The Constructed Mennonite - History, Memory, and the Second World War

by Hans Werner

  On one foray into these enclosures, Ivan came face to face with a politruk. Politruks were political commissars with the same rank as an officer. A feature introduced by Trotsky during the civil war, the political commissar’s role was to maintain appropriate communist vigilance in the army, and rank-and-file Red Army soldiers generally disliked politruks. According to my father, a politruk stopped him and demanded he be treated like a captured officer rather than an ordinary soldier. My father responded by asking him if he was aware that all the politruks were being shot. He advised him to remove his politruk shoulder patch, cover the area with mud so there would be no evidence of it, and keep his mouth shut about deserving better treatment. The story suggests that my father knew early about the infamous order issued by Hitler on 12 May 1941 that called for the liquidation of all political commissars.7 The story also matched the common belief among Germans that all Politruks were Jews. As my father put it, “they were, I would say, 100 percent Jews, and that [fact] the Germans also knew.”8 Prisoners kept arriving at the hastily constructed enclosures, and my father remembered that, during the time he served as an interpreter, the number of POWs in the camp in which he worked rose to 48,000. He was treated like a German but could not enter the camps unless accompanied by another German soldier.

  During his time as interpreter, Ivan also came across the senior officer with whom he had spoken German and who had intervened to prevent him from being sent to a work battalion. When the officer saw him, he shook his head. In a bizarre twist, Ivan suggested to the officer that he would go to his German superiors and tell them he had found another German among the POWs who was afraid to identify himself. The officer agreed and was taken out of the camp and given the job of recording the names of new POW arrivals. Ivan’s role as an interpreter lasted for a week or two, after which Ivan and a group of ten other Soviet Germans were sent to occupied Poland.

  In Hitler’s grand Lebensraum scheme, an area of occupied Poland renamed Warthegau was to be cleared of its Slavic population to be resettled with the German minorities from Eastern Europe with the clear intent that it was to become a new German province. The Non-Aggression Pact signed by Stalin and Hitler in 1939 had also called for the exchange of populations, with Germans in Soviet-occupied areas of Poland being given the option of moving to the Warthegau. In 1940 and 1941, most of the Germans from eastern areas of Poland, Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Baltics were resettled in the Warthegau.9

  On the way to the Warthegau, the train on which Ivan and the group of ten young Soviet Germans were travelling stopped briefly at a station near Warsaw. My father could not remember exactly what they had done wrong but thought their mistake had been to flirt with Polish girls coming to the marketplace to sell apples. They had tried to communicate with them, and the girls had thrown them apples. Apparently, on a neighbouring siding, there was a train with returning SS soldiers to whom the girls had not thrown apples and who had complained to German officials about Ivan and his friends’ behaviour. When they got to Lublin, the ten young men were promptly taken off the train and loaded onto a truck headed for the Lublin prison.

  After stopping between two gates, they were unloaded, their personal belongings were put in bags with their names on them, and they were marched down a passageway into a cellar to cell number sixty-six. There was no explanation of why they had been incarcerated. One member of the group was a German who had been in the Polish Army when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had divided up Poland. He had been captured and ended up in a prison in Minsk. He was now part of their group and was being released to go home. This slightly older German, who also spoke Polish, helped them in a number of ways. In the cell was a high barred window, and they lifted Ivan up on their shoulders; he saw a beautifully landscaped inner courtyard with flowers and shrubs. In this courtyard, prisoners regularly exercised, and when they did not run fast enough their SS guards regularly whipped them. The group agreed that when it was their turn for exercise they would walk, not run, and the older German would complain to the guards that they were Germans and should not be mistreated like the other prisoners. They did this, and after some consultation the SS guards allowed them to walk in peace. One day they all had to strip and hand in their clothes, which were then laundered and brought back to them. They were escorted back to the same gated area, given back their personal belongings, and taken to the train station. There was no hint of why they had been arrested or why they were now being released. The only word they got was that they were going to Litzmannstadt (Łódź), where someone would pick them up. When they arrived at Litzmannstadt, there was a small bus—it looked quite inviting compared with their recent experience—that took them to a resettlement camp at 25 Warsaw Street in Pabianitz (Pabianice), just outside the city.10

  Ivan’s first experience of life in civilian Nazi Germany came in the camp’s office, and my father’s recollection of that encounter was vivid and telling. After entering the office, Ivan first saw a secretary and then the camp commander, who was “terribly fat, and then his dog lay beside him, a bulldog who looked just like him.” Ivan had trouble understanding the camp commander even though he was fluent in German. He had to ask the secretary what he had said: Ivan had been told they were not to have contact with any Jewish or Polish girls, or they would be shot. Commenting on the experience some forty-five years later in Canada, my father noted that he had not been accustomed to such attitudes. He had not been “used to there being a difference between Jews and Poles and anybody else. We all concluded we would have to change considerably.”11

  When they were processed, the group of ten settled into an entire floor of a building. Their suite had shared kitchen facilities, but each had his own bedroom. Each also got a wardrobe of civilian clothes, including a sharp-looking suit. They had a food allocation and were surprised when it included strong-smelling cheese unfamiliar to them that they traded for fruit jam. Nazi ideology was intent on preserving the Germanness of minorities in Eastern Europe, and the efforts of the Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom (RKFDV) and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (VoMi) were dedicated to that goal. These Nazi organizations planned cultural and social events for resettled ethnic Germans to introduce them to and integrate them into Hitler’s Germany.12 My father recalled being taught social graces—such as how to behave in the presence of a German lady and learning to dance the foxtrot. At some time during the process of his socialization as a German, he also became Johann rather than Ivan.

