Hitler's Unwanted Children I

"Patently Ridiculous that Psychiatrists Caused the Holocaust"

NADA STOTLAND: President of the American Psychiatric Association

Hitler's Unwanted Children

Sally M. Rogow

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Half a century old, the Holocaust still mocks the idea of civilization and threatens our sense of ourselves as spiritual creatures. Its undiminished impact on human memory leaves wide open the unsettled and unsettling question of why this should be so. (Langer, 1994 p. 184)

The years of disaster have enmeshed all of us in guilt deeply enough, as it is, and the task of the day is to find bridges that will lead us to deeper insight. (Mitscherlich and Mielke, 1947, p.151)

Childhood in Nazi Germany was cast in the mythic illusion of a super race. Children who did not meet the social or biological criteria of " perfect" children were removed from their homes and communities, isolated in institutions, hospitals, work and concentration camps, and many thousands were murdered (Aly, 1993; Burleigh, 1994; Friedlander, 1994; Peukert, 1987).

It is a myth that only children with severe disabilities were killed or that the killings stopped in 1941; the last child was killed almost a month after the war was over. Unwanted children were orphans, children in care because of emotional or behavior problems, adolescent non-conformists as well as children with physical disabilities or mental handicaps (in addition to Jewish, Gypsy and non-white children). The campaign to remove unwanted children from the community was not only the result of Nazi racial biology and eugenics, it was part and parcel of the effort to impose control and conformity on the entire German population. In a climate of social chaos, economic depression and poverty, the Nazis created an economy of privilege and conflicting spheres of jurisdiction. By persecuting selected groups of people, they were able to establish a system of thought control that reached deeply into family life (Peukert, 1987). Terrorist tactics were used against German families, secret police and the SS were involved in isolating and transporting children to their deaths in psychiatric hospitals and institutions.

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The Nazis were expert at the creation of power groups that robbed their opposition of public voice or power. A small tightly knit group of university medical scientists and psychiatrists, who planned and administered the euthanasia killings, dominated university departments, wrote and reviewed articles for one another's journals and never bothered to consult their colleagues. Fewer than 200 physicians participated directly in medical crimes, but several hundreds more were aware of what happening.

Under conditions of absolute power, careerism, greed, and arrogance, vulnerable children become victims and once venerable institutions became slaughter houses. Well known schools, hospitals and institutions were changed from places of learning, healing and rehabilitation into work camps, prisons and execution chambers. The claim that German parents approved of the murders of their disabled children is challenged by the hundreds of cases that were brought to courts accusing hospitals and institutions of negligence and causing the deaths of their children. Even during the war, there was so much unrest and so many appeals that in 1941, Hitler intervened with an edict that prohibited parents from bringing charges against hospitals and asylums. In the process of persecuting people with disabilities, one of the finest and most comprehensive system of rehabilitative education in the world was destroyed.

Rehabilitative Education in Pre-Hitler Germany

During the Weimar years, children with a variety of learning and developmental problems were being integrated into community schools long before it became standard policy in North America. When children with mild mental handicaps were routinely being isolated in closed institutions in Britain, the U.S. and Canada, German educators believed that they should be kept with their families, exposed to the world and live and work in the community (Safford & Safford, 1996). Only children with severe and debilitating conditions were sent to institutions in Germany.

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Children were kept in their homes and communities by organizing special classes in community schools. These classes were considered transitional and whenever possible children were returned to regular classes (Safford & Safford, 1996). In 1922, there were 1,670 special classes serving 34, 300 students in 305 German towns (Becker, 1982). Children who were too weak or too ill to go to school were visited by teachers in their homes.

Community day schools (Hilfschule) served children with more severe developmental disabilities and learning problems. Their purpose was to help them "lead rewarding lives" and not become "a burden on the community" (Becker, 1985, p. 91). In 1927, there were 1,027 Hilfschule located in German cities. The Hilfschule organization (Verband der Hilfschulen Deutschlands), provided one of the first European teacher training programs for special education teachers.

The belief that social deprivation was the cause of delinquency and behavior problems led to the development of community-based .guidance centers and treatment programs. August Aichorn, a pioneer educator shared Anna Freud's belief that family life is far superior to life in an institution. Aichorn provided treatment to troubled youth in community settings. He established "Das Rauch Hause" in Hamburg where young people lived in small groups with a counselor. Aichorn's treatment model was copied by other European countries as well as North America (Safford and Safford, 1996).

