 ALebensborn birth house | |
| Formation | 12 December 1935 (1935-12-12) |
|---|---|
| Founder | Heinrich Himmler |
| Dissolved | 1945 |
| Headquarters | Munich, Germany |
| Membership | 8,000 (1939) |
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|---|---|---|
Personal
4thReichsführer-SS Organizations   | ||
Lebensborne.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was a secret,SS-initiated,state-registered association inNazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "healthy"Aryans, based onNazi eugenics (also called "racial hygiene" by someeugenicists).Lebensborn was established byHeinrich Himmler, and provided welfare to its mostly unmarried mothers, encouraged anonymous births by unmarried women at their maternity homes, and mediatedadoption of children by likewise "racially pure" and "healthy" parents, particularly SS members and their families. TheCross of Honour of the German Mother was given to the women who bore the mostAryan children.Abortion was legalized (and, more commonly, endorsed) by the Nazis for disabled and non-Germanic children, but strictly punished otherwise.
Set up in Germany in 1935,Lebensborn expanded into several occupied European countries withGermanic populations during theWorld War II. It included the selection of "racially worthy" orphans for adoption and care for children born from Aryan women who had been in relationships with SS members. It originally excluded children born from unions between common soldiers and foreign women, because there was no proof of "racial purity" on both sides. During the war, many children were kidnapped from their parents and judged by Aryan criteria for their suitability to be raised inLebensborn homes, and fostered by German families.
At theNuremberg trials, much direct evidence was found of thekidnapping of children by Nazi Germany during the period 1939–1945.
TheLebensborn e.V. (e.V. stands foreingetragener Verein or registered association), meaning "fount of life", was founded on 12 December 1935,[1] to counteract falling birth rates inGermany, and to promoteNazi eugenics.[2] Located inMunich, the organization was partly an office within theSchutzstaffel (SS) responsible for certain family welfare programs, and partly a society for Nazi leaders.[citation needed]
On 13 September 1936,Heinrich Himmler wrote the following to members of the SS:
The organisation "Lebensborn e.V." serves the SS leaders in the selection and adoption of qualified children. The organisation "Lebensborn e.V." is under my personal direction, is part of the Race and Settlement Central Bureau of the SS, and has the following obligations:
- Support racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable families with many children.
- Placement and care of racially, biologically and hereditarily valuable pregnant women, who, after thorough examination of their and the progenitor's families by the Race and Settlement Central Bureau of the SS, can be expected to produce equally valuable children.
- Care for the children.
- Care for the children's mothers.
It is the honorable duty of all leaders of the central bureau to become members of the organisation "Lebensborn e.V.". The application for admission must be filed prior to 23 September 1936.[3]
In 1939, membership stood at 8,000, of which 3,500 were SS leaders.[4]TheLebensborn office was part ofSS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (SS Race and Settlement Main Office) until 1938, when it was transferred toHauptamt Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS (Personal Staff of theReichführer-SS), i.e. directly overseen by Himmler. Leaders ofLebensborn e. V. wereSS-StandartenführerMax Sollmann [de] andSS-Oberführer Dr.Gregor Ebner.[citation needed]
Initially the programme served as a welfare institution for wives of SS officers; the organization ran facilities – primarilymaternity homes – where women could give birth or get help with family matters. The programme also accepted unmarried women who were either pregnant or had already given birth and were in need of aid, provided that both the woman and the father of the child were classified as "racially valuable". About 60% of the mothers were unmarried. The program allowed them to give birth secretly away from home withoutsocial stigma. In case the mothers wanted to give up the children, the program also had orphanages and an adoption service.[5] When dealing with non-SS members, parents and children were usually examined by SS doctors before admission.
The firstLebensborn home (known as "Heim Hochland") opened in 1936, inSteinhöring, a tiny village not far from Munich. The first home outside of Germany opened inNorway in 1941. Many of these facilities were established in confiscated houses and formernursing homes owned by Jews.[2] Leaders of theLeague of German Girls were instructed to recruit young women with the potential to become good breeding partners for SS officers.[6]
WhileLebensborn e. V. established facilities in several occupied countries, its activities were concentrated around Germany, Norway and occupiednortheastern Europe, mainlyPoland. The main focus inoccupied Norway was aiding children born to Norwegian women and fathered by German soldiers. In northeastern Europe the organisation, in addition to services provided to SS members, engaged in the transfer of children, mostly orphans, to families in Germany.[citation needed]
Lebensborn e. V. had or planned to have facilities in the following countries (some were merely field offices):
About 8,000 children were born inLebensborn homes in Germany, and a similar number in Norway.[8][9] Elsewhere the total number of births was much lower.[8]
In Norway theLebensborn organisation handled approximately 250 adoptions. In most of these cases the mothers had agreed to the adoption, but not all were informed that their children would besent to Germany for adoption. The Norwegian government recovered only 170 of these children after the war.[citation needed]
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In 1939, the Nazis started to kidnap children from foreign countries – mainly fromYugoslavia andPoland, but alsoRussia,Ukraine,Czechoslovakia,Romania,Estonia,Latvia, andNorway[10] – for theLebensborn program. They started to do this because "It is our duty to take [the children] with us to remove them from their environment ... either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people or we destroy this blood," Himmler reportedly said.[11]
The Nazis would seize children in full view of the parents. The kidnapped children were administered several tests and were categorised into three groups:
