Skip to main content

Delousing—Naked in Litzmannstadt (Łódź), 1943-44

She was only six, but my mother Kathe Bräul’s most vivid recollections of the trek out of Molotschna in 1943 are the lice-infested barns that they slept in—an experience shared by thousands of Mennonites. Katie Friesen recalled how her mother and friends tried to sleep sitting on pails with their skirts pulled up “so that the parasites at least could not crawl up on them” (note 1). “We were full of lice, in our hair and up and down the seams of all our clothes,” a slightly older neighbour in Marienthal—Albert Dahl—recalled when my mother and I met him for coffee a few years ago.

There were many indignities suffered by those evacuated from Ukraine, and lice are part of that story. But so is the memory of public nakedness when they were deloused upon entry into “Greater Germany” at Litzmannstadt (Lodz). All were required to be disinfected and deloused in large facilities outside the city at the rail junction in Görnau (Zgierz) or Pobianitze. About 1,600 persons could be deloused in those facilities in one day (note 2). "That was no fun either, but very necessary to prevent diseases” (note 3).

Katie Friesen recalls how “males and females were put in separate rooms and then put through the cleaning ritual” while their clothes were taken elsewhere to be disinfected (note 4). Mennonite modesty kept her from noting further details.“ Now in her old age, my mother has told me multiple times how embarrassed she was seeing her mother and all the other Mennonite women naked as steam came from ceiling vents.

Margaret Siemens Braun (b. 1930) of Neuendorf had similar recollections and feelings.

"We had to go through a big room where they put us all in, and deloused us. You had to take your clothes off: babies, pregnant women, everyone, all in the same room! I thought it was the most terrible thing. They had us all in there, and they sprayed us, and the clothes did go into an oven. How we found our clothes, I don't remember, but they brought the clothes back, and they were baked." (Note 5)

In her memoir Helene Dueck offers further details:

“We were led into large rooms where men and women were separated. Little boys under six went with the women and the older boys with the men. In one large room we all had to undress. The clothes were labelled and brought away to be deloused. We ourselves entered a huge bathroom with dozens of showers and long rows of benches. Here we had to wait for hours and sit naked on the cold benches. How embarrassing that was! Most of us had never been to the beach and had never worn a bathing suit, and here were hundreds of naked women with their children, exposed to every eye. The workers, men and women, were walking around. We could have sunk into the earth [with embarrassment].

Workers went from woman to woman powdering their hair, which was washed in troughs after a long wait. The water had a pungent smell. Then we got into the shower, and after a long wait, we stood in long lines again, still without clothes, to get a stamp on our left arm. The dark blue stamp clearly said CLEAN, and with that we were now ready to live in the Reich. In the other room we found our clothes, which had been dry cleaned and were barely recognizable. They were wrinkled and had lost their colours. We had to wear them because we had no others. We were told that all this was necessary to avoid disease. Everyone who came from the East had to go through the delousing camp." (Note 6)

One report confirms that they received the stamp “REIN” (clean) on their “left wrist,” but the official complained that it is easily washed off, “especially by the women” (note 7). In another report it is noted that resettlers bathed with a 5% cresol soap formula and washed hair with sabadilla vinegar (note 8).

Connie Braun tells her father’s account and adds that the men and the boys had their heads shaved and that the girls had their braids “snipped off if necessary” (note 9).

Isaac Reimer—a former mayor of Einlage and Novo-Zaporizhzhia under German occupation—is most graphic in his recollection:

“We entered Poland, Warthegau, and stopped at the Pobianitze station [near Litzmannstadt]. Here the whole transport was first bathed and deloused. During the bathing in the large bathing room, the women in charge of the transports stood on the balcony in the bathing room and looked at the naked men. Little attention was paid to the old, weak men, but more to the young, strong men. If such a man was discovered, he was thoroughly looked over, one of them alerted the other women to him, even pointing her finger at him, and he was then admired and complimented.

With the women vice versa, there the men stood and looked at the women while bathing and passing by. Liese Jäger, who was never at a loss for words, said to them: ‘Well, have you looked at me enough from the front?’ Then she turned around, bent down, and said: ‘Now look at me from behind, too.’ After delousing the women had to spend the night in their railroad car and the men were allowed back into theirs.” (Note 10)

After delousing another Marienthal child remembered that when their clothes were finally returned they “were treated to a hot milk soup with a slice of bread. That felt great” (note 11). Helene Dueck was a little older and remembered above all her exhaustion:

“We were now led into a huge room where thousands of refugees had already bedded down for the night. Exhausted, we lay down on the straw bed that had been assigned to us and waited for dinner. Finally it came. A big piece of bread with jam and a piece of sausage. I ate it very slowly to keep the taste in my mouth longer. Then I fell asleep and slept well, even though the lights were on all night, children were crying and there was a constant coming and going.” (Note 12)

After leaving Litzmannstadt and arriving at their resettler camps, a second delousing would occur. A medical officer for the camps in the District of Schieratz reported to the Governing President of the City of Litzmannstadt that when delousing locally, he personally “had to ensure that women were not deloused by men and that the appropriate separation was observed. I found little understanding for this. The transport leader told me that other Black Sea Germans had complained bitterly that their women had been deloused by soldiers in Litzmannstadt” (note 13).

