Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44

They walked in one end as Soviet citizens, proceeded through a few wagons, and emerged out the other end as naturalized citizens of the German Reich.

Below is a newspaper article marking the completion of the registration and naturalization of some 35,000 Mennonite resettlers—plus other Black Sea Germans. By July 1944 all the treks or transports had arrived from the Black Sea region into Greater Germany [most in Warthegau], and almost all were now registered for a more permanent settlement situation in German-annexed Poland—or so they thought.

The translation is important because it offers a clear account of the process of naturalization, application and assessment. While not all Mennonites evacuated from Ukraine 1943-44 were naturalized in one of the visiting mobile Immigration Central Office trains, most were. The article and photos fill a gap in our knowledge of that experience in Nazi Germany and how naturalization was approached and experienced by some 30,000-plus Mennonites.

While previous posts (see Table of Contents) brush on aspects of the application procedure, this newspaper account gives a concrete picture from the era of the steps taken (literally), and the celebrative atmosphere of the occasion. While the article is a general propaganda piece, it calls into question post-war claims that Mennonites were coerced to take on German citizenship (see Table of Contents for related posts).

---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

Source: Ostdeutscher Beobachter 4, no. 190 [July 12, 1944], 3, https://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/publication/126128/edition/135300/content.

Text:

“... The resettlement of the Russian Germans from the East, which began in September last year as part of the withdrawal of the German front, has essentially been completed. Around 350,000 people were, in the long run, in danger of losing their intrinsic Germanhood due to the alien nature of Bolshevik dictatorship. They have now been saved and are being brought into a new, more meaningful call within the protective borders of the Reich. According to a promise [made in Halbstadt] from the Reichsführer SS and Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German Nationality, Heinrich Himmler, after a transitional period—which at the same time serves their acclimatization to the changed living and economic conditions—they will be able to acquire their own farm under the condition that they prove themselves capable of working the land.

Just as the Reichsgau Wartheland offered a new home to the vast majority of the resettlers during the previous resettlements, 220,000 of the 350,000 repatriated Russian Germans will remain in our region after their current job assignment has been completed. Around 120,000 from this latest group of resettlers, insofar as they are intended for the Wartheland, come from Transnistria, the German settlement area between the Dniester, the Ukrainian Bug and the Black Sea with Odessa in the southeastern tip of this area. It is the most fertile German ethnic group, with a birth rate of 45 per 1,000, more than twice the national average. 65,000 come from the closed German settlement areas of southern Russia, whose spatial location is characterized by the place names Halbstadt [=Molotschna], Melitopol, Kronau, Grünau, and Chortitza. The remaining 35,000 had their original home in the settlement area of Eastern Volhynia, which was no longer completely closed in terms of population, with Zhitomir as the eponymous center.

Parallel to the current vocational deployment of the Black Sea Germans [in Warthegau], their naturalization through the so-called "Durchschleusungs-” process, as it became known in previous resettlements, has also been underway for weeks. In addition to recording their personal details and history [demographic information], it also serves to determine the health and biological status of the resettlers, their kinship origins and ethnic background as well as their technical or professional skills, which are decisive for the nature of their future employment.

This “Durchschleusung” process, which culminates in the presentation of the naturalization certificate, is currently carried out in the individual districts by commissions of the Immigration Center [EWZ]. For this purpose, the special train of the Immigration Center [EWZ] is used in the Wartheland, which is equipped with all the necessary facilities for the immigration procedures. During its layover in the various places of operation, several hundred resettlers are processed daily. What could otherwise be much more time-consuming, the resettlers move efficiently from car to car—from registration to naturalization as freshly baked citizens of the Reich. Towards the end of this year we can expect the technical completion of this latest resettlement process, which, with the influx of a new stream of German blood, will broaden the ethnic basis for the Germanization of our Gau by a considerable amount.

Just as the birth of the Wartheland and its development in recent years were subject to wartime measures, these time-related difficulties inevitably had to affect an operation as massive as the resettlement of an entire ethnic group, which arrived overnight, so to speak. Simply by virtue of their existence and future determination, they not only wanted to be welcomed as guests, but they also desired their organic and permanent incorporation into the new community that is being knit together from the most diverse elements of origin.

In view of these unchangeable circumstances, even the spatial accommodation of the resettlers and their provision with the basic necessities of life has not been an easy task; their remaining outer shell had become thread-bare after years of Bolshevik rule, full of privation. Even with the best intentions, the possible is limited by present realities. However there will be no capitulation to the challenges of the present, and even if we are still far from the desirable state of affairs, the cooperation of all the agencies involved has made it possible to create generally acceptable, makeshift conditions—not unlike what millions of people throughout the Reich have had to accept because of the war, and have had to endure in the knowledge of the significance of this sacrifice.”

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To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Mobile Immigration Central Office (EWZ) Trains and Naturalization, 1943-44," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 3, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/mobile-immigration-central-office-ewz.html.

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History of the Russian Mennonites

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