Foster home for foreign children (Velpke)

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Bronze plaque in the cemetery of Velpke at the place of the children's graves: If the echo of their voices fades away - we will perish (text)

In the foster home for foreign children in Velpke (between Wolfsburg and Helmstedt ), 102 children of forced laborers who had to work for farmers in the Wolfsburg and Helmstedt area were housed.

The establishment of foster homes for foreign children goes back to a decree by Heinrich Himmler from 1943. The children of forced laborers were not in a hospital, but in so-called children's collection are born. There, the newborns should be separated from their mothers as few days after birth as possible and housed in facilities of the simplest kind, which Himmler's decree were grandly referred to as foster homes for foreign children . This was tantamount to a murder recommendation.

The care facility for foreign children near Velpke was operated in a stone quarry, the so-called Wetzsteinkuhlen , from May 1 to December 14, 1944 in a rusted corrugated iron barrack. It was closed because the nearby Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg needed barracks. 76 Polish and 15 Russian children are buried in the Velpker cemetery; the surviving children were after December 14 to nearby Rühen in the local Rühen children's camp brought. This was also a death camp.

The camps in Velpke as well as in Rüllen were built in the last years of the Second World War . Documentation published in 2008 names 60 camps at that time for Lower Saxony , 30 more were in the planning stage.

Foster homes for foreign children

The memorial at the place of the children's burial in the Velpker cemetery

In the last years of the war, foreign forced laborers, especially from Poland and the Soviet Union, were increasingly abducted and had to work in the German economy and in agriculture under unbelievably harsh living and working conditions; Despite these circumstances, female forced laborers became pregnant and gave birth to children. In the ideas of the Nazis, female forced laborers should not raise their own children (in Nazi terminology: racially inferior offspring ) and should be reintegrated into the work process as soon as possible. The Nazis took away the babies and children from their mothers and took them to foster homes for foreign children. In Velpke, the decree of the Reichsführer SS , Heinrich Himmler , of July 27, 1943, was strictly followed to separate the children from their mothers as few days as possible after the birth and to accommodate them in the simplest kind of foster home for foreigners . This was tantamount to a murder recommendation, the infants and small children had very poor chances of survival.

Space and care

The corrugated iron barracks in Velpke had a small kitchen, and the adjoining accommodation room was partitioned by a curtain for healthy and dying children. A second barrack that was later taken over, a storeroom for the quarry, was used as a morgue. No doctor or pediatric nurse was hired to check on the children's health. The children were entitled to half a liter of milk a day. The issuing was handled differently on site by the NSDAP. The hygiene was catastrophic, the clothes of the children in Velpke were hardly washed, the weight of the children was never checked. Running water was two kilometers away and most of the window glasses were broken. There was no electric light in the barracks, no telephone for emergencies, no disease prevention, and no use of medication for sick children.

The Velpke care facility for foreigners was occupied by an average of 20 babies and toddlers. A manager, a Russian woman who was married to a German, took care of the operation with four Polish and Russian caregivers who had no training in child care. The four nurses, all of whom were forced laborers, only had two beds available for themselves; the director herself said she did not spend a night in the barracks.

The mothers of the children had to pay 1 Reichsmark per day of accommodation and 15 Reichsmarks were required for the children's funeral.

Competence and responsibility

The home organization was the NSDAP. In Velpke she arranged for the renting of the barracks, the rent payments were stopped after a few months. She organized the interior fittings of the barracks through the National Socialist People's Welfare Association (NSV) , she paid the salary instructions to the manager in Velpke and the supplier invoices she presented.

The "foster homes" for the children of the forced laborers were set up in Germany without those responsible in the party committees of the NSDAP having clearly clarified whether they wanted the children to survive. It was not clearly established which standards homes had to meet for the accommodation and meals of the children. It was unclear who was actually responsible for the operation and financing of this facility. The only well-known fact - also in Velpke - was that it was an institution of the NSDAP.

The irritations caused by the non-decisions and non-action of those responsible meant that everyone was waiting for decisions from other departments or postponing them. A situation arose in which everyone defined their own area of ​​responsibility, and so these "sites" were in administrative no man's land, each department as well as each person could transfer their responsibility to the next and reject their own responsibility. The NSDAP thus provided the prerequisites for the appearance of actual infant nursing homes to emerge and, on the other hand, for the unspoken purpose of allowing the unwanted children to die quickly was fulfilled.

