History reveals how Authoritarianism usually develops and what one can do if facing it?

[Neto]

Notes for the article "Eugenics and Euthanasia: Russian Mennonites in the Third Reich"

---Notes---
Note 1: Benjamin H. Unruh to Gauamt für Volkstumsfragen /Posen, Hauptabt. für Plannung und Bauten /Posen, Einwandererzentralstelle /Litzmannstadt, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle /Berlin (SS-Obersturmführer Dr. Wolfrum), July 25, 1944, p. 2 [80].
Berichte der Kommandos der Einsatzgruppe D über das Schwarzmeerdeutschtums vertrauensmänner der Russlanddeutschen Umsiedler in einzelnen Kreises des Warthegaues. Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives Poland), 39/205/0/-/10. https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/... ... a/10973074.
Note 2: See my Unruh essay, “Benjamin Unruh, MCC [Mennonite Central Committee] and National Socialism,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 96, no. 2 (April 2022), 157–205, https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/. ... 12730/1571.
Note 3: The Holocaust Encyclopedia of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has two concise and helpful online articles on the Nazi practice of euthanasia and the pseudo-science of eugenics, its background and development. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/.../art. ... ia-program; https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/con.../e ... e/eugenics....
Note 4: Dmytro Myeshkov, “Mennonites in Ukraine before, during, and immediately after the Second World War,” European Mennonites and the Holocaust, edited by Mark Jantzen and John D. Thiesen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), 217f.
Note 5: Richard D. Thiessen, electronic text to author, March 24, 2020, regarding his father Abram J. Thiessen’s eye-witness experience.
Note 6: Horst Gerlach, “Mennonites, the Molotschna, and the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle in the Second World War,” translated by John D. Thiesen, Mennonite Life 41, no. 3 (1986), 5, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/ ... 986sep.pdf; Wendy Lower, “Hitler’s ‘Garden of Eden’ in Ukraine: Nazi Colonialism, Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust, 1941–1944,” in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John Roth (New York: Berghahn, 2006), 196.
Note 7: Maria Fiebrandt, Auslese für die Siedlergesellschaft. Die Einbeziehung Volksdeutscher in die NS-Erbgesundheitspolitik im Kontext der Umsiedlungen 1939–1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 51. The “Neu-Chortitza Dorfbericht,” 261, May 1942, in “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” R6/623, file 184, https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/gallery.php...) singles out a Braun family for “marriage among relatives” and where “all three children are intellectually disabled (Idioten).” Nothing is noted about their fate. Similarly a son of Peter Martens in “Gnadental (Rayon Sofiewka) Dorfbericht,” May 1942,” Familienverzeichnis, 480, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BArch R6/623, Mappe 182, https://tsdea.archives.gov.ua/deutsch/gallery.php....
Note 8: Cf. Karl Lietz, “The Place of the School for the Deaf in the New Reich,” in Deaf People in Hitler’s Europe, edited by Donna F. Ryan and John S. Schuchman (Washington, DC: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 117.
Note 9: “Schutz gegen Volkszerfall,” Ukraine Post, no. 8 (February 27, 1943), 4, https://libraria.ua/en/all-titles/group/878/. The policy “has resulted not only in an increased birth rate and a considerable decline in unsuitable elements, but has also impacted, among other things, the crime statistics,” according to the unnamed author.
Note 10: Gerhard Winter, ed., Die volksdeutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt (LBA) zur Zeit der deutschen Besatzung in Rußland (Wolfsburg: Self-published, 1988), 143f. Racial theory had been a required course for all schools in Prussia since September 1933; cf.
Renate Fricke-Finkelnburg, ed., Nationalsozialismus und Schule. Amtliche Erlasse und Richtlinien, 1933–1945 (Opladen: Leske Budrich, 1989), ch. 7 (“Rassenkunde”).
Note 11: Document from: Unterbringung der Schwarzmeerdeutsche, Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (National Digital Archives Poland), 53/299/0, series 2.2, file 1978. Cf. https://szukajwarchiwach.pl/.
Note 12: Albert Dahl, interview with author, July 26, 2017.
Note 13: In Anson Rabinbach and Sander Gilman, eds., The Third Reich Sourcebook (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013), 171.
Note 14: Abram Janzen, Osterwick, for Gerhard Fast, Das Ende von Chortitza (Winnipeg, MB: Self-published, 1973).
Note 15: Unruh to Gauamt für Volkstumsfragen /Posen, et al., July 25, 1944, p. 2 [80].
Note 16: Benjamin H. Unruh to Abram Braun, letter, February 5, 1944. Vereinigung Collection, Folder 1944, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof.
Note 17: Cf. Benjamin H. Unruh, “Vollbericht,” to Executive of the “Vereinigung der deutschen Mennonitengemeinden,” January 7, 1944, 2. Benjamin H. Unruh Collection, Abraham Braun Correspondence, 1930, 1940, 1944-45, Mennonitische Forschungsstelle Weierhof.