  Johann immediately applied for work at the local military airfield just outside Litzmannstadt. Probably his interest in flying contributed to that choice, and his familiarity with airplanes and qualifications as a trained mechanic helped him to get the job. The airport was about fifteen kilometres from Pabianitz, but a streetcar ride and a twenty-minute walk got him there. The airfield was a base for twin-engine bombers going to and coming back from the eastern front, and Johann was assigned a variety of tasks, including fuelling airplanes, packing the dirt runways, and replacing worn-out engines with ones rebuilt in German factories. The airport was the scene of many spectacular crashes when badly shot-up bombers returned from their missions and tried to land. Sometimes their tires were flat, and everything seemed to be going well until the weight of the airplane came down on the tires and the plane either spun around like a top or dug its nose and propellers into the ground. While Johann was there, the runway was extended after a heavily loaded bomber failed to gain sufficient altitude to clear the trees at the end of the runway and crashed and exploded.

  In spring, according to my father’s story, Johann decided to quit his job at the airport because of an incident in the washroom. One day he overheard a conversation in the bathroom between two pilots, who were discussing their reliance on “Russians” to repair their airplanes. “This is how far it has come,” one remarked, “that the Russians have to rebuild our airplanes; I don’t trust it; I don’t want to fly that thing if he,” meaning Johann, “has touched it.” Johann immediately w
ent to his superior and reported what he had heard. The superior demanded to know who had made the remark. Johann indicated that he had not seen the pilot’s face, but in any case, if he was being suspected of sabotage, he was giving notice that he was quitting. The superior tried to convince him that it was only one “dummkopf,” but Johann was not persuaded. If one pilot believed it, his influence could spread the rumour, and he refused to work under such conditions. Johann also indicated to his superior that he was German and a civilian and could not be forced to work there.13

  His next job was driving a truck for the Carl Leib business on Breslauer Strasse in Pabianitz. The job involved loading groceries or coal for distribution in Pabianitz and towns and villages within a fifty-kilometre radius. The truck Johann drove was powered by wood or coal and had a trailer attached. He usually had two Polish workers assigned to help unload the truck at the grocery stores. The firm’s owner, Carl Leib, was an officer and pilot in the Luftwaffe and was only at home briefly between missions, approximately every two weeks. When Johann was caught up with his grocery distribution runs, he was sometimes called upon to fill in as driver for the family.

  Johann seated in the truck he drove for the Carl Leib firm in Pabianitz, Poland. Posing with him are his Polish helpers. The cylinder behind the cab is the gasifier, which converted wood or coal into combustible gases.

  In unrecorded stories of his later war experiences, my father made obscure references to a Mennonite woman; in one case, he referred to her as Mrs. Fast, with whom the group of friends he lived with in Pabianitz kept in correspondence after they were scattered throughout the European theatre of war. When I interviewed him formally, I asked him to clarify this story. He explained that she was a widow who had been evacuated to the Warthegau in 1942 whose maiden name had been Fast but who had been married to a Russian. Almost in the same sentence, he seemed to suggest she might not have been a widow in the sense that her Russian husband had died but in the sense that he had not accompanied her to the Warthegau—he had stayed behind in Russia. My father used the story of Mrs. Fast to explain how he knew about what had happened to some of his friends after they were separated. He closed his explanation by noting that at a certain point all contact with Mrs. Fast and his friends was lost, presumably because the Red Army occupied the area in January 1945.14

  Work at the Carl Leib firm was interrupted by a significant event for Johann and his friends. In the fall of 1942, the travelling citizenship commissions came to Litzmannstadt to process ethnic German citizenship applications. Surviving documents from Johann’s naturalization situate the events of his time in the Warthegau more firmly in a chronological sequence than my father’s stories did. According to these sources, the process began on 6 October 1942, and the various file cards of the Einwandererzentralstelle (EWZ), the travelling Nazi citizenship commission that processed them, indicate that Johann had been employed at the airport and note that at the time of his being processed for citizenship his occupation was truck driver but that he was also a qualified auto mechanic for both gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. They note that he had a driver’s licence that qualified him to drive trucks. Other documents indicate that he received his driver’s licence on 7 June 1942, suggesting that his employment with the Carl Leib firm must have begun after that date.15

