Children of the country road

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The aid organization for the children of Landstrasse was set up in 1926 as a project of the semi-public Swiss foundation Pro Juventute . It was set up under the direction of Alfred Siegfried with the intention formulated by him: “Anyone who wants to successfully combat vagueness must try to break the association of the traveling people, he must, as tough as that sounds, tear the family community apart ». With the support of the guardianship authorities, the children of Travelers , especially Yeniche , were taken away from their families. By 1972, when the project was discontinued after public pressure, around 600 children were affected. The aim of Kinder der Landstrasse was to alienate the children from the influence of the minority living conditions that were judged to be asocial and to adapt them to the predominant way of life of the majority of society. Another goal was to develop the children into "useful" workers for society. The "aid organization" was dissolved in 1973.

Basics

The legal basis for the removal of children was found in the Civil Code of 1912, which legitimized the guardianship authorities to withdraw custody of their children from parents in the event of improper behavior by the parents , permanent endangerment or, in general, neglect . Although the civil code spoke of supervision of the work of the authorities, it was hardly noticed. Basically, only the welfare authorities had the right to withdraw custody of the parents. However, the fact that children belonged to a traveling family was sufficient reason to take them away from their parents.

Psychiatric reports, which the "Hilfswerk" had applied to its ward, served as a professional and caring justification. Their general scientific foundation found the attitude of the leaders not only in the conviction of the harmfulness of a family socialization in as asocial categorized families than what families traveling origin per se regarded, but also in hereditary biological notions of inferior genetic "antisocial" , they were sedentary or not that will damage the valuable genetic material of the sedentary majority population if its transmission is not prevented.

The protagonists of such population sanitary and racial hygiene concepts included the Graubünden psychiatrist Josef Jörger with his psychiatric-eugenic writings on the Zero family and the German racial hygienist and gypsy expert Robert Ritter .

practice

The “relief organization” endeavored to intern children from both non-sedentary and sedentary families of traveling origin or to transfer them to foreign families . The decisive criterion for the removal of the child was not the parents' real driving lifestyle, but belonging to a fringe group of Kessler, Korber, beggar or worse classified as a collective bearer of socially harmful properties . Federal Councilor Heinrich Häberlin ( FDP ), President of the Foundation Council of Pro Juventute, described the Yeniche in a brochure published in 1927 as a “dark spot in our Swiss country, which is so proud of its cultural order” that needs to be removed.

In some cases, children were taken away from the mother immediately after birth. The children were usually placed in homes, in some cases also in foreign families, in psychiatric institutions and also in prisons, or as contract children assigned to farm families as workers. Contact between children and parents was systematically prevented. In some cases, the names of the “Hilfswerk-Mündel” were even changed in order not to be found by their relatives. Child abuse was legitimized as education for work . In the 1930s / 40s, the kidnapping reached its peak. At times, more than 200 children were under the control of the "aid organization".

The "aid organization" needed and found support from welfare agencies, teachers, pastors and charitable organizations. The legislation opened up room for maneuver, which the actors used in different ways, but often extensively. The boundaries of open illegality were exceeded.

Detection and Consequences

In 1972 the Swiss Observer published the fate of people who were torn out of their families. Most of the children and parents suffered from the activities of the "aid organization" all their lives. Public pressure prompted Pro Juventute to dissolve the "aid organization" in the spring of 1973. Existing guardianship was revoked or transferred to another person. The federal government, which had financially supported the foundation for many years, paid financial compensation of between 2,000 and 7,000 Swiss francs per person.

There was no criminal prosecution of those responsible for the project, in particular the two main actors Alfred Siegfried (1890–1972) and Clara Reust (1916–2000), as well as those responsible in the guardianship authorities who did not fulfill their supervisory function.

Speakers and supporters of the Yeniche as the group of the most affected among the Swiss travelers raise against the federal government the charge of genocide . The UN Convention of 1948 qualifies the forcible transfer of children of one national, ethnic, racial or religious group to another group with the intention of destroying them in whole or in part as genocide. This is followed by Swiss criminal law in Art. 264 StGB with a view to a group characterized by their nationality, race, religion or ethnic affiliation . The question is whether Yenish can be assigned to one of the groups mentioned, which is partly affirmed in recent scientific papers and partly put up for discussion. Today there is the Naschet Jenische Foundation , which stands up for those affected.

literature

Movie

  • The Last Free People , Documentary by Oliver M. Meyer, 1991
  • Kinder der Landstrasse , feature film by Urs Egger, 1992
  • Children of the highway , Galle, Sara: Of people and files. The “Children of the Landstrasse” campaign by the Pro Juventute Foundation, Chronos, Zurich 2009. DVD.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Children of the Landstrasse, 2009, Sara Galle
  2. ↑ Thomas Huonker : A dark spot . In: Remember what's going on. Racism in the sights . Pestalozzianum, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-03755-105-9 , pp. 167–174 ( online [PDF; 586 kB ]).
  3. ^ Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War. Roma, Sinti and Yeniche - Swiss Gypsy Policy at the Time of National Socialism .
  4. ↑ a b Independent Expert Commission Switzerland - Second World War: Genocide of the Yeniche?
  5. ↑ UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. ( Memento of the original from November 21, 2008 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. (PDF, German text; 84 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.grandtrial.org
  6. ↑ Art. 264 StGB .
  7. ↑ Nadja Capus - Does the past stand still forever? Bern: Stämpfli 2006. ISBN 3-7272-9124-9
  8. ^ Walter Leimgruber, Thomas Meier, Roger Sablonier : The aid organization for the children of the country road. Historical study based on the files of the Pro Juventute Foundation in the Swiss Federal Archives. Swiss Federal Archives, Bern 1998, ISBN 3-908439-00-0 (Federal Archives Dossier 9, PDF , 223 MB)
  9. ^ Peter Paul Moser, excerpts from his autobiography