It is difficult not to contrast the Mennonite experience of delousing and nakedness in Nazi Germany and that of the Jews of Warthegau sent naked into showers which were gas chambers.

As Nazi Germany was cleansing and resettling its “chosen people” from the east for a new “blond province” in Wartheland (as Himmler once directed; note 14), the historical “chosen people” had a very different fate, of which previous posts have touched upon (note 15).

In 1942 Himmler had visited Mennonites in Halbstadt and then two months later over New Years met with Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh, their representative in Germany. “I have been in Ukraine [October 1942] and I have observed the people there for myself. Your Mennonites are the best,” Himmler told Unruh (note 16). Himmler's criteria of value were racial purity, racial prowess and racial fecundity. And when he addressed ethnic Germans in Halbstadt, Himmler promised his Mennonite hearers that they would be compensated according to their assets as of August 1, 1914—a promise they would cling to and repeat to officials as they entered Warthegau (note 17).

Mennonites remained a favoured and desired resettler group for officials in Litzmannstadt as well (note 18). Though humiliated in this initiation process, they were now clean, lice-free and soon ready to contribute as settlers in the strange new world of the Greater German Reich.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Sampler delousing photos from WW1 from Thomas Edelman, “Wen juckt’s?,” https://blog.hgm.at/2021/03/15/wen-juckts/. Lodsch/Litzmannstadt EWZ photo above from Bundesarchiv Bild 146/74/79/73.

Note 1: Katie Friesen, Into the Unknown (Steinbach, MB: Self-published, 1986), 67.

Note 2: Medical Officer for the State Health Office of the District of Schieratz (Warthegau) to the Governing President of the City of Litzmannstadt, February 4, 1944, regarding the field report on the deployment of Black Sea Germans, February 4, 1944. In Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche, SAP-53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1978, Blatt 95, https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/de/jednostka/-/jednostka/1049367. See also Hans-Jürgen Bömelburg, Lodz (Paderborn: Brill-Schöningh, 2022), 192. On entering Litzmannstadt, see related post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/03/litzmanstadt-odz-entering-reich-1943-44.html.

Note 3: Martha Cornies, “Auf der Flucht,” Mennonitische Rundschau 93, no. 15 (April 15, 1970), 14, https://archive.org/details/sim_die-mennonitische-rundschau_1970-04-15_93_15/page/14/mode/2up.

Note 4: Friesen, Into the Unknown, 73.

Note 5: George Braun and Margaret Siemens Braun, Follow the Black Lines, p. 55 (courtesy of Dave Loewen).

Note 6: Helen Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not (Winnipeg, MB: Centre for Mennonite Brethren Studies, 1995), 79f., https://archive.org/details/durch-truebsal-und-not/mode/2up.

Note 7: N.N. (Lodsch) to SS-Sturmbannführer Sandberger, letter, December 26, 1939, Bundesarchiv R69/69, Blatt 2, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/6692a3a8-098c-440e-9d11-a42035ff6755/.

Note 8: February 3, 1944, Gesundheitsamt Kreises Schrimm (Warthegau), Blatt 59, slide 64, Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche (see note 2).

Note 9: Connie Braun, The Steppes are the Colour of Sepia: A Mennonite Memoir (Vancouver, BC: Ronsdale Press, 2014), 136, https://archive.org/details/steppesarecolour0000brau/

Note 10: In Heinrich Bergen, ed., Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943: Ein Denkmal (Regina, SK: Self-published, 2008), 389.

Note 11: Selma Kornelsen Hooge and Anna Goossen Kornelsen, Life Before Canada (Abbotsford, BC: Self-published, 2018), 70.

Note 12: Dueck, Durch Trübsal und Not, 80.

Note 13: Medical Officer for District of Schieratz to the Governing President of Litzmannstadt, February 4, 1944, Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche (see note 2).

Note 14: Chef des Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamtes-SS Günther Pancke to Himmler, December 20, 1939, letter, Bundesarchiv NS 2/60, Blatt 4, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/d90b9bc3-f8d2-441d-af46-36a23b3a5d11/; also reported by SS-Sturmbannführer Künzel, December 12, 1939, Blatt 16. In this context Künzel quotes Hitler extensively on racial value from his Mein Kampf (1931, pp. 448f.). On delousing and the concentration camps, see Himmler’s handwritten discussion point no. 7 with Oswald Pohl, December 5, 1939 in Lodz/Litzmannstadt, where he first discusses the idea of a “crematorium with a delousing installation.” In Bundesarchiv NS 19/1449, Blatt 16, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/invenio/direktlink/5e0c3166-d1fa-4a25-8629-db0f7cd7b477/. Pohl was the Chief of the Main Bureau for Budget and Construction, and would later control 20 SS-run concentration and labour camps.

