The Lebensborn Project: Why the Nazis Took 50,000 Soviet Children to Germany
In Nazi Germany, there was an organization called Lebensborn, which after the war was called “Himmler’s Factory of Children.” Lebensborn’s main goal, with the motto “Give the Führer a child,” was to raise and educate “racially pure” boys who would later take part in the conquest and settlement of new lands for the German Empire. After Hitler’s attack on the USSR, tens of thousands of children were taken from the territory of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus for Aryan re-education, who did not return to their homeland after the victory.
Baby Factory
At the beginning of the 1930s, due to social instability and the economic crisis in Germany, a sharp drop in the birth rate began, associated with a huge number of abortions. To solve the problem, in 1935, on the instructions of the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, the organization “Lebensborn”, which translates as “Source of Life”, was created. Some women took part in the programme for ideological reasons. They voluntarily settled in comfortable asylums, where they became pregnant by SS members and gave birth to children under the full care of the Reich. Norwegians, whom the Nazis considered “true Aryans”, were especially actively involved. [C-BLOCK]
Women who gave birth to four or more children were given a mother’s cross and an engraved silver candlestick. If there were abnormalities in the fetus, then a mandatory abortion was performed. A few weeks after birth, the baby was taken away for further transfer to a foster family. By 1938, Himmler’s program had given birth to 8,000 children in Germany and 12,000 in Norway. Babies born out of wedlock were also accepted into the program, but parents must provide certificates of racial purity, the absence of genetic diseases and criminal records.
The New Germans
Since 1940, the conquered territories began to be included in the program. Shelters were opened in Denmark, France, Luxembourg and other European countries. According to the research of the Polish historian Tadeusz Malicki, from 1941 the Reich began to Germanize children from the Slavic peoples. Babies with blue eyes and blond hair were taken from Poland, the Czech Republic, Yugoslavia, often the children of partisans whose parents had been killed by the Nazis.
During the interrogation in Nuremberg, the head of the organization, SS-Standartenführer Max Zollmann, claimed that 50,000 children had been taken out of the USSR for re-education. According to a study by Professor Heinz Wirst of the University of Dresden, more than 10,000 children were taken out of Russia in August-September alone. Most often, the “racially faithful” were recruited from Pskov, Novgorod, Bryansk, Smolensk, and especially the Crimea. They took the children of partisans, orphans and those caught on the streets.
From Slavs to Germans
For the Slavic children who ended up in the Lebensborn orphanages, re-education began with the ritual of receiving a new German name. Surrounded by torches, swastikas and portraits of Hitler, the child was taken in the arms of an SS officer, who pronounced an oath and named the baby with ancient German names – Siegfried, Adelaulf, Æthelwolf and others. The birth records of the children were changed and they were registered as orphans whose parents had died in the battle for the Führer and Greater Germany.
For example, thousands of children of Russian children from Polotsk, who were brought to an orphanage near the Polish city of Lodz, were recorded as having been born in Breslau. Infants, after registration, were handed over to SS families, and older children were taught German and indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda. The Czech historian František Kolín found out that after a 3-4 month course of Germanization, the child was handed over to German families. The conditions of detention of the future “Aryans” were regularly checked by inspectors and doctors from the Lebensborn structure. Most of the Russian children ended up in Berlin, Dresden and Poznan.
The fate of children
In the winter of 1945, the orphanages began to be moved to the West, and after the end of the war, most of the Slavic children ended up in the American zone of occupation. Lynn Nicholas, an American researcher, wrote in her book “The Children of Europe in the Web of the Nazis” that in 1947, U.S. Army investigators, communicating with children, concluded that: “Some children, who had forgotten their language, considered themselves Germans and were afraid to leave, having become accustomed to adoptive parents. Others were intimidated by “Germanization,” and “Lebensborn” got it into their heads that it was better to be an Aryan in this world. The little ones didn’t remember their past.”
There were 13,517 children from the USSR and Poland on the wanted list, but this figure was derived on the basis of only 10% of the Lebensborn archives that came into the possession of the investigation. Lynn Nicholas estimated that there were hundreds of thousands of such children in Europe. Professor Heinz Wirst believes that no more than 3% of the stolen children have returned to Russia
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