• 12/02/2023
• By wizewebsite
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85 years of Lebensborn.Czech track - Novinky.cz<

85 years of Lebensborn. Czech footprint

The conquest of Europe "through the sword and the cradle" was supposed to help the breeding of the noble race. The project took place not only in Germany, but also in controlled territories, including in the Czech Republic. And it took various forms: from state support for large families to adoption and almost ritual procreation to the rape of "racially suitable" women and child abduction.

Veltrusy Castle

Part of the program also took place at the castle in Veltrusy, near Prague. What happened there can only be deduced from the memories of local people. And for the German women who were sent there, it didn't have to be any honey.

“Once I saw how the German girls were standing in the courtyard - in front of the wing where the maids slept - with their leaders. One of the leaders had a small basket from which she drew numbers. The soldiers stood opposite in a line, and the one with the drawn number went to the girl with the same number, and the girl went inside with him. One of the girls didn't want to go, she screamed and fell, and two soldiers took her by the arms and legs and carried her down the hall towards the kitchen. She screamed the whole time," described Mrs. Marie Škodová, who lived with her parents in the former castle spyroom during the war.

The witness is no longer alive, but she told everything to the castellan of the Veltrus castle, Pavel Ecler. As he specified, in 1942 the Germans imposed forced administration on the Veltrus estate. Administrator Baron von Hartrott had sixteen young German women assigned to farm work as part of the Reich Labor Service. Hard work in agriculture was paramount, the Nazi Aryan hatchery apparently functioned only as an associated production. "It was a secret program, there are no documents for it," states Pavel Ecler.

And so we can only rely on the memories that Marie Škodová passed on to him: "Those German girls had two leaders and four took turns working in the fields. I saw that they were riding a bicycle and that they had a hoe or a rake. Another four were in the laundry, four were cooking and four were cleaning. That was their regime. Soldiers always came and went, they were not accommodated at the castle. And when it turned out happily for some, she left and another one came. However, no one knew anything about the Czechs."

Writer Otakar Špecinger describes on the website veltrusy.net: "The vast castle park was then closed to the public. Numerous signs forbade entry, chains hung on the main gate, and the German administrator reprimanded a village girl who was collecting rattlesnakes at the edge of the forest. We know for certain that this institution worked at the castle in Veltrusy until the turn of 1944 and 1945, when it disappeared with all its equipment and when the park was once again made available to regular visitors."

Be attractive and give birth

Nazi Germany was built on conservative patriarchal values. A woman's life was to be defined by the three K's: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). "A woman's job is to be attractive and bear children. If we push her out of public life, we will give her woman's dignity back," proclaimed Minister of National Education and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

The most suitable fathers of "racially qualified" children were, of course, members of the SS, vetted five generations ago. Producing a "pure race" was their sacred duty - if an SS member did not have two children by the age of thirty, his career progress was stopped and the penalty in in the form of financial levies.

"Those who think they can avoid their obligations to nation and race and remain free will be charged a fee in an amount that will make them prefer married life to old bachelorhood," warned an SS circular .

"A marriage that produced... few children is not very different from an insignificant affair," proclaimed Nazi propaganda. The ideal condition was four offspring, preferably sons. The Nazis adopted a number of measures to promote fertility. For large families, new apartments were built, newlyweds received favorable loans. Those who did not reproduce naturally were forced to adopt a "racially valuable" child. Aryan women were threatened with death for having an abortion after the outbreak of war.

Classical family ties went by the wayside, a woman's primary duty was to fulfill a biological function. Motherhood as an institution was no longer associated with marriage, let alone love.

Himmler even considered that, after the war, the Nazi leaders would release the marriage vows they made to "good and honorable matrons" and marry them to selected, racially perfect young women. He himself set an example, with his wife Margarete he had a daughter, a young Hedwig's lover son and daughter.

Saving the blood

"In Germany, six hundred thousand abortions are performed every year, and the idea that this affects Germans of the best blood scares me. In my opinion, we cannot afford to lose children like this by the hundreds of thousands. To save this German blood is our primary task. If we can prevent the abortions mentioned, we can raise two hundred new regiments every year. Five or six hundred thousand people in addition will bring millions of marks to our economy. Thanks to the strength of these soldiers and workers, our Germany will be stronger and greater. That is why I founded the organization Lebensborn..., (where) every woman can give birth to a child in peace and quiet, and thus dedicate her life to the revival of the race," explained the Reich leader of the SS to Marshal Wilhelm Keitel.

The Lebensborn organization was founded on December 12, 1935 in Munich and subsequently came under the direct influence of the SS. Children from this program were to become Aryan demigods. As Himmler hoped, before the "wild, intrepid, cruel youth" who would come out of his homes, "the whole world would cower in fear."

Initially, single mothers and married women who were expecting an illegitimate child gave birth in homes. Only later did the above-standard care attract other women.

