Re: History reveals how Authoritarianism usually develops and what one can do if facing it?
Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2023 1:18 pm
Notes for the article "Eugenics and Euthanasia: Russian Mennonites in the Third Reich"
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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.