On March 10, 1948, within the framework of the eighth of the trial in Nuremberg, dedicated to the investigation of racial and territorial crimes of a special organization of the SS (Der Pro Prozsess Rasse- Und Siedlungshauptamt Der SS), very soft sentences were made by the leaders of the LebensBorn criminal program.
LebensBorn (translated into Russian as a "source of life") was aimed at the destruction of "defective races" and the creation by the selection selection of the "Higher" or "Aryan" race. This, as I would say now, the project initiated by Reichsfür Heinrich Himmler was founded on two main demographic principles of the Nazis: the salvation of the Nordic race from allegedly threatening her extinction due to the birth deficit (GebrTendefizite) and high-quality improvement in the offspring by national socialist racial Hygiens (NationalSozianistischen RassenHygiene).
First, the German "Aryan" children
Lebensborn was finally undertaken on December 12, 1935 in Berlin as an independent non-profit organization, which exists at the expense of the membership contributions of the members of the SS. At the same time, the childless members of the SS should have paid the highest fee. The members of the SS were charged ("Völkischen Verpflichtungen") to have at least four children, they were born in marriage or out of marriage. It was originally part of the main management of races and settlements (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS-, Rusha), which was engaged in the preparation of the "Aryan" mothers to their important function and the upbringing of the "Aryan" babies.
August 15, 1936 Organization Lebensborn e. V. Opened its first shelter for 30 young mothers and 55 babies called Hochland in the Bavarian Town Steinhöring (Steinhöring Bei Ebersberg). In 1938, the organization was transferred to the management of "L", to the personal headquarters of the Persönlichen Stab Des Reichsfühners SS). Head Lebensborn E. V. Assigned Major MSK Guntrama Pflaum (SS-Sturmbannführer Guntram Pflaum).
In Germany, the houses of Mothers were built in the cities of Bad Pollinets, Vernigerode, Wiesbaden, Kloscheide, Norders, Penicks, Hohenhorst.
Studying documents LebensBorn E. V., the German historian Folker Coop (Volker Koop) found that the activities of this organization acquired a special scale after Reichsführer Henry Himmler began to fight the "Abortion epidemic": their number before the war accepted catastrophic sizes and reached the value of almost 600 thousand per year .
On October 28, 1939, Reichsfücher publicly stated that unmarried German women and girls with a good "Aryan" pedigree have a duty to become mothers out of marriage, they are given the opportunity to give birth to children not in ordinary maternity homes, but in special maternity institutions. At this stage, at home, built in the forest arrays under the program Lebensborn, seelle pregnant unmarried women who have been checked at least two generations. Such pregnant women were listed "in the service" until the child was transferred to specially selected German families. All documents on such children had a vulture of special secrecy and were stored separately from the civil and church records of civil status acts. Thus, from official sources to learn anything about such children turned out to be almost impossible.
Here you should make one reservation. Historian Folker Coop in his book leads a few specific cases, when pregnant unmarried young women from small villages asked themselves to such houses, since they could take away from shame there. But this, of course, private cases that do not reflect the whole situation.
On April 11, 1940, Major's troops of SS Guntrama Pfulaum at Lebensborn e. V changed the colonel of Max Solmann SS Max Solmann; The medical unit was responsible for Gregor Ebner (SS-Oberführer Gregor Ebner). By this time, Lebensborn had "Mother's houses" and "Child's houses" also in Belgium (Vegaimont), Denmark (Copenhagen), France (Lamorle, SERNANKUR), Norway (Oslo, Trondheim, Bergen, Gayo, Klekken, Hurdalsomk).
"Aryan" children from Slavs
After the beginning of World War II, the program of the Lebensborn E. V. spread to occupied countries. At the captured territories, the Nazis were looking for and selected children with the "Aryan" appearance. Polish children became the first mass victims of the program. They were given new, German names, and the date of appearance in the "birth certificates" were raised arbitrarily. The place of birth was usually indicated by the city of Poznań, since it was there that the Nazis most often selected children from Polish mothers. Therefore, the stories of almost 150,000 Polish children exported under the program Lebensborn to Germany, find out, with a rare exception, is not possible.
Since 1940, the same since 1940 occurred in the territories of captured regions of France and Norway, and after 1943 - from Belarus, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Russia. After all, many Slavic children were blue-eyed and blonde, that is, they met the selection requirements, as a result of which it was planned to create a Nazi political and military elite to manage the Third Reich and the rest of the world.
LEBENSBORN's maternity hospital was sent to the Blue-eyed Slavs. The practice was introduced that the distinguished soldiers and officers at the time of vacation were sent from the fronts of World War II into these houses, and they became the biological fathers of Lebensborn children.
These children were declared the legacy of the nation. The SS officers carried out the rite of "Aryan" baptism ": the mother on behalf of the child gave an oath of loyalty to Führera and the Third Reich. For Slavic children, a special ritual "imparting by the name" was developed. The child was given ancient-month names - Siegfried, Gudrun, Ethelvolph. The SS officer took the "newborn" (read, stolen) the baby in his arms and kept in front of the altar, who hung the portrait of Adolf Hitler (Adolf Hitler) surrounded by torches.
Stories of those who survived
As part of the Lebensborn program, fathers and mothers of different nationalities were selected and taken to Germany, according to the most approximate calculations, several hundred thousand children. Cases are known when Lebensborn sent children to children partisans. So, for example, after the defeat in 1942, the partisan cell in the Ljubljana kids partisans under the age of 5 were sent to the Lebensborn houses, and their parents are shot. Patients and "defective" children were destroyed in concentration camps. The most famous is the tragic history of the Czech village of Lidice.