[barnhart]

Neto, what do you know about the experiences of Russian Mennonites in the 30 years leading up to WW2. Did they react differently to authoritarian regimes of the left than to authoritarian regimes from the right.

[Neto]

Neto, what do you know about the experiences of Russian Mennonites in the 30 years leading up to WW2. Did they react differently to authoritarian regimes of the left than to authoritarian regimes from the right.

My impression is that they were so broken by the one, that when they received favor from the other, they were like starving birds, going after scraps of dried bread.

I'm in the middle of this film about the gulags in Siberia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK99iy1Mw-o
I just keep thinking that but for the decisions my great grandparents and great great grandparents made, I could be living in that place, "Magadan - the City Built on Bones". Many of my people DID end up in places like that. And others, also human beings. Some were the guards, others the prisoners.

So, when confronted with authoritarianism, it doesn't really matter which side, 'Left' or 'Right' it is coming from. The suffering is the same. The sins are the same. You live, or you die. Some live by looking away while others are killed, or even take part in it. Others die at their own hands because they see no other way out. Others die because they will not accept it, so are defiant. I know this is very dark, negative. This evening I am influenced by this film, and others. The one I cannot watch again is "Through the Red Gate", because it is about my own people. I started to watch it again earlier this evening, but I just can't. Instead, I watched this one, because I can't tell if any of these people are my own people, or not. But that in itself is bad. Why is it easier to see others suffer than to suffer ourselves? We are all one people, all people loved by God, people for whom Christ suffered and died - AND people for whom He returned to life. That's what I want to remember.

[Josh]

And very lefty governments like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, and Iceland are not even remotely authoritarian.

Fascist authoritarianism: bad
Nationalist authoritarianism: bad
Communist authoritarianism: bad

What do all three have in common?

NZ was utterly authoritarian during the COVID fiasco. I consider banning church meetings for a year to be “authoritarian”.

Are these restrictions still in place or were they temporary?

They lasted over a year. I consider banning church to be authoritarian.

I realise a lot of y’all want us to just forget 2020 and 2021, but I haven’t forgotten.

[Neto]

Tonight I finished watching the (Russian language) documentary I mentioned in my post on Tuesday evening. Near the end of the film, one woman (one of the two main contributors) made the following statement:

"Only when we suffer do we try to overcome our suffering."

[barnhart]

Tonight I finished watching the (Russian language) documentary I mentioned in my post on Tuesday evening. Near the end of the film, one woman (one of the two main contributors) made the following statement:

"Only when we suffer do we try to overcome our suffering."

What did she mean by that.

[Neto]

Tonight I finished watching the (Russian language) documentary I mentioned in my post on Tuesday evening. Near the end of the film, one woman (one of the two main contributors) made the following statement:

"Only when we suffer do we try to overcome our suffering."

What did she mean by that.

