Foster home for foreign children (Gantenwald)
The foreign children care facility Gante Forest was the end of the Third Reich on a farm in the district Gante forest of the Buhlerzell in the district of Schwäbisch Hall in Baden-Wuerttemberg .
In the period from June 1944 to April 1945, 79 children of foreign forced laborers were born there. Of these, at least 24 infants died in the first three months after their birth due to inadequate hygiene, insufficient care, inadequate medical care and clothing.
Period from 1943 to 1945
The establishment of foster homes for foreign children goes back to a decree of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler from 1943. Under no circumstances should the children of female forced laborers be born in a hospital, but in so-called foreign children 's nursing homes. It should not be known how people are treated. In the so-called nursing homes, the newborns should be separated from their mothers as few days after birth as possible and housed in facilities of the simplest kind. This was tantamount to a murder recommendation.
From June 1944 until the end of the war, pregnant forced laborers from the surrounding area were brought to Gantenwald to give birth and had to give birth to their children in Gantenwald under unimaginable conditions. They were forced laborers from the Soviet Union , Ukraine and Poland . A few days after the birth, they were returned to their workplaces. The infants had to stay behind. In the accommodations they were mostly left to their own devices and vegetated under unimaginable hygienic conditions. They received little food or medical care. Between June 1944 and April 1945, 79 children were born there and at least 24 died. The first five bodies were still buried in the Bühlerzell cemetery. 19 infants who died later and the Russian mother Eugenia Rossamacha, only 19 years old, were buried in the children's cemetery ⊙ on the edge of the forest a little east of Gantenwald.
After 1945
At the beginning of the 1980s, the children's cemetery in the forest was in a neglected state. The so-called nursing homes came into the public eye during this time. The children's cemetery was redesigned and initially only marked with a cross with the inscription "Rest in peace". The VVN had previously erected a memorial stone that was dismantled after a week and hidden in the local fire department store. At that time, a second mayor of the municipality of Bühlerzell caused a sensation with statements about the murdered infants when he described them as "coincidental products of sexual pleasure" and saw their death as "not a Nazi crime". This brought the place into disrepute. In 1986 a memorial stone by the sculptor Hermann Koziol was erected with a bronze mother figure holding her child accusingly in front of her. On the memorial stone is a plaque with a text by Luise Rinser :
“Since 1945 a Russian mother has been lying here next to small children, born of forced laborers and miserable to death. We remember her and all women and children in shame and sadness, sacrificed in the Nazi state in a senseless war. "
The children's cemetery has been a memorial since 1988 and is maintained by the municipality of Bühlerzell.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Himmler's “Foster Care” brought children to death on wendland-net.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016
- ↑ The fate of Eugenia Rossamacha and her son Eugen , on stolpersteine-backnang.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016
- ^ A b Hans Georg Frank: Testimony to German History: Children's Cemetery in the Forest , from September 11, 2013, on swr.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016
- ↑ Crosses in the Thicket - A community disputes the care of children's graves , on zeit.de, article from November 28, 1986. Retrieved on December 9, 2016
- ^ Cemetery of the Gantenwald foreign children care facility , on leo-bw.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016
- ↑ Memorials in Baden-Württemberg , on Gedenkstätten-bw.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016
Coordinates: 48 ° 59 '7.2 " N , 9 ° 54' 3.8" E