Education for children with blindness or deafness in Germany existed for more than a century. The first school for deaf children was established in Leipsig in 1778; (Institute for the Mute and other Speech Disordered Persons). In 1806, the first school for blind children was established at Steglitz, near Berlin by Dr. August Zeune. By the 1920's there were schools for blind or deaf children in each of the German states (Lander). Children were usually admitted to residential schools at seven years of age, but many residential schools offered kindergarten programs.

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Early childhood education for blind children was established in Germany in 1862, when William Riemer, established the Preschool for the Blind in Hubertsburg, Saxony. Riemer spoke of the importance of early childhood education at the first congress of teachers of the blind in 1873. Germany was one of the first countries in Europe to provide government sponsored public education for very young blind instead of relying upon charities (Lowenfeld, 1981). The government also supported a comprehensive academic secondary that became a gateway to university education for blinded young people. The Carl Strehl School was established in Marburg and had its own braille printing center and braille library (Britz, 1983).

"Open Air Recovery" schools were opened in the 1920s for children recovering from polio (an all too common illness at the time). These schools were built in the mountainous regions and other rural settings (Safford & Safford, 1996). Religious schools, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish that served children with a variety of disabilities were supported by the government and received state funding.

Educational reform in the Weimar era may not have achieved all that the educational reformers had hoped, but it made significant contributions towards ensuring that all children received an education and emphasized the importance of child development in the preparation of teachers. Under Nazi jurisdiction and leadership comprehensive and inclusive schools disappeared. Teachers who had been proponents of inclusive education were blamed for the social problems that were evident in many German schools.

"These so-called institutional practitioners" are also wont to say that this comprehensive form of education will cause lower elements to be pulled up by the better elements. Our response to that is to cite the simple fact that one rotten apple can infect all the sound ones around it." (Nazi official cited by Peukert, 1987, p.231).

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The Campaign Against The Vulnerable: The Scientific Excuse

Nazi policy sought justification in a science that was shaped by political priorities and pseudo racial and genetic beliefs (Peukert, 1987). Nazi bioscience and racialism were woven into all aspects of the social, health, and educational policies. Cloaked in the terminology of Social Darwinism and eugenics, the persecution of vulnerable people was justified on the grounds that they threatened the health of the German nation. Social Darwinism and eugenics and its claim that social problems could be solved by preventing people with mental handicaps or psychiatric illnesses from having children had advocates in Europe and North America and led to the involuntary sterilization of people with mental handicaps in 27 states in the U.S. and several Canadian provinces and European countries.

In Nazi Germany, eugenics became state policy and a means of population control. Nazi biogenetic concepts also included social usefulness, (the ability to work) and conformity as measures of the worth of a human life and led to the division of entire German population was into two groups, "those who had genetic value" and those "who did not" (Peukert, 1987). The claims of being scientific gave justification to terroristic policies.

The results of our science had earlier attracted much attention (both support and opposition) in national and international circles. Nevertheless, it will always remainthe undying, historic achievement of Adolf Hitler and his followers that they dared to take the first trail blazing and decisive steps towards such brilliant race-hygienic achievement in and for the German people. In so doing, they went beyond the boundaries of purely scientific knowledge. He and his followers were concerned with putting into practice the theories and advances of Nordic race conceptions...the fight against parasitic alien races such as Jews and Gypsies...and preventing the breeding of those with hereditary diseases and those of inferior stock" (Ernst Rudin, 1934, The archive of Racial and Social Biology cited in Frei, 1993, p. 122).

Laws and decrees were issued to ensure that only people who could prove their genetic value could marry and produce children. The Law for the Prevention of Progeny of the Genetically Unhealthy (1933) legislated mandatory sterilization of persons with mental handicaps or mental illnesses and the Marriage Law of 1935 prohibited persons

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with "hereditary illnesses" to marry. Blindness, deafness, physical disabilities and mental handicaps were designated hereditary illnesses. Social non-conformity, delinquency, and emotional problems were attributed to "inferior genes" Arbitrary criteria such as suspected mental handicap, poor work habits, and delinquency were also used in the system of social selection (Peukert, 1987). Nazi biogenetics served as a powerful means of enforcing conformist social behavior.