Note 15: See previous posts, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-small-town-near-auschwitz-chortitza.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/10/eugenics-and-euthanasia-russian.html (other links forthcoming).

Note 16: Cited in Diether Götz Lichdi, Mennoniten im Dritten Reich. Dokumentation und Deutung (Weierhof/Pfalz: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein, 1977), 140f. https://archive.org/details/mennonitenimdrit0000lich/.

Note 17: Horst Hoffmeyer, “Die Lage der Rußlanddeutschen im Warthegau” 1944, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, T-175, film 72, 2588975-983, 975.

Note 18: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonites-highly-attractive-and.html. Also see Andreas Strippel, NS Volkstumspolitik und die Neuordnung Europas: Rassenpolitische Selektion der Einwandererzentralstelle des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (1939–1945) (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011).

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Delousing--Naked in Litzmannstadt (Lodz), 1943-44," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 3, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/delousingnaked-in-litzmannstadt-odz.html.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...

"A Small Town near Auschwitz” – Chortitza Mennonite Refugee/ Resettlement Camps

Simple proximity to a place of horrors does not equal knowledge or complicity. Many Gnadenfeld-area Mennonite refugees were, for example, temporarily housed 20 km. away from the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp where 15-year-old Anne Frank died ultimately of typhus ( note 1 ). The day after liberation by British troops on April 15, 1945, camp survivors began to flow through neighbouring villages. “What a sight they were! They had been tortured and starved, and were swollen from lack of food. … We could hardly believe that the glorious country of Germany could commit such crimes against people,” Susanna Toews wrote ( note 2 ). My mother was only seven, but she remembers overhearing shocking descriptions given by their host family’s teenaged girls forced by the British to clean some of the camp buses. What about the much larger death camp at Auschwitz? There is a book entitled: A Small Town near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust. It is about an administrator living near the ...

“Operation Chortitza” (Part II) – Resettler Camps in Danzig-West Prussia, 1943-44

Waldemar Janzen, my former German professor and advisee, turned eleven years old in 1943. He and his mother and 3,900 others from Chortitza and Rosenthal (Ukraine) were evacuated west to the ethnic German resettler camps in Gau Danzig-West Prussia in October that year (see Part I; note 1 ). Years later Janzen could still recall much from this childhood experience—including the impact of the visit by Professor Benjamin H. Unruh a few weeks after their arrival. “He was a man who had extended much help to his fellow Mennonites ever since they began to emigrate from Russia during the 1920s” ( note 2 ). Unruh was a father-figure to his people, and his arrival at their camp in West Prussia signaled to the evacuees that they were in good hands ( note 3 ). Unruh’s impact on 7,000 other Chortitza District villagers in Upper Silesia would be the same some weeks later ( note 4 ). Surprisingly Unruh’s West Prussian camps visit left an equally indelible impression on the Gau’s Operations Commande...

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 ...

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...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (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 accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...

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 ...

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, ...

What is the Church to Say? Letter 3 (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 Mennonite endorsement Trump the man No one denies the moral flaws of Donald Trump, least of all Trump himself. In these next months Mennonite pastors who supported Trump will have many opportunities to restate to their congregation and their children why someone like Trump won their support. It may be obvious, but the words can be difficult to find. To help, I offer examples from Mennonite history with statements from one our strongest leaders of the past century, Prof. Benjamin H. Unruh (see the nice Mennonite Encyclopedia article on him, GAMEO ). I have substituted only a few words, indicated by square brackets to help with the adaptation. The [MAGA] movement is like the early Anabaptist movement!  In the change of government in 1933, Unruh saw in the [MAGA] movement “things breaking forth which our forefathe...

Diary of Johann Jantzen, 1843-1903

Johann Jantzen was born in 1823 in Neuteichsdorfsfeld, West Prussia, resided in Neuendorf near Danzig, and migrated late to Russia (1869), then Central Asia, and finally in 1884 to Nebraska, USA. He died in 1903. Decades later his descendants translated his diary of notable annual highlights, entitled: Accounts of various Experiences in Life. A Diary begun in the Year 1839 ( note 1 ). The little West Prussian villages he names regularly are familiar place to many with Russian Mennonite family history: Schönau, Neu Münsterberg, Schönsee, Lakendorf, Neuteicherwalde, etc. While most Russian Mennonite families left Prussia much earlier than Jantzen, his diary offers a picture of the typical rhythm of life that Mennonites lived in West Prussia over generations. It also offers something I did not expect. The revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a local impact which he mentions, and he gives us a hint as to the other political highlights and episodes of civil unrest that were on the mind...