Maternity camp for children of Eastern workers

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Polish-German text 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 - here in 1944 victims of the Second World War were buried: 76 Polish and 15 Russian babies. Born by Forced laborers, separated from their mothers, they died of exhaustion in the Velpke children's home. Their suffering is part of the history of Europe in the 20th century.
X.1996 Compatriots from Poland "

Maternity camps were for pregnant Eastern workers . Their children were born in these camps. After that, the women were sent back to forced labor .

history

With Hermann Göring's 1939 “To secure agricultural production” decree , more female workers were to be brought to the Old Reich from the east occupied by Germany so that the male forced laborers would no longer seek contact with German women. The numerous Polish and Soviet women who became pregnant were initially sent back to their homeland. When the suspicion arose that the women were using pregnancy to return home, this practice was suspended again. Polish women were no longer willing to be obliged to work in Germany, and companies resisted the return regulation because they had to keep training new women. They called for regulations in dealing with the children of foreign women who should remain able to work.

Heinrich Himmler had the children selected according to racial characteristics . The "children of good blood" should be placed in homes and the "children of bad blood" given special treatment . In March 1943, the foreign workers were allowed and even recommended to have an abortion . They were used as visual aids for teaching medical personnel. But there were also clinics in which “Eastern workers” were treated like German women. According to the Midwifery Act of 1938, every woman was entitled to perfect midwifery help. People without appropriate training were not allowed to provide obstetrics . This was ignored in relation to “Eastern workers”. The foreign women, who mostly live in mass accommodation, should give birth centrally. The children should be taken away from their mothers, thus preventing a relationship between mother and child.

Starting in September 1942, illegitimate children “ foreign nationals ” were systematically recorded by the Reich Security Main Office . In October, two closed children's homes for foreigners were set up “on trial”. In December, homes with different names were set up. The official designation “ foreign children foster home ” was rarely used.

“Following the review process, the children classified as valuable were placed in special nursing homes, even against the mother's will. The recording of children increasingly extended to rural areas as well. "

- Annika Dube-Wnęk : see literature, p. 36.

The recommendation of the Main Office for People's Welfare was "to let the children die without torture and painlessly if they are 'not used' or, with the intention of using them in the future, to feed them in such a way that they are fully-fledged once they are at work." Perhaps it was the imprecise specification also intent, on the one hand to disturb the work ethic of the mothers and on the other hand to disguise the behavior towards the own population.

Theoretically, the foreign children should be adequately fed from February 1944. The mothers had to pay for the food, even though they had no means for it. The wages of women "only ensured the minimal reproduction of women's labor, but not the 'rearing' 'of a subsequent generation of labor".

A small selection of different bearings

Waltrop- Holthausen

The "Gemüseanbaugenossenschaft Waltrop und Umgebung eV" set up a maternity camp in the Rieselfeldern in 1943 on behalf of the National Socialists. In the 1990s, the historian Gisela Schwarze (Münster) carried out surveys of contemporary witnesses and researched sources into the history that had been suppressed until then. According to Schwarzes research results, at least 500 infants are believed to have died.

“The illegitimate civilian workers [...] who often work in the textile factories in the local deanery are sent to an institution in Waltrop before they are born. [...] One thing can be said, however, that almost all children of civil workers from abroad who are baptized here die a short time after being baptized. "

- Notes from an Emsdetten dean : Gisela Schwarze, children who didn't count, see literature.

The camp in Waltrop-Holthausen was probably "the largest maternity and abortion camp in the former German Reich".

Gravel pit Dresden

Forced labor was accepted by the German population, and it could not be hidden: there were at least 205 camps in Dresden . 497 children were born in the “ Lager Kiesgrube ” nursing home for foreign children on the Heller , and 225 infants and toddlers died there. Notes can be found in the death books of the registry office and notes in the baptismal registers of churches and in a few cemetery documents. In 2015, a new memorial was built on the site of a collective grave at the St. Pauli cemetery. Each of the children - infants and toddlers - received an individually designed board with names and dates of life. These extend to each other for about 90 meters.