  To become a citizen, Johann had to appear before the EWZ to determine his status in the Nazi state. My father’s memory of his appearance before the commission centred on the group’s realization that one of them was in fact Jewish. On the evening before their scheduled appearance, a Moscow student named Mettner confided to the group that he was Jewish and had been circumcised. After considerable discussion, the group decided to try to smuggle Mettner through the examination, which involved appearing entirely naked before a panel of seven doctors. Although it was touted as a medical exam, this appearance was actually one of the most important in the naturalization process because its primary aim was to examine the candidate’s racial suitability. The ruse must have involved creating a suitable biography for Mettner and was helped by the fact that one member of the group, Schmidt, resembled him. It was decided that Schmidt would go through with Mettner’s papers first and then, because they believed he would return to the group, come back after the examination and, after a number of the others had gone, go through again with his own papers. My father admitted that if it had not worked they all would have ended up in a concentration camp. But it did work; Mettner became a German citizen, like all the others. Through his contact with Mrs. Fast, Johann learned that Mettner later became an officer in the German Army.

  The documents of the process of becoming a German citizen that have survived offer some additional insights into where my father stood regarding his previous life in the Soviet Union. On the citizenship commission forms, he noted that he had four sisters and a mother who were in the Soviet Union, but he declared himself to be single. There is no mention of a wife. There is also no mention of his being Mennonite; he indicated his own and his parents’ religious affiliation as Lutheran. Although he likely began to use the German version of his name before becoming a German citizen, it is not clear exactly how and at what pace he switched from being Ivan to being Johann. All of his documents from this time give his name as Johann, even though in his earlier life he had been Hans and Ivan.

  The Nazi system of assessing the suitability of ethnic Germans for membership in the herrenvolk (“master race”) rendered Johann an ideal candidate for establishing German dominance in the east. One of the classification systems placed them in a volksliste, a category based on their racial suitability. Johann was classed as volksliste ii on a document that noted the relative length and width of his nose, the colour of his eyes and hair, and the shape of his head and cheekbones. Ethnic Germans in volksliste i and ii were eligible to be considered as settlers of the east. Hitler’s dream was to populate the territory gained in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union with racially and culturally suitable “true” Germans. In a second classification system, applicants could be classed as “O,” “A,” or “S.” Category “O” settlers were to become the vanguard of Nazi domination of territories in Eastern Europe that would provide lebensraum for Germans. To qualify, one had to show evidence of cultural suitability. EWZ records dutifully record that Johann attended a German-language village school, that both his parents were German, and that he was fluent in German. As a result, he was placed in Category “O.” Category “A” settlers were to be sent to the Reich proper to be culturally reintegrated, while Category “S” settlers were deemed unsuitable and sent out of the Warthegau. Documents note that Johann expressed a desire to be resettled in Ukraine.16

  The period between my father’s being drafted into the Red Army and his becoming a German citizen captures the range of how we marshal memories to create stories. The dramatic stories of first combat, coming under attack, and being captured were some of my father’s most vivid stories—you could almost smell the dust and powder of explosions and taste the stagnant water. The surviving documents of his becoming German, and a German citizen, illustrate how my father had to become increasingly selective in the weaving of available memories into stories to maintain coherence with the image of himself he wanted to convey.

  The stories of points of contact with the Jewish question offer an interesting window onto the transformation of his identity, the context of his storytelling, and the autobiographical image he was trying to project. Within days of his capture by the German military, Johann seems to have come into contact with the reality that Jews were being killed. He “knew” that politruks were Jewish and that they were being summarily shot. Although it is less clear what he and his friends knew about the consequences of Mettner’s being discovered to be Jewish, it is apparent that they feared the worst. They also came face to face with the reality of their own safety if they fraternized with Jews and Poles, who were considered in Nazi ideology to be less than human or, in the case of Jews, devilishly superhuman.

&nb
sp; It appears, however, that my father also chose his stories carefully. He told stories that painted himself in a positive light. In every case, he was either assisting Jews to prevent their sure execution or portraying himself as being dismayed or surprised at Nazi racial ideology. Given that the stories were told in a Canadian context in which the Holocaust is a potent memory and the complicity of ordinary Germans in its atrocities is controversial, the stories assembled autobiographical memories in ways that were acceptable to Canadian listeners.

  Even in the absence of any direct conversation on becoming German, my father’s stories conveyed the rapid transformation of his identity. Within days of being captured in the POW camps, Johann started to be German. Although there were some bumps in the road, such as the incident with the girls in Lublin and the harsh admonishment from the camp commander in Litzmannstadt, Johann did not seem to have any difficulty making the transition. Even then, my father’s stories were sensitive to the social context of Canada and the reality of the Holocaust. My father chose to highlight his contact with the Jewish question in terms of how he had helped to save some Jews from sure death. His stories illustrated the creative reconstruction that we are capable of without violating the veracity of our stories.