I'm not sure - I imagine that if someone here understands Russian, they would likely have a better translation that would provide a better understanding. I took it in a way that I saw it as relating to the question of this thread, that the tendency is to struggle against suffering only when we are experiencing it. That is, possibly it is an appeal to try to overcome the elements of our culture that lend themselves to creating human suffering. She also said (earlier in the film, but at least twice) that God had turned His back on her, or on the Russian people as a whole, just "letting people do whatever they want".

But one of the later sections of the film delved into the opinions of the youth, who mostly didn't want to hear about the past, and thought that, as this woman's own daughter told her, "They wouldn't have put you in the prison if you hadn't dome something wrong". So, how can the young people (in any cultural situation) learn from and benefit from what the previous generations experienced? (Some of the young men interviewed seemed to embrace the authoritarianism they live under now, because "It reduces crime". (And even the older man who was one of the main "interviewees" basically said the same - that "freedom invites lawlessness".)

[barnhart]

Interesting window into the Russian world view. I had a friend in college from a Russian colonized state who remarked, "In my country there is no freedom so people go to jail. In your country there is too much freedom so people go to jail."

[Szdfan]

Neto, what do you know about the experiences of Russian Mennonites in the 30 years leading up to WW2. Did they react differently to authoritarian regimes of the left than to authoritarian regimes from the right.

My impression is that they were so broken by the one, that when they received favor from the other, they were like starving birds, going after scraps of dried bread.

I'm in the middle of this film about the gulags in Siberia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK99iy1Mw-o
I just keep thinking that but for the decisions my great grandparents and great great grandparents made, I could be living in that place, "Magadan - the City Built on Bones". Many of my people DID end up in places like that. And others, also human beings. Some were the guards, others the prisoners.

So, when confronted with authoritarianism, it doesn't really matter which side, 'Left' or 'Right' it is coming from. The suffering is the same. The sins are the same. You live, or you die. Some live by looking away while others are killed, or even take part in it. Others die at their own hands because they see no other way out. Others die because they will not accept it, so are defiant. I know this is very dark, negative. This evening I am influenced by this film, and others. The one I cannot watch again is "Through the Red Gate", because it is about my own people. I started to watch it again earlier this evening, but I just can't. Instead, I watched this one, because I can't tell if any of these people are my own people, or not. But that in itself is bad. Why is it easier to see others suffer than to suffer ourselves? We are all one people, all people loved by God, people for whom Christ suffered and died - AND people for whom He returned to life. That's what I want to remember.

Unless someone is making a careful historical argument, I think that most arguments over whether Hitler or Stalin was worse are generally immoral because they are all about Left vs. Right and minimize the suffering that people endured in both situations. What made the Nazis unique was the industrialization of murder through the concentration/death camp system, but both regimes were murderous of people they considered undesirable.

[Szdfan]

Tonight I finished watching the (Russian language) documentary I mentioned in my post on Tuesday evening. Near the end of the film, one woman (one of the two main contributors) made the following statement:

"Only when we suffer do we try to overcome our suffering."

What did she mean by that.

I'm not sure - I imagine that if someone here understands Russian, they would likely have a better translation that would provide a better understanding. I took it in a way that I saw it as relating to the question of this thread, that the tendency is to struggle against suffering only when we are experiencing it. That is, possibly it is an appeal to try to overcome the elements of our culture that lend themselves to creating human suffering. She also said (earlier in the film, but at least twice) that God had turned His back on her, or on the Russian people as a whole, just "letting people do whatever they want".

But one of the later sections of the film delved into the opinions of the youth, who mostly didn't want to hear about the past, and thought that, as this woman's own daughter told her, "They wouldn't have put you in the prison if you hadn't dome something wrong". So, how can the young people (in any cultural situation) learn from and benefit from what the previous generations experienced? (Some of the young men interviewed seemed to embrace the authoritarianism they live under now, because "It reduces crime". (And even the older man who was one of the main "interviewees" basically said the same - that "freedom invites lawlessness".)

The Russians have never had a tradition of democracy — they went from the Tsars to the Communists to Putin. One of the appeals of authoritarianism is security and stability. Whether one is stable and secure depends on whether you’re in the in group or the out group.