Braunschweig Broitzemer Strasse

Crosses for murdered infants in the Hochstrasse cemetery in Braunschweig
Grave slab with the names of the murdered infants in the Hochstrasse cemetery

On April 16, 1943, a meeting took place in the Chamber of Commerce, which dealt with the establishment of a “maternity home for Eastern workers”. The AOK , which had already set up a “Russian hospital”, took over responsibility for the maternity hospital. The maternity hospital was set up in an existing barrack on the premises of the share brickworks and opened on May 10, 1943. The women stayed in the home for 8 days and then were separated from their children who stayed there. Small children who had given birth in other places in Braunschweig were also admitted to the home. The house was occupied by around 25 to 30 pregnant women or women who had just given birth. The house had three rooms, one for those who have recently given birth, the second for the newborns and the third for the slightly older children. Sick and healthy children stayed together. The first children were born in mid-May and the first children died a few weeks later. At the turn of the year 1943/1944 there was an infectious bowel disease in the home, which led to a check-up visit by a German doctor without the situation changing or the mass deaths stopping. The health department once determined a "hospital fever epidemic". In the spring, however, the head of the Braunschweig Children's Hospital found a nutritional disorder. The children suffered from vomiting, diarrhea and skin diseases. Despite the mass deaths, children who had been discharged were taken back several times, including in June 1944. At the time, the conditions there were “catastrophic”. Toilets and washrooms were “filthy and covered with completely dirty blankets and towels. Maggots crawled around and three corpses of children were in the bathroom. ”If the children died, they were“ collected ”in the“ house ”, placed in margarine cartons and kept in groups in the cemetery chapel. The bodies of deceased infants were buried in “10 kg margarine boxes” in collective graves in the cemetery. The foreign women were largely familiar with the short survival time and the conditions. They refused to surrender the children or tried to hide them in the camp where they were staying. Some broke into the home to get their children back. About 360 infants died.

On June 27, 1944, the home in Braunschweig -Broitzemer Strasse was taken over by the "Community Camp of Braunschweig Industry". Many women tried to bring their children to their homes in the east, they broke into the home to kidnap their children. In February 1944, the Braunschweig armaments center was systematically bombed. Pregnant women, mothers and children were brought to less endangered areas, such as the Harz Mountains, but pregnant foreigners and children of foreigners were not. On March 15, 1944, the large brick building in the immediate vicinity of the “maternity hospital” was completely destroyed. The maternity barrack was not hit, even later.

After the city ​​of Braunschweig was handed over to US troops on April 12, 1945, German anti-fascists referred the Allies to the “maternity hospital”.

Velpke child care center for foreigners

On May 1, 1944, the “ Velpke Foreigners Child Care Center ” was put into operation in Velpke in the Helmstedt district. Newborns from Soviet and Polish forced laborers who worked in the Volkswagen factory or in agriculture were housed there.

literature

  • Annika Dube-Wnęk: Structural violence in the National Socialist social system using the example of the care facilities for foreign children and the research results for the “Kiesgrube maternity camp” in Dresden . Dresden December 5, 2011 ( online [PDF; 9.2 MB ; accessed on January 2, 2014] Bachelor thesis at the Evangelical University for Social Work Dresden).
  • Raimund Reiter: Killing sites for foreign children in the Second World War - On the tension between the war economy and the National Socialist racial policy in Lower Saxony. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1993. ISBN 3-7752-5875-2 . (Publications of the Historical Commission Lower Saxony and Bremen 39.)
  • Gisela Schwarze: Children who didn't count. Eastern workers and their children in World War II . Klartext-Verlagsgesellschaft, Essen 1997, ISBN 978-3-88474-578-6 .
  • Bernhild Vögel: The “Maternity Home for Eastern Workers” Braunschweig, Broitzemer Straße 200 . Ed .: Hamburg Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century. Hamburg 1989, ISBN 978-3-927106-02-4 ( pdf edition 2005 [accessed on January 2, 2014]).