The Campaign Against the Vulnerable

In 1934, 181 Genetic Health courts and appellate Genetic Health Courts were created for the sole purpose of enforcing Nazi health laws and decrees (Peukert, 1987). These courts were attached to local civil courts and presided over by two physicians and a lawyer. All physicians were required to register every case of genetic pathology with the courts and failure to do so was punishable. The reports were filed in specially created data banks (Burleigh, 1994). Public health officials, teachers, and social workers were also required to report children suspected of having a disability or emotional problem.

The search for people with hereditary illnesses was relentless; every large institution became a regional catchment area and sent officials to the homes of every person reported to have a hereditary illness (Burleigh, 1994). When no genetic cause for a condition could be found, the term "congenital" was substituted for "hereditary."

Consistent with all other forms of Nazi persecution, the campaign to eliminate everyone with a mental handicap or physical disability was intense. Hitler himself was deeply involved in the plan that culminated in the murder of children and adults with disabilities. Hitler ordered the making of propaganda films to persuade the public of the necessity of eliminating people with genetic defects. The film "Victims of the Past " was made on Hitler's explicit orders and he made sure the film was shown in Germany's 5,300 cinemas. Special lighting effects distorted features so that people with disabilities were

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portrayed as grotesque and could only survive at the expense of healthy people (Doino, 1995). Propaganda films reveal how much the Nazis condemned those who they regarded as socially or politically unacceptable.

The Economics of Exclusion

The destruction of schools and the impoverishment of residential facilities, institutions and asylums diverted money to new children's hospitals, free summer camps and other benefits that helped to convince the German public that the Nazis had their best interests at heart (Aly, 1993). Generous family allowances and public health care was provided from monies taken from special schools and institutions, welfare agencies, health insurance, guardianship courts, municipalities, private charities, and from families with children who had any type of disability (Aly, 1993).

Beginning in 1941, families with children with disabilities were denied family allowances and often had to pay the funeral expenses of their murdered children (Burleigh, 1994). Dr. Ernst Wentzler, one of the chief architects of the children's killing program, built a modern children's clinic in Berlin with funds appropriated from Catholic Sisters who looked after children with mental handicaps (Aly, 1993).

Wentzler was not ignorant about the emotional needs of children and planned his clinic in consultation with pre-school teachers and decorated the rooms in pastel colors. Wentzler, one of the key architects of child murder, killed unwanted children in his Berlin clinic (Aly,1993). "Expropriation from 'enemies of the state and destruction of unusable people were both preconditions and complementary elements of the new, cheery, reformed German children's hospital" (Aly, 1993, p. 186).

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Community Aliens

Non-conformist behavior was an important criterion for exclusion and removal from the community. Considerable sections of young people held themselves aloof from what National Socialism had to offer. At the very moment when the Hitler Youth established itself as a compulsory service, it came up against the apathy and rejection by many young people who were persistent in passive or active insubordination. The greater the demand for conformity, the more attractive alternative social groups became. Rebellious youth groups offered meaningful social identities and cultural expressions to young people between the ages of 14 and 18 years of both working and middle class backgrounds (Peukert, 1987).

By the end of the 1930s, thousands of young people were refusing to participate in Nazi youth groups. The largest groups were the "Edelweiss Pirates" and the "Swing Movement".

The Edelweiss Pirates were adolescent boys from working class families, who refused to submit to the massive pressure of the Hitler Youth and created their own cultural forms and modes of action which made it possible for them to create a meaningful attitude to everyday life and repudiate National Socialist society. Through their dress and demeanor they emphasized their differences and even provoked public fights with Nazi youth gangs. An armory of repressive measures were brought against them, they were imprisoned or placed in reform schools, labor and youth concentration camps (Peukert, 1987).

The "Swing Movement, appealed to adolescents from wealthy or middle class homes. The swing boys and girls were apolitical; they had money to spend on clothes and nightclubs where they indulged their love of "jitterbugging" and American Jazz. The swing movement was informal and Swing Clubs sprang up in the bigger cities. Members preferred casual dress and let their hair grow, they admitted Jewish youth and refused to join Nazi youth activities. The swing groups outraged Himmler, who ordered them to be rounded up and sent to the Moeringen concentration camp near Goettingin (Peukert, 1987).

