Widow Penner’s Jewish Husband and the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, 1944

After 35,000 Mennonite were evacuated from Ukraine in 1943-44, they were all brought to German-annexed Poland where after a few months they were naturalized as German citizens. This process included racial and genetic-biological assessment by so-called race experts of the Immigration Central Office (EWZ). Nazi Germany was especially interested in their “Nordic blood purity,” absence of mixed marriages, racial fecundity and their long commitment to German language and culture while living in the east (note 1). The naturalization process for Mennonites was almost always unobjectionable, even hundreds with “Jewish names” like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and Sarah were “strongly encouraged” to officially adopt Germanic names (note 2).

In 1956 Gerhard J. Klassen wrote to the Canadian Mennonitische Rundschau recalling his close call with death at a Nazi-SS run resettler camp in April 1944 at Hermannsbad, Warthegau (note 3, today Ciechocinek, Poland). And he also noted the experience at the camp of a Jew who was married to the Mennonite “Widow Penner.”

Klassen’s crisis erupted when a German naturalization officer concluded that Klassen must be Jewish. All were required to sign a form affirming that there was no trace of Jewish blood in their families, but Klassen’s list of ancestors seemed to indicate another story. The official thought that Klassen’s mother’s very Mennonite maiden name—“Elias”—was Jewish, given its similarity to the name of the Old Testament prophet “Elijah.” The official with the Immigration Central Office (EWZ) of the Ethnic German Liaison Office (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle; VoMi) and responsible for naturalization decisions “jumped out of his armchair and shouted: ‘What? Elias ascended to heaven, and now you present yourself to be the second Elias? You are a Jew! Away with you!’”

After unsuccessful explanations and reassurances that he was of German lineage, Klassen thought his fate was sealed. Moments earlier the naturalization officials had just praised him: “Things seemed to be going very well for us—none of the names of parents or children had to be changed. ‘You have chosen names so carefully,’ they said repeatedly. ‘There is not a Jewish name among them!’”

Klassen however was saved by a second VoMi official who had initially drawn similar conclusions about a Mennonite “Zacharias” family, and he intervened: “I would regard this family as Germans and advise you to naturalize them. Just now a family with the Jewish name ‘Zacharias’ stood before me, and I believed them [that they were Mennonite].’" Klassen wrote: "That was our salvation.”

But in those terrifying moments, memories flashed before Klassen’s eyes: a twenty-year-old German soldier who boasted to him in his village of Kronsweide in Ukraine of killing 180 Jews with his very own rifle (note 4); seeing the mass Jewish killing- and burial site in large ditch (tank trap) outside of Halbstadt near Tokmak (note 5)—and then a horrible event in their camp earlier that week:

“Hadn't we seen this hostility towards the Jews ourselves here in the [resettler] camp a few days ago? The deaf-mute man with Jewish ancestry who had married a widow Penner in Blumenort [Molotschna] was taken from the camp and his wife never saw him again. In Halbstadt they had released him at her request, but here they said, ‘He has Jewish blood after all and has to go.’ All this and much more rushed through our minds in those moments.”

There are sufficient clues in this stunning paragraph that allows us to unfold this story further. A search of the profile notes in the Russian Mennonite genealogy database GRanDMA quickly turns up the Blumenort couple at Hermannsbad and the links to related EWZ papers: shortly after Luise Penner’s (b. 1878) first husband (also a Penner) died in 1917, she married Samuel Dunajewski, b. 1887, "a Jew" (note 6).

Klassen gives two additional, important details. First, Dunajewski had been arrested by the occupying German forces in the predominantly Mennonite settlement area of Molotschna, now named after its central village, Halbstadt. This would have occurred sometime between October 1941 and evacuation from Ukraine two years later. Then he was released “at her request.” This would have been highly unusual. Perhaps Dunajewski was “only partially” Jewish, that is, with a Mennonite mother; after all, he was born in the Mennonite village of Ohrloff, Molotschna. Perhaps this saved him, but we do not know.

Second, Klassen notes that Widow Penner's Jewish husband was a “deaf mute.” Mennonites were extraordinarily proud of “their” school for the deaf started in Blumenort (1885) and then properly established with a large building in Tiege (1890), adjacent to Ohrloff (Mary School for the Deaf; Marientaubstummenschule), where Dunajewski was born. Mennonites donated generously to this favoured charity—especially after it became clear that deaf children too could understand and “hear" the gospel” and be baptized upon confession of faith (note 7).

There is every reason to think that Dunajewski was a student at the Mennonite school for the deaf. Moreover, it is not completely unimaginable that Dunajewski was a baptized Mennonite with Jewish background. In fact, Widow Penner's EWZ indicates that his religious confession is "Mennonite". He had survived Nazi German rule until April 25, 1944—and that is unusual—perhaps because he was "Mennonite" by faith.

Nonetheless, he was taken from his wife at the Warthegau resettler camp. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) records indicate that a Samuel Dunajewski was sent to the Jewish ghetto in Litzmannstadt (about 150 km south of Hermannsbad) where he died shortly thereafter on June 13, 1944 (note 8). It is an unusual name—there are not multiple individuals in the Holocaust records with that same name. Tragically the name, spelling, place and the time match our Molotschna Dunajewski very well.