Movies

  • Unwanted and forgotten: forced laborers and their children in World War II . WDR television, screenplay & director: Anne Roerkohl, first broadcast: October 20, 2000, contribution to the One World International Human Rights Film Festival Prague April 2002

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sexual intercourse between Germans and Eastern workers was punished draconically: “The 'unauthorized sexual intercourse' between German women and 'Eastern workers' or Poles was punished by the Gestapo without a trial. The man was given ' special treatment '; H. in most cases hanged, the German partner was sent to a penitentiary or concentration camp. "Bernhild Vögel, maternity hospital ..., (see literature), p. 26.
  2. ↑ From the decree of the Reichsführer SS of July 1943: “The need to prevent the loss of German blood to foreign national bodies is increased by the blood victims of the war. It is therefore important not to assign the children of foreigners, some of whom are carriers of German blood of the same tribe and who can be regarded as valuable, to the ' foreign children foster homes ', but rather to keep them German wherever possible and therefore raise them as German children. For this reason, in cases in which the sire of the child of a foreigner is a German or a member of a related tribal (Germanic) ethnic group, a racial check of the sire and the mother must be carried out. "(Bernhild Vögel, maternity hospital ..., (see Literature), p. 72).
  3. ↑ Annika Dube-Wnęk, see literature, p. 32.
  4. ↑ Reich Midwives Act of 1938
  5. ↑ a b Annika Dube-Wnęk, see literature, p. 35.
  6. ↑ Vögel, Bernhild: “Maternity Home for Eastern Workers” Braunschweig, Broitzemer Str. 200, Hamburg Foundation for the Social History of the 20th Century, Hamburg 1989, pdf edition 2005 , p. 32.
  7. ↑ Josef Reding and Waltrops youngsters put up a memorial in memory of the Nazi maternity camp for Eastern workers in Holthausen.
  8. ↑ Waltrop maternity camp at www.migrationsroute.nrw.de Waltrop maternity camp at www.migrationsroute.nrw.de ( Memento of the original dated August 12, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.migrationsroute.nrw.de
  9. ↑ Entry in the Internet portal "Westphalian History"
  10. ↑ Paul Reding and Waltrops youngsters put up a memorial in memory of the Nazi maternity camp for Eastern workers in Holthausen.
  11. ↑ Paul Reding's memorial in Waltrop
  12. ↑ Annika Dube-Wnęk, see literature, p. 16.
  13. ↑ Annika Dube-Wnęk, see literature, p. 30.
  14. ^ SZ online, Friday, November 6th, 2015: Memorial for forced laborers in the Dresden cemetery
  15. ↑ Bernhild Vögel, Maternity Home ..., (see literature), p. 15.
  16. ↑ Raimund Reiter: Killing sites for foreign children in the Second World War - On the tension between the wartime economic work and National Socialist racial policy in Lower Saxony. Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1993. ISBN 3-7752-5875-2 , pp. 129ff.
  17. ^ Raimund Reiter: Killing sites for foreign children in World War II ... Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hanover 1993. P. 131ff.
  18. ↑ Bernhild Vögel, Maternity Home ..., (see literature), p. 95.
  19. ^ Raimund Reiter: Killing sites for foreign children in World War II ..., Hanover 1993. P. 131.
  20. ↑ Bernhild Vögel, Maternity Home ..., (see literature), p. 90.
  21. ↑ Bernhild Vögel, Maternity Home ..., (see literature), p. 94.
  22. ↑ Bernhild Vögel, Maternity Home ..., (see literature), p. 62.
  23. ↑ Children's home memorial on the website www.velpke.de  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.velpke.de  
  24. ↑ Anne Roerkohl dokumentARfilm GmbH produces audiovisual media for museums, memorials, television stations and other clients from the culture and media industry. Website of the film production

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