The children classified as unwanted were taken toconcentration camps to work or were killed. The children from the other groups, if between the ages of 2 and 6, were placed with families in the programme to be brought up by them in a kind offoster child status. Children of ages 6 to 12 were placed in Germanboarding schools. The schools assigned the children new German names and taught them to be proud to be part of Germany. They forced the children to forget their birth parents and erased any records of their ancestry. Those who resistedGermanisation were beaten and, if a child continued to rebel, they would be sent to a concentration camp.[12]
In the final stages of the war, the files of all children kidnapped for the programme were destroyed. As a result, researchers have found it nearly impossible to learn how many children were taken. The Polish government has claimed that 10,000 children were kidnapped, and less than 15% were returned to their biological parents.[11] Other estimates include numbers as high as 200,000, although according toDirk Moses a more likely number is around 20,000.[13]
After the war, the branch of theLebensborn organisation operating in north-eastern Europe was accused of kidnapping children deemed "racially valuable" in order to resettle them with German families. However, of approximately 10,000 foreign-born children located after the war in the American-controlled area of Germany,in the trial of the leaders of theLebensborn organisation (United States of America v. Ulrich Greifelt, et al.), the court found that 340 had been handled byLebensborn e. V. The accused were acquitted on charges of kidnapping.[citation needed]
The court found ample evidence of an existing programme of the kidnapping or forced movement of children in north-eastern Europe, but concluded that these activities were carried out by individuals who were not members ofLebensborn. Exactly how many children were moved byLebensborn or other organisations remains unknown due to the destruction of archives by SS members prior to fleeing the advancing Allied forces.[citation needed]
From the trial's transcript:[14]
The prosecution has failed to prove with the requisite certainty the participation ofLebensborn, and the defendants connected there with in the kidnapping programme conducted by the Nazis. While the evidence has disclosed that thousands upon thousands of children were unquestionably kidnapped by other agencies or organisations and brought into Germany, the evidence has further disclosed that only a small percentage of the total number ever found their way intoLebensborn. And of this number only in isolated instances didLebensborn take children who had a living parent. The majority of those children in any way connected withLebensborn were orphans of ethnic Germans.Upon the evidence submitted, the defendant Sollmann is found not guilty on counts one and two of the indictment.
After Germany's surrender, the press reported on the unusually good weight and health of the "super babies". They spent time outdoors in sunlight and received two baths a day. Everything that came into contact with the babies was disinfected first. Nurses ensured that the children ate everything given to them.[15] Until the last days of the war, the mothers and the children at maternity homes got the best treatment available, including food, although others in the area were starving. Once the war ended, local communities often took revenge on the women, beating them, cutting off their hair, and running them out of the community. ManyLebensborn children were born to unwed mothers. After the war,Lebensborn survivors were often subjected to ostracization.[citation needed]
Himmler's effort to secure a "racially pure"Greater Germany, sloppyjournalism on the subject, as well as Nazi ideology retained by some, led to persistent false assumptions about the programme. The main misconception was that the programme involved coercive breeding. The first stories reporting thatLebensborn was a coercive breeding programme can be found in the German-language magazineRevue, which ran a series on the subject in the 1950s.[citation needed]
The programme did intend to promote the growth of Aryan populations, through encouragingrelationships between German soldiers and Nordic women in occupied countries. Access toLebensborn was restricted in accordance with theNordicist eugenic and racial policies ofNazism, which could be referred to as supervisedselective breeding. Recently discovered records and ongoing testimony ofLebensborn children – and some of their parents – shows that some SS men did sire children in Himmler'sLebensborn program.[16] This was widely rumored within Germany during the period of the programme.[17]
In Norway, children born to Norwegian mothers by German fathers were allegedly often bullied, raped, abused, and persecuted by the government after the war, and placed in mental institutions. The Norwegian government attempted to deportLebensborn children to Germany,Brazil, andAustralia but did not succeed. A group ofLebensborn children sought compensation from the Norwegian government, which they saw as being complicit in their mistreatment. In 2008, their case before theEuropean Court of Human Rights was dismissed as the events had happened too long ago, but they were each offered an £8,000 payment from the Norwegian government.[18]
In November 2006, in the German town ofWernigerode, an open meeting took place among severalLebensborn children, with the intention of dispelling myths and encouraging those affected to investigate their origins.[19][20]
General documents onLebensborn activities are administered byInternational Tracing Service and byGerman Federal Archives.[21] The associationVerein kriegskind.de is among those that published search efforts (Suchbitten) to identifyLebensborn children.[22]
Several of the survivingLebensborn children appeared inWars Don't End, a 2018 documentary film directed by Dheeraj Akolkar and narrated byLiv Ullmann.[23]
The Czech TV filmSpring of Life (2000) tells the story of aSudeten German teenager recruited as a future mother into aLebensborn in Poland.[24]
In the television series,The Man in the High Castle, Joe Blake and Nicole Dörmer are among several characters who wereLebensborn children.[25]
The video gameMy Child Lebensborn, which won theBAFTA Games Awards in 2018 for "Game Beyond Entertainment",[26] lets players experience the bullyingLebensborn children went through after the war.[27][28]
In the novel and filmSophie's Choice, Sophie unsuccessfully attempts to place her son in theLebensborn program.[29]
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