History of the Russian Mennonites

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 fi...