For one only a suspicion that in this village there may be hiding persons guilty of the murder of the Obergroupness Heydrich, the punitive detachment of the Nazis, spelled 95 houses, shot 173 men over 15 years old, and 195 women sent Ravensbruck to the concentration camp (52 of them There and died). Until recently, it was known that 9 pregnant women were sent to Prague, where they selected children after birth.
Recently it was found that in the village of Lidice, the fascists selected 105 young boys and girls for "Germanization". Children sent to the Central Bureau Rusha; 82 The child "rejected": they did not come across racial criteria, and they were sent to the Culmhof's concentration camp gas chambers, which is near the city of Hellno. One of those who were lucky was Maria Doležalová-Šupíková).
She changed her name to Inhiborg Schiller, gave to an orphanage, and then in a German family. She lived with this name until 1946, until the time when the archives of Rusha managed to find her authentic documents. According to these documents, Maria was able to find his mother who was hijacked for forced work in Germany and became crippled. Maria Delagelova-Shupikov was a witness in the Nuremberg process. But she responded well about her German family: "We were taken at school - right in the middle of the lesson. At first he drove into the camp - we slept on bare earth, in rags, all in the lush, bread balancing ... Finding into a childless German family, I was out of myself from happiness - Lord, I fought and shod, I live in warmth! I and those few who were passed on to raising the foil families were grateful to a new mom and dad. And they rejoiced that we were alive. All the time staying in families treated us well, even perhaps loved. And compared to child houses, where we were settled immediately after being taken out of the Lidice, it was quite good here. "
The Polish girl Janina was placed first in the children's home in Kalishe, then transported to the Salzburg region, in the Alpenland shelter. Every week they were carefully examined: the eye cut was measured, the width of the nose, the shape of the skull. Those children who spoke Polish, beat. On weekends, German couples came to them and asked whether the girls want to live with them. "No," Yanina answered each time, "I'm waiting for my mom." But on June 1, 1944, she was still put in one German family in Minden (North Rhine Westphalia). From now on, she became Johanna Kunzer.
A similar story happened to the Polish girls of Gertrudomska (Gertruda Niewiadomska) and Barbara Barbara (Barbara Paciorkiewicz), materials about which were presented at the Geraubte Kinder - VergeSene Opfer exhibition ("Stolen children - forgotten sacrifices", Freiburg, 2014-2016) . "They wanted to make a real German from me," said Gertruda Neigho. And Barbara Papacekivich, born in 1938 in Gdynia, said that in the shelter children did special injections: "I didn't know what kind of injections. Someone said that they were with the drug to forget their past. "
In the same kindergarte, Volker Heineke (Volker Heineke) visited. Little in Crimea of Two-year-old Sasha Lito in 1943, the Nazis took away from their parents. Blonde and blue-eyed boy is not suitable for Lebensborn. The child was sent to the shelter to Lodz (Poland), where they changed his name and surname to the Hineek folker and pointed out another place of birth in the documents. In an orphanage, where he originally lived, he and other children were banned in their native language. Behind disobedience, beatings and a cake were relied. "Children were locked in the dead, in the basement. There were corpses, Rats ran. And they put the little children on the peas there, so that they were not only scary, but it was hurt, "says Volker Hainek. - 80 percent of children did not pass racial selection. They were returned back to the camp. And no one ever heard about them. "
Sasha took into their family childless shipowners from Hamburg. They treated him well. "Father said: In the orphanage, I myself came up to him and put my hand on my knee ... So they decided to take me to themselves. They were convinced Nazis, had dating in the leadership of the Third Reich. I was 4 years old - I remember how Henry Himmler came to our home, I was struck by his coal-black form. Looking into my direction, Himmler said: "All blond children should live in Germany." I am grateful to receiving parents - they adored me, gave me excellent upbringing and education abroad. But everything about what I am now dreaming - it is finally putting flowers to the grave of his Russian mother ... "
Sentence of the Nuremberg court
In the Nuremberg process, the consideration of the crimes of the organization Rusha began in October 1947. 13 leaders and employees of Lebensborn E. V. Three charges were nominated: crimes against humanity (ads of children from the occupied territories); The plundering of public and private property in Germany and in the occupied territories and belong to a criminal organization.
By the time of the court, the former major troops of the SS Guntram Pflaum disappeared. Max Solmann at the interrogation showed that through the organization Lebensborn E. V. Passed from 5,000 to 50,000 children from the countries occupied by the German troops and their allies of the Soviet Union. How many of these children survived and how much died, it is impossible to install, because almost the entire main archive of LebensBorn E. V. In the Bavarian city, Steinchöring was destroyed on April 28, 1945 when the American troops approach. When the American services began to ask the staff of suspicious "homes of the mother" in the Bavarian forests, they were convinced that they had a help for unmarried pregnant women. And nothing illegal was found.
LEBENSBORN E heads. V. were justified on two first points of charges and were convicted only in the third paragraph for belonging to the criminal organization of the SS. As a result of the above-mentioned former colonel of the SS Max Solmann forces and the former Major Major Major General, Gregor Ebner, were sentenced to imprisonment for a period ... two years and eight months. And at the exit to freedom they had to pay a cash fine in the amount of 50 German brands.