Youth concentration camp

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Youth concentration camps (with a National Socialist euphemism called youth protection camps or youth detention camps ) were concentration camps for interning resistant, “difficult to educate”, “work-shy” and non-conformist children and adolescents during the Nazi era .

Organization of youth concentration camps

The camps were subordinate to the Reich Security Main Office and officially served "youth welfare" as well as criminal police measures. In the Reich Ministry of the Interior , Hans Muthesius was responsible for the central administration of the youth concentration camps. In December 1939, the initiative came from Goering , who commissioned Himmler to do something against youth neglect and juvenile delinquency . Under the war conditions the drafted Hitler Youth functionaries were absent, in the evenings it was darkened and there was fear of more contact with foreigners, prostitution and homosexuality. Goering had Heydrich hold a meeting with several Reich authorities and NSDAP organizations at the RSHA on December 22, 1939 . Another legal basis was to be created for measures, for which Göring called together 21 high-profile officials and ministers on February 1, 1940: Frick , Goebbels, Lammers, Rust and many more. One of the results was the possibility of camp accommodation. In June 1940, the RSHA informed the police that it would begin with the camp accommodation soon. The legal basis for the placement was a decree on " preventive crime prevention ", which regulated access to " anti-social ". Any person who belonged to a minority, who evaded submission to National Socialism or was otherwise conspicuous could be regarded as "anti-social". The young people were assessed by Robert Ritter's Racial Hygiene and Population Biology Research Center for racist or “criminal biological” characteristics and their “developmental or educational ability”. It was then decided which coercive measures should be used against them.

Main camp

Moringen camp (near Göttingen) for boys

The boys' camp in Moringen in the "Landeswerkhaus" (officially "Police Youth Protection Camp ") was set up in June 1940 as the first camp of its kind at the suggestion of Reinhard Heydrich . It was subordinate to the Reich Security Main Office , Office V ( Reich Criminal Police Office ). At least 1,400 boys and young men between the ages of 13 and 22 were imprisoned in the camp; after selection they were placed in different blocks. At least 89 prisoners were murdered.

Subcamps were set up in Berlin-Weißensee in September 1943 and in Volpriehausen in July 1944 . Moringen was liberated in April 1945.

"Uckermark" camp for girls and young women

The “Uckermark” girls' camp was set up in June 1942 in the immediate vicinity of the Ravensbrück women's concentration camp . The management had criminal Councilor Lotte Toberentz held. Over 1,000 girls and young women were accommodated here. The background was similar to that in Moringen, but there were also briefings by the criminal police because of “sexual deviations”. Some female partisans were also imprisoned.

In June 1944, a sub-camp was set up at the Döberitz military training area, in which girls who had proven themselves in Uckermark were housed. In January 1945, the sub-camp served the mass murder of women from Ravensbrück and thus assumed the character of a death camp.

Litzmannstadt youth custody camp for Polish children and young people

In the Polish Łódź (called “Litzmannstadt” by the National Socialists), Reichsgau Wartheland , the “ Poland Youth Custody Camp Litzmannstadt ” was opened for Polish minors of both sexes at the beginning of December 1942 . The exact number of those detained here is not known; it is estimated at up to 20,000. At its peak in 1943, their number was just under 8,000.

There was a job requirement and draconian penalties were common. Furthermore, racial studies were carried out and children regarded as sufficiently “Aryan” were given up for adoption by German families. The number of Polish children and young people who perished here is also unknown. Several thousand inmates are believed to have died of ill-treatment, malnutrition and poor hygiene.

More institutions

The National Socialists had set up other institutions, labor camps and youth prisons to suppress deviating young people. Inmates of legal age were often sent to other concentration camps.

Children and young people who were persecuted by the National Socialists for racist reasons were deported like adults to concentration and extermination camps and killed in the Holocaust .

Furthermore, on the orders of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, so-called “ foreign children foster homes ” existed for the children of forced laborers. The same inhumane conditions prevailed here as in the other institutions mentioned. The “foreign children foster homes” had no other aim than to let the children of forced laborers wither away as unnoticed by the public as possible.

Recognition as a concentration camp and commemoration

For a long time, the inmates of the youth protection camps were regarded as the "forgotten persecuted" of the Nazi regime. It was not until the 1970s that the Federal Republic of Germany recognized the camps as concentration camps by the compensation offices.

The Uckermark camp is remembered in the Ravensbrück memorial. In Moringen there is the Moringen concentration camp memorial , which provides information about the three existing concentration camps. There is also a memorial site in Łódź with a sculpture created by Jadwiga Janus ( Pomnik Martyrologii Dzieci , German: “Monument to the Martyrdom of Children”).

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Ayaß: "To the files". The German Association for Public and Private Welfare is still grappling with its Nazi past. (pdf; 64 kB) In: Sozialmagazin 17 (1992), issue 9, pp. 54-57.
  2. ↑ Michael Buddrus: Total education for total war: Hitler Youth and National Socialist youth policy . Volume 1. Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-11615-2 , p. 424ff and 488ff ( online )
  3. ↑ Printed by Wolfgang Ayaß (arr.): "Community foreigners". Sources on the persecution of "anti-social" 1933–1945 , Koblenz 1998, no. 50.