The USHMM summarizes briefly these last months of the Jewish Ghetto in Litzmanstadt (Lodz):

“In the spring of 1944, the N@zis decided to destroy the Lodz ghetto. By then, Lodz was the last remaining ghetto in German-occupied Poland, with a population of approximately 75,000 Jews in May 1944. In June and July 1944 the Germans resumed deportations from Lodz, and about 7,000 Jews were deported to Chelmno. The ghetto residents were told that they were being transferred to work camps in Germany. The Germans deported almost all of the surviving ghetto residents to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center in August 1944.” (Note 9)

The brief recollection by G. J. Klassen opens a small window on the horrific aspects of Nazi Germany and its worldview, as well as the registration procedures experienced—normally flawlessly—by thousands of Mennonites. The story of Luise Penner and her husband Samuel Dunajewski shows again that these “racial experts” of the Ethnic German Liaison Office (VoMi) had the power over life or death with their racial, genetic and ethnic assessments. The story is also a welcome reminder of the pioneering schools created by the Mennonite community before the revolution, and of the lives the Maria School for the Deaf transformed. In particular, the story makes one want to know more about this older “mixed couple” and their life in Blumenort under German occupation, and of a spouse who saved her Jewish husband from certain death at that point.

This larger blog includes many posts that make reference to Litzmannstadt (note 10), because almost all of the 35,000 Mennonite resettlers from Ukraine 1943-44 were funneled through the city’s VoMi reception facilities. Yet this is the first to connect the Mennonite story and the massive ghetto at Litzmannstadt.

With the Klassen-Penner-Dunajewski story, however, the Litzmannstadt ghetto clearly becomes part of this larger Mennonite story. It is now longer possible to tell the story of "the Great Trek" out of Ukraine well or fully without narrating this episode. Minimally, we will always need the caveat: Salvation for Mennonites in Warthegau was for Mennonites of German lineage alone.

---Notes---

Note 1: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/08/mennonites-highly-attractive-and.html.

Note 2: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/05/removal-of-old-testament-names-after.html. On the Warthegau resettler camps, see previous posts linked in the Table of Contents, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/p/table-of-contents.html. Note that most Mennonites were naturalized in the mobile EWZ naturalization train cars that were brought to areas of with resettler camps; cf. previous post: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/mobile-immigration-central-office-ewz.html.

Note 3: Gerhard Joh. Klassen [b. 1889, GRanDMA #1031627], “Elia oder Elias? Erlebnis von unserer Einbürgerung in das ‘Großdeutsche Reich’ in Polen,” Mennonitische Rundschau 79, no. 25 (June 6, 1956), 5, https://archive.org/details/die-mennonitische-rundschau_1956-06-06_79_23/page/4/mode/2up.

Note 4: The soldier may have been referring to actions before his arrival in the predominantly Mennonite Chortitza District of Ukraine, for there were no Jews in Kronsweide either before or after German occupation. Nearby Einlage had 633 Jews immediately prior to occupation, but most fled east before the arrival of German forces. However there was a mass killing of some 3,700 Jews just outside of Zaporizhzhia in March 1942 (“Zaporozhye,” Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center, https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/community/14621812-Zaporozhye). Sources: Kronsweide Village Report, Rayon Chortitza, Bundesarchiv (BA) R6/622, Mappe 86, May 1942; Einlage Village Report, Rayon Chortitza, BA R6/621, Mappe 83, May 1942, https://invenio.bundesarchiv.de/. On the handful of Einlage Jews present upon German arrival, cf. Heinrich Bergen, ed., Einlage: Chronik des Dorfes Kitschkas, 1789-1943 (Saskatoon, Sask.: Self-published, 2010), 80; idem, Einlage/ Kitschkas, 1789–1943: Ein Denkmal (Regina, SK: Self-published, 2008), 364; 365.

Note 5: On these killings, outside Halbstadt (Molotschna) near Tokmak, see: “Soviet Report about the mass murder of Jews in Molochansk,” Yad Vashem Archives, M.37/293; TsGAOOu 57-4-14, https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/killing-site/14626570; AND https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/untold-stories/commemoration/14625235. On Jews and Mennonites during German occupation of Ukraine generally, see also: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/judeo-bolshevism-thesis-and-mennonites.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/judeo-bolshevism-thesis-and-mennonites.html; AND https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-tinkelstein-family-of-chortitza.html.

Note 6: Cf. Luise Penner (GRanDMA #1189660) with link to one page of Penner’s EWZ form (A3342 EWZ50, folder B030, frame 0520).

Note 7: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/01/should-holy-baptism-be-offered-to-deaf.html. See also brief entry in GAMEO: https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Marientaubstummenschule_(Tiege,_Molotschna_Mennonite_Settlement,_Zaporizhia_Oblast,_Ukraine).

Note 8: See entry (pic) for Samuel Dunajewski, “Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database,” Rejestr Zgonow (Death Register), ID: 37603_RG-15.083M, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=6302225; AND https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/source_view.php?SourceId=37603.

Note 9: Cf. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/lod.

Note 10: See note 2 above, in particular: https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/delousingnaked-in-litzmannstadt-odz.html.  

---

To cite this page: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "Widow Penner's Jewish Husband and the Litzmannstadt Ghetto," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), November 4, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/11/widow-penners-jewish-husband-and.html.