_368. NB: After Spring 1945 the unit changed its name to “1st Ukrainian Division of the Ukrainian National Army.” See also the well-documented Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14th_Waffen_Grenadier_Division_of_the_SS_(1st_Galician).

Note 3: Cf. “Canadian Speaker in House of Commons Quits After Honoring Ukrainian Who Fought for Nazis,” New York Times, Sept. 26, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/26/world/canada/anthony-rota-resign-canada-ukraine-nazi.html.

Note 4: Myroslav Shkandrij, In the Maelstrom: The Waffen-SS “Galicia” Division and its Legacy (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023).

Note 5: See blog post by Justin Ling: “About the SS Officer in the Gallery: History is messy, horrible, complicated. All we can do is face it,” https://www.bugeyedandshameless.com/p/yaroslav-hunka-canada. Thanks to Randy P. Penner for alerting me to this post.

Note 6: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/easter-and-molotschnas-first-ethnic.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/notes-on-lost-generation-first-ethnic.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/retrieving-lost-generation-heinrich.html.

Note 7: Operations Commander SS-Hauptsturmführer Bösche, “Activity Report of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi; Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans) in the Gau Danzig-West Prussia for the Period from January 1, 1943 to January 31, 1944 on the Resettlement of Germans from Lithuania, Southern Russia and Northern Russia,” February 10, 1944, pp. 3-4 [33-34; scans 67-69), Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans) Operations Command Gdansk-West Prussia. From: Bundesarchiv (BA) R 59/109, Umsiedlung der Deutschen aus Litauen und Russland, Gau Danzig/West-Preussen, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/54c4be9f-0130-4868-baec-e7a6b5c6628a/.

Note 8: See European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 3, 4, 12, 14, 23, 30n.40, 36, 39, 57-62, 71n.63, 210-213, 217, 227n.66.

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Outrage in Canada: Ukrainian in Waffen-SS honoured in Parliament. Mennonite Connections," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), September 28, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/09/outrage-in-canada-ukrainian-in-waffen.html.

Comments

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 ...

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...

1929 Flight of Mennonites to Moscow and Reception in Germany

At the core of the attached video are some thirty photos of Mennonite refugees arriving from Moscow in 1929 which are new archival finds. While some 13,000 had gathered in outskirts of Moscow, with many more attempting the same journey, the Soviet Union only released 3,885 Mennonite "German farmers," together with 1,260 Lutherans, 468 Catholics, 51 Baptists, and 7 Adventists. Some of new photographs are from the first group of 323 refugees who left Moscow on October 29, arriving in Kiel on November 3, 1929. A second group of photos are from the so-called “Swinemünde group,” which left Moscow only a day later. This group however could not be accommodated in the first transport and departed from a different station on October 31. They were however held up in Leningrad for one month as intense diplomatic negotiations between the Soviet Union, Germany and also Canada took place. This second group arrived at the Prussian sea port of Swinemünde on December 2. In the next ten ...

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...

"They are useful to the state." An almost forgotten Prussian view of Mennonites, ca. 1780s-90s

In 1787 Mennonite interest for emigration was extremely strong outside the quasi independent City of Danzig in the Prussian annexed Marienwerder and Elbing regions. Even before the land scouts Johann Bartsch and Jacob Höppner had returned from Russia later that year, so many Mennonite exit applications had flooded offices that officials wrote Berlin in August 1787 for direction ( note 1a ). Initially officials did not see a problem: because Mennonites do not provide soldiers, the cantons lose nothing by their departure, and in fact benefit from the ten-percent tax imposed on financial assets leaving the state. Ludwig von Baczko (1756-1823), Professor of History at the Artillery Academy in Königsberg, East Prussia, was the general editor of a series that included a travelogue through Prussia written by a certain Karl Ephraim Nanke. Nanke had no special love for Mennonites, but was generally balanced in his judgements and based his now almost forgotten account of Mennonites on perso...

