Files offer insight into people who joined Nazi party

North Americans still can’t find out who was in the Epstein files. But those of German descent who live in Canada and the U.S. can now easily learn if their ancestors were Nazis.

In March, the U.S. National Archives released a searchable database containing the records of millions of Germans who joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, from 1929-43.

Through the records, which were seized by the Americans following the second World War, those who want to know can find out if grandpa or grandma was a Nazi.

Prior to the online release of the records, getting that information was a laborious process that involved making a written request to the Berlin Document Centre in Germany or the German federal archives. It could take months to get a response.

Now, as one person who learned her grandma had joined the Nazi party in 1937 wrote to Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail: “Disturbing revelations — in seconds.”

One group of people who are going through the newly-released records are Mennonite scholars. This includes Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, a researcher from Toronto.

Using the search feature, Neufeldt-Fast was able to find quickly find the Nazi membership cards of five Mennonite Ältesters (bishops or elders) and many other Mennonite ministers from the former German state of Prussia, where Mennonites migrated in the mid-16th century from the Netherlands.

“When I sampled the surnames Wiens and Dyck, two very common Prussian Mennonite names, the number who were in fact from the Mennonite community and also Nazi members was overwhelming,” he said.

“There were young and old, men and women, baptized adults and newly baptized youth,” he added, noting that some joined before Hitler came to power in 1933, but many others joined within weeks afterwards.

For Neufeldt-Fast, the cards that have photos were especially haunting.

“They could all be my relatives or those of friends. Culturally and spiritually, they are,” he said, adding that some of the people in these photos were grandparents or great grandparents of friends and co-religionists.

The goal of researching and publicizing the records is not to condemn or shame anyone, he emphasized. “The point is to understand what made their choices feel plausible at the time, and what this means for us now in Canada and the U.S.”

Aileen Friesen teaches Mennonite history at the University of Winnipeg. For her, the release of the records shows how Nazi ideology back then “seeped into church communities.”

The availability of the files will help scholars get a clearer sense of people with traditional Mennonite last names who joined the Nazi party, she said, adding “it doesn’t tell us why people joined, but it does provide insight into who joined and when.”

Friesen agreed that research into the records is not meant to condemn those who joined the Nazi Party. But, she said, it can serve “as a lesson for our current time.”

For Hans Werner, a senior scholar at the University of Winnipeg who also taught Mennonite studies there, the records confirm what scholars have known about the enthusiasm shown by some Prussian Mennonites for Nazism.

“Prussian Mennonites had abandoned strict pacifism long before the Second World War,” he said. At the same time, “there will still be surprise and consternation when families see their ancestors among those with party membership.”

Werner also believes there should be no rush to judgment. “The simple determination of seeing someone on the list does not convey the complexities of life in an authoritarian state,” he said, adding it is impossible to tell where they were on the spectrum of perpetrator, collaborator, enabler or observer.

Mark Jantzen teaches history at Bethel College, a Mennonite school in Kansas. Scholars have known about the high rates of Mennonite involvement in the Nazi party in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s for some time, he said, but it will still be news for many.

While the records show many were Nazi party members, Jantzen said they can’t say why they joined. “Understanding why and how many Mennonites participated in Nazi racist and nationalistic projects remains an ongoing task,” he said.

Richard Thiessen is the former executive director of the Mennonite Heritage Museum in Abbotsford, B.C. For him, the prevalence of traditional Mennonite names in the records “is very disheartening. I can’t believe that Mennonites who joined the party were not aware of the more sinister aspects of the party’s agenda,” he said.

Thiessen thinks they might have supported Adolf Hitler because he “voiced the grievance politics that was music to their ears. That’s not saying that they agreed with the Final Solution, but they agreed with the xenophobia behind it.”

Neufeldt-Fast agreed. From his studies of Mennonite leaders in the Third Reich, he observed the same patterns again and again: Grievance, a yearning for protection, reverence for a strong leader who they believed to have been sent by God, and the scapegoating of others.

“Seen in this light, Mennonite enthusiasm for Nazism was not an inexplicable aberration. It was the predictable result of a community seeking order, stability, prosperity and hope — and being offered a dangerously compelling counterfeit,” he said.

The records can be accessed here: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/12044361

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