All officials and officials knew about the death of the children, but they could always say that they did not know how to behave and that they were not responsible for the death of the children. The foster homes for foreign children were neither infant homes nor a killing center for the accused.

The on-site doctor who issued the death certificates in Velpke confirmed that in most cases there were three causes of death: general weakness in life, dysentery and diarrhea - clearly a consequence of the circumstances. The general weakness in life with fatal consequences was not a result of the birth but was brought about deliberately.

The place

Bronze plaque on the memorial

Although the home was an institution of the NSDAP, it did not exist in an empty room and was dependent on local help to operate. Its existence and the death of the children were well known and obvious: “ Although it was forbidden to enter the home, the death of the children could not be concealed from the villagers. The church council, pastor and parish council had to deal with the question of where the children should be buried. One row of graves after the other was built on a piece of land behind the community cemetery. First the children were buried in cardboard boxes, later in nailed boxes. "

The fact that such an institution could be built on the outskirts of this village was due to the passive attitude of the population and the possibility of the Nazis to suppress any form of sympathy immediately. No resistance was to be expected from the farmers who benefited from the use of forced labor, because they had demanded that the children be removed from their farms. One of the women from Velpke was immediately interrogated by the Gestapo in the presence of the Russian woman after a conversation with a Russian woman who asked for directions because she had to bring her child to the Velpke home.

A farmer from Velpke admitted before the military court in Braunschweig that he had brought two children to the home against the wishes of their Polish parents.

The local group leader of the NSDAP spoke to the district leader of Helmstedt Heinrich Gerike once about the conditions in the corrugated iron barracks. He rebuked him that this matter was not his area of ​​responsibility. Then he refrained from further questions.

The mayor of the village approached the foreign ministry 's foster home and wanted the home to be removed from its area, but was not heard.

There were some residents of the village who tried to find out more about the home's circumstances. There were predominantly women of Polish origin and members of marginalized social groups in the village. The women belonged to the rest of a former large Polish population of Velpke, who lived socially declassed on the outskirts of the village due to race laws. They could easily be threatened and intimidated by the community and the NSDAP. The attempts to save the children from admission and to take care of them themselves remained only short episodes.

War crimes charges

By looking the other way, not listening or the reluctance to deal with guilt, “Velpke became an exemplary example of how war crimes of the Nazis could happen in full view , and nobody raised his voice or tried to prevent worse by tacitly acting " .

From March 20 to April 3, 1946, eight people were charged with war crimes before the Braunschweig British Military Court. Four people were convicted, three people were certified innocent, Fritz Flint of the Braunschweig Gestapo died during the negotiations. The district leader of the NSDAP Heinrich Gerike and the responsible for the children Georg Hessling, NSDAP district organization leader and DAF functionary (German Labor Front), were sentenced to death by hanging, the camp manager Valentina Bilien was sentenced to 15 years in prison and the doctor Dr. Richard Demmerich sentenced to 10 years in prison. No judgment was passed against the people who, due to their position and importance in the place, could have had an influence on what happened.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Velpke “children's home” (as it was called by the local population) was established in May 1944 to care for the infants of the Polish female forced laborers who worked on the farms near Wolfsburg and Helmstedt. Quotation from Children and the Holocaust: Symposium Presentations. ed. v. United States: Holocaust Memorial Museum. Center For Advanced Holocaust Studies. Washington DC, Sept. 2004, p. 78.
  2. ↑ Himmler's “Foster Care” brought children to death on wendland-net.de. Retrieved May 20, 2016.
  3. ↑ (see literature)
  4. ↑ Eggers / Riesener: Geschichte des Steinhauens, p. 77f (see literature).
  5. ↑ a b Law Reports p. 77 (see literature).
  6. ^ Birds: Maternity Home, p. 65 (see literature).
  7. ^ Birds: Maternity Home, p. 69f (see literature).
  8. ↑ Eggers / Diesener: Geschichte des Steinhauens, p. 78 (see literature).
  9. ↑ Riesener / Eggers: Geschichte des Steinhauens, p. 79 (see literature).

Coordinates: 52 ° 24 ′ 27 ″  N , 10 ° 56 ′ 55.8 ″  E