Sesquicentennial: Proclamation of Universal Military Service Manifesto, January 1, 1874

One-hundred-and-fifty years ago Tsar Alexander II proclaimed a new universal military service requirement into law, which—despite the promises of his predecesors—included Russia’s Mennonites. This act fundamentally changed the course of the Russian Mennonite story, and resulted in the emigration of some 17,000 Mennonites. The Russian government’s intentions in this regard were first reported in newspapers in November 1870 ( note 1 ) and later confirmed by Senator Evgenii von Hahn, former President of the Guardianship Committee ( note 2 ). Some Russian Mennonite leaders were soon corresponding with American counterparts on the possibility of mass migration ( note 3 ). Despite painful internal differences in the Mennonite community, between 1871 and Fall 1873 they put up a united front with five joint delegations to St. Petersburg and Yalta to petition for a Mennonite exemption. While the delegations were well received and some options could be discussed with ministers of the Crown, ...

German Village on the Dnieper: Occupation Propaganda Photos. Chortitza, 1943

The following propaganda photos are of the Mennonites community in Chortitz, Ukraine during German occupation in World War II. German armies reached the Mennonite villages on the west bank of the Dnieper River on August 17, 1941. The photos below were taken almost two years later. However the war was already turning, and within two months the trek out of Ukraine would begin. The photographs are accompanied by an article about the Low-German speakers of Chortitza for a readership in the Reich ( note 1 ). The author repeatedly draws on the myth of one-sided German pioneer accomplishments abroad: “The first settlers found the land desolate and empty,” the reader is told, and were “left to fend for themselves in a foreign environment” where with German diligence, order and cleanliness they thrived. The article correctly recognizes the great losses of the ethnic Germans under Bolshevism--as if to convince readers that the war is a shared burden of all Germans, and which is now payin...

Flooding as a weapon of war, 1657

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these maps speak volumes. In February 1657, the Swedish King Carolus Gustavus ordered an intentional breach of the embankments along the Vistula River to completely flood the villages of the Danzig Werder. See the vivid punctures and water flow in 1657 map below; compare with the 1730 maps with rebuilt villages and farms ( note 1 ). In Polish memory this war is appropriately remembered as "The Deluge". Villages in the Danzig Werder (delta) from which Mennonites immigrated to Russia include: Quadendorf, Reichenberg, Krampitz, Neunhuben, Hochzeit, Scharfenberg, Wotzlaff, Landau, Schönau, Nassenhuben, Mönchengrebin, and Nobel ( note 2 ). In the war the suburbs outside the gates of Danzig suffered most; Mennonites lived here in large numbers, e.g., in Alt Schottland and Stoltzenberg. First, these villages were completely razed by the City of Danzig to keep the invading Swedes from using the villages to their advantage in battle. ...

Molotschna: The final months, Summer 1943

These photos are from German propaganda material filmed in Molotschna (called "Halbstadt") in 1943—just a few months before the evacuation from Ukraine and trek to German-annexed Poland (Warthegau). Not all of the film is of the Mennonite settlement, however, but much of it is. Below are some frames from the film. The edited shorter version is of higher quality and designed as propaganda to be consumed by Germans in the Reich and to secure their approval . The scenes are marked by cleanliness, orderliness and discipline. There is economic activity, a model Kindergarten, and always happy ethnic German people in the newly occupied territories. A predominantly Mennonite Cavalry Regiment (Waffen-SS) guarding Ukrainian and Russian workers is also highlighted. This hard to see and disturbing. Anything that may have been good here for Mennonites meant enslavement, hunger and death for untold numbers of others. Two versions of the film are available: Shorter (edited for l...

Nazi German love for Mennonites in Ukraine. Why?

For Mennonites the dramatic and massive invasion of USSR by German forces in Summer/Fall 1941 meant liberation from Soviet state terror and answer to prayer. Nazi Germany spared neither money nor personnel to free, feed, cloth, protect, heal and educate the Soviet Union’s ethnic Germans—and Mennonites in particular. Mennonite memoirs, village reports and EWZ (naturalization applications) autobiographies are consistent with praise for the German Reich and its leader. From the highest levels, goodwill, care and patience towards ethnic Germans was policy. Reichsführer -SS Heinrich Himmler was also named by Hitler as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood . This authorized Himmler and his para-military SS to oversee and coordinate the Germanization, resettlements and population transfers which came with the invasion and partial annexation of Poland (Warthegau), and later occupation plans for parts of Ukraine and Russia. The VoMi ( Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle )...

History of the Russian Mennonites

Search This Blog