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In 1944. there were 1,231 adolescents in the Moeringen Youth Protection Camp and very few were released. Those who reached their 18th birthday in the camp were sent to psychiatric hospitals and many were victims of "euthanasia" (Peukert, 1987). In addition to non-conformist youth, troubled children and young people who posed problems to the authorities by running away, or committing delinquent acts were designated "Community Aliens". The "Law on the Treatment of Community Aliens" was put into effect in 1940 and authorized keeping young people under surveillance, putting them in prison or sending them to work camps. (Peukert, 1987). "In a self accelerating process in which morality was progressively discarded, the scholars followed the direction of their ideas with fatal consequences: from the approximately 360,000 compulsory sterilizations...to the mass murders of an ever widening euthanasia programme, behind which the monstrous contours of a Final Solution of the social question were beginning to emerge" (Frei, p. 122.).

The laws and regulations governing the treatment of "unwanted" children were enforced by all- powerful special authorities appointed by and responsible only to Hitler. These authorities replaced and circumvented traditional local government agencies. As a result there was constant conflict between administrative agencies and increasing chaos and rivalry which led to a growing reliance on extreme measures (Peukert, 1987). Control over the educational system was given high priority as a way of controlling and bringing young people into conformity with the aspirations of the Reich.

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Schools Under the Nazis

Schools were a primary target for control and their administration was placed in the hands of the party faithful. By 1938, the German school system was brought under the total control of the central government and removed from the jurisdiction of the individual states or Lander (Huebner, 1962). Bernard Rust, an unemployed school teacher, was appointed Minister of Education. (Mayer, 1966). Rust had been dismissed from the school system for unprofessional conduct during the Weimar period (Mayer, 1966). The entire educational system was politicized, but primary and special schools received the most attention, secondary schools reached only about a quarter of German students and were more difficult to change (Mayer, 1966). New textbooks and curriculum guides were full of Nazi propaganda, hateful racist stereotypes and myths of Aryan superiority (Mosse, 1966). Fuehrer worship was encouraged and even traditional fairy tales were rewritten to portray Hitler as the hero- rescuer. In "Sleeping Beauty" it was Hitler, not the prince, who awakened the princess. The works of the poet Heinrich Heine were banned, except for his classic poem "The Lorelei" which appeared with the note "author unknown" (Mosse, 1966). Almost every single reform made during the Weimar Republic was abolished along with provisions for educational opportunities for disadvantaged and disabled children (Peukert, 1991). Comprehensive schools that included classes for children with learning problems were closed, parent-teacher associations were made powerless, corporal punishment was reintroduced and progressive teaching methods were discouraged. Early childhood and kindergarten systems were also brought under government control and church and privately sponsored kindergartens were banned. The Froebel Association which pioneered early childhood education in Germany was forced to disband (Tietze, Rossback and Ufemann, 1989). It was a common sight to see three year olds marching and waving flags in a military parade.

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Famous private schools, like the Waldorf School, known for humanist and progressive policies were closed. The first Waldorf School was established in Stuttgart in 1919 and the many Waldorf schools established in other European countries and North America were modeled after the school in Stuttgart. The school was closed in 1935 (Murphy, 1991).

"Always a thorn in the side of the Nazis, the Waldorf school was harassed and plagued by constant injunctions. Soon the existence of the first grade was forbidden, in an attempt to throttle the school from below. When this proved too slow, the authorities closed down the school completely" (Murphy, 1991, p.166).

Church schools were taken over by the state despite the protests of Catholic parents who fought against making all schools non-denominational. Public meetings were held to give the appearance of consultation, but dissent and protest were ignored. Parents who did not attend the meetings were counted as supporters (Huebner,1962; Miklem,1939; Mosse,1966; Peukert, 1987).

"In the years of its rise the movement little by little brought the community's attitude toward the teacher around from respect and envy to resentment, from trust to suspicion. The development seems to have been inherent; it needed no planning and had none. As the Nazi emphasis on nonintellectual virtues (patriotism, loyalty, duty, purity, labor, simplicity, "blood", "folkishness") seeped through Germany, elevating the self esteem of the "little man", the academic profession was pushed from the very center to the very periphery of society. (Mayer, p.112, 1955).

Teaching, once a highly respected profession in Germany had little status in Hitler's Germany. Educators who were pioneers in rehabilitative education were carefully screened to ensure they followed the new policies. Traditional teacher organizations (including special education teachers) were disbanded and replaced by Nazi associations. Teachers were employees of the state, civil servants, who like other state employees had to prove they were "Aryans" and submit a table of their ancestors Miklem,). The secret police made sure that teachers obeyed the new regulations and did not express criticism or personal opinions on public policies.