However, Himmler had to constantly defend Lebensborn. As Catrine Clay and Michael Leapman note in The Master's Race, even the idea of ​​racial superiority could not replace centuries of church morality. Even many Nazis of a different persuasion looked down on the homes.

The births and subsequent adoptions therefore took place strictly anonymously. Doctors took an oath of secrecy, in which they promised to "respect the honor of pregnant women, whether they conceived before or after marriage." Mothers were not allowed to be photographed. Birth records bypassed official registries, illegitimate children only received certificates of racial integrity.

Luxury Breeding Stations

Lebensborn was not a cheap affair. The homes provided state-of-the-art medical care. They offered clean delivery rooms, comfortable, sunny, luxurious rooms, peaceful surroundings full of well-kept greenery. Mothers and older toddlers received high-quality food, which was insufficient during the war.

Nutritional values ​​were taken care of, even current nutritionists would not have reservations about the menu: oatmeal with honey, whole grain bread, raw vegetable salads, potatoes cooked in their skins and steamed vegetables, lean meat, milk, fresh tropical fruit, sunflower seeds...

However, all this comfort and facilities came at a cost. Himmler's wealthy friends from business and industrial circles as well as members of the SS - especially those who avoided parenthood - contributed. The homes were often located in clinics or sanatoriums confiscated from Jews and furnished with furniture and carpets looted from the apartments of enemies of the empire. Unpaid labor from the concentration camps also came in handy during construction.

Mothers stayed in Lebensborn homes for several months. After weaning, they could decide whether to leave with or without the baby. In the first case, in front of the Reich standard and Hitler's portrait, they solemnly swore that they would raise the child in the spirit of National Socialism. In the second, the child was given up for adoption to a politically aware family.

My beloved hauptsturmführer

For someone to give birth in homes, it was necessary to become pregnant. Young women of Nordic appearance and verified Aryan origin were chosen for this role. Blue-eyed blondes - often girls from the Union of German Girls - became "fiancees of the motherland". They were persuaded to start with the SS. In many summer or rural residences, they met with them in an organized manner for the purpose of conception. But no romance, dancing or holding hands at the moon, just sacred procreation!

We can get a picture of how everything happened from the memories of SS officer Peter Neumann, which he captured in the book Graves of the Others. One day, along with four other pure-blooded Aryan comrades, he was ordered on a "mission".

It must be admitted that the healthy 20-year-old didn't resist much... He successfully passed two medical examinations, including the collection of a semen sample, and took the train to a cozy recreation facility. When he was admitted among the girls, he decided almost immediately on Liselotte, a blonde with a beautiful figure.

She told him that she was a member of the Union of German Girls and admitted that they exerted considerable moral pressure on her to "voluntarily" fulfill her duty to her country.

"You're not selling your body - you're sacrificing it for Germany, and that's something completely different," argued Neumann. He spent six days and nights with the girl. After that, they both stamped for their duty, Peter returned to the front, and Liselotte eventually gave birth to another soldier in one of the Lebensborn leaders' homes.

Despite the complete isolation, some couples managed to catch a glimpse of each other during the few days they were together. When they demolished the oldest wing of the home in Steinhöring in 1985, they discovered pictures of handsome young men in SS uniforms under the parquet floors. One of the snapshots was captioned "My hauptsturmführer", another was reminisced about private moments by "happy Max Wechter". However, not all young German women were fanatical. Then it just had to go bad...

Stolen children

Pure-blood Aryans were not enough to fill the places left by the fallen, so the Nazis began to steal children even in occupied territories.

"What is in these peoples of the good blood of our family, we will get for ourselves, and perhaps even in this way, if necessary, by stealing their children and re-educating them," declared Himmler. The procedure was clear: find a "racially appropriate" child, steal them, brainwash them and place them in a "conscious" family. In Western Europe, the Nazis did not allow themselves this procedure, they focused on the East, especially on Poland.

Orphanages were the first to be hit. In order to be "saved" for the German nation, the abandoned children had to pass tests in which dozens of physical parameters were assessed.

Bright hair and blue eyes were the main ones, but the shape of the skull and body structure also played a role. The children were weighed, their chest, head and hips were measured, they were photographed from three angles and the results were recorded in a health card, which became the basis for adoption.

Project Lebensborn worked until the last possible moment, homes were evacuated to the heart of the empire before the enemy armies advanced. When the Americans entered the founding center in Steinhöring in May 1945, they found almost three hundred abandoned small children there...

However, German blood alone was not enough for the planned population of the Third Reich. While about seven thousand "pure-blooded" Aryans came from the Lebensborn homes, around two hundred thousand "racially appropriate" children, mostly Polish, were kidnapped from the occupied territories. After the war, about a fifth of them returned home. Others lived or are still living in Germany without suspecting the truth about their origins.