MARK JANTZEN and JOHN D. THIESSEN, eds. European Mennonites and the Holocaust. University of Toronto Press, 2021. $US 39.70 (paperback).
I have been wanting to read about what went wrong with so many Christians in Nazi Germany. European Mennonites and the Holocaust, published in association with the United States Holocaust Museum, is a painfully insightful introduction to answering my questions.
The book is a collection of twelve essays by various scholars. The introduction explains the relationship and relevance of the chapters well, and is by itself worth the price of the book. This introduction, by the editors and by Doris L. Bergen, a scholar with Mennonite background and an expert on Christian responses to the Third Reich, helpfully sorts out some important preliminary points.
- The bases on which someone is considered “Mennonite” for this purpose is broad and may be familial, social, cultural, imposed, or theological (12).
- There were an estimated 185,000 Mennonites in Europe in 1939, including 120,000 in the Soviet Union and 17,000 in Germany (6).
- “The history of Mennonites and the Holocaust is not a sealed-off chapter from a bygone era but a challenge, a warning, and a reflection of the world around us. Thinking critically about history does not imply that I would do better. But it might open possibilities to listen, understand, and care” (25).
- A helpful approach to the book is “to think about Mennonite particularity, rather than exceptionalism. The Mennonite interaction with Nazism is a particular story that is not the same as anyone else’s, but it need not carry the moral baggage that Mennonites were exceptionally good, exceptionally bad, or exceptionally significant. . . . One interpretation of the chapters in this volume is that they offer little evidence of Mennonite exceptionalism” (8-9).
- One reason to explore German Mennonite responses to the Holocaust is to ask, “Are there lessons or guidelines in this history for preventing future atrocities and failures?” Another is “demythologizing” the “myth of Mennonite innocence” and of being “always on the ‘right’ side of history” (8, 17-18).
The appeal of bloodlines: Ironically and tragically, one reason the Mennonites found favor from and resonated with the German regime was their German ancestry. Heinrich Himmler himself considered the Mennonites in the Ukraine to be loyal guardians of “German blood” (35). “The seemingly innocuous habits of genealogy and ‘the Mennonite game’ dovetailed all too tidily with these racial notions: a susceptibility to Nazi racial ideology ran through German Mennonite congregations” (79).
Mennonite theologian Horst Quiring wrote in 1938 that “the ‘call to keep blood pure’ and ‘the cultivation of a healthy race’. . . finds a clear echo in the Christian worldview” (131). Quiring was an editor of the Circular Community, a kind of early social media. The approximately 250 mostly young (25 to 35 years old) Mennonite members contributed their thoughts in notebooks, which they sent on to other members, along with occasional letters to one another and annual meetings (105). Here are some of the ambivalent sentiments expressed there:
- I would not simply [want] to condemn the idea that every civil servant has to be Aryan. But it will always be an injustice to expand this principle to all areas of life (114).
- There is so much talk of decent Jews and I could be persuaded by it if I knew of any (115).
- That they are no longer permitted to hold leading or high-level positions is also entirely correct, as ‘opportunity makes a thief,’ and they would unerringly soon practice their clean craft again. But the fact that they are repressed to the extent that they are, I sometimes find outrageous (117).
Gustav Kraemer, pastor emeritus of the north German congregation of Krefeld, in a 1938 lecture written for the broader Mennonite community, wrote that the anti-Jewish laws at first “appeared very brutal and unjust to me, but later I could appreciate that . . . in the ordering of the world, which of course is God’s order . . . we live as members of a community” (128).
The appeal of God on our side: One appeal the Nazi regime had for German Mennonites was that it echoed the perception of the “‘Godless’ materialism of international socialism as a ‘satanic’ or ‘demonic’ force.” The regime was seen “as a return to a ‘Christian state’ and as their best guardian against the threat of Bolshevist atheism.” (80, 87). The reports of the 1933 special meeting of the Alliance of Mennonite Congregations in the German Reich concluded: “God has called men to the head of the government who have placed themselves with a clear confession on the foundation of Christian faith,” and that Hitler as Führer was himself “a divine gift of salvation to our people” (127).
Not a good news account: A line has stuck with me in the 1980 Arthur Miller movie, Playing for Time. This made-for-TV movie was based on a true story by Fania Fenelon about an orchestra of female prisoners at Auschwitz who played for the Nazi guards to try to avoid death. Said one musician: “We now know a little something about the human race that we didn’t know before—and it is not good news.”
Doris L. Bergen delivers some especially bad news: “Much of the literature on Mennonites during the Holocaust, and indeed on all Christian individuals and groups, is dominated by the notion of ‘silence,’ that is, the accusation that failure consisted of not ‘speaking out’ or ‘doing enough’ to help Hitler’s victims. More difficult to face is the evidence that Mennonites played active roles, as hands-on killers of Jews, and also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, and people with disabilities” (36). According to the Introduction, Mennonites “helped normalize genocide by accepting what most knew to be the stolen property, houses, and clothing of recently murdered Jews” (11). “Only a very few opposed the killing or tried to help victimized Jews” (21). “Those who pushed against the tide were exceptions. . . . [Most] sat in the pews undeterred” (22). Only a “small number of Mennonites, mostly in the Netherlands, . . . took immense risks to aid Jews” (23).
This book has by no means a “gotcha” tone. It is a confession, an exploration, and one which the editors would like to see continue, as they do not purport to have all the facts or answers. And of all the disheartening information it reveals, what has specifically stuck with me, perhaps surprisingly, is this. At the 1936 General Congress of Mennonites (forerunner to Mennonite World Conference), held in the Netherlands, the Dutch Mennonite pastor and theologian Frits Kuiper wanted to present a lecture entitled “The Mennonites and Violence.” The governing body of the General Mennonite Conference declined, “fearing the German brothers and sisters would not like it” (155).
When discussion of a subject or position is declared verboten, it could mean that something is going on that ought instead to be given open and honest ongoing consideration. Despite the risk of rancor or rupture, a discussion on difficult matters could avoid the greater danger of the Church aligning with something imbued with a spirit that is not at all holy.