Stolen "Lebensborn children" demand recognition as victims of National Socialism
It is one of the comparatively unknown chapters of the National Socialist dictatorship: in several European countries the SS had children stolen in order to have them "Germanized" in the care of the so-called Lebensborn Association. Thousands of families were affected by this brutal policy of "Germanization", many of the children still do not know their true origins.
DISPLAY
Those affected who are still alive are not officially recognized as victims of Nazi tyranny in Germany . But that should finally change - if it is up to the will of children who were abducted: The association »Robbery Children - Forgotten Children« from Freiburg is now calling in a letter to members of the Bundestag that »Lebensborn« children are legally victims of National Socialism to acknowledge.
According to the letter that is available to SPIEGEL, this should go hand in hand with a claim for compensation for those who were once abducted. Anyone who is officially a victim of the first German dictatorship in Germany can receive benefits according to the so-called guidelines on hardship payments to victims of National Socialist injustice.
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"The state should not enrich itself with this fine, it should benefit the kidnapped children as victim support"
So far, the life stories of these people have only been regarded as what is known as the fate of the war. "The fate described affected a large number of families as part of the war and served the war strategy," said the Ministry of Finance in 2012 in response to a petition . "The primary goal was not to destroy or deprive those affected, but to win them over for their own benefit."
The association around the teacher Christoph Schwarz regards this as a farce, the letter to the parliamentarians speaks of a "cynical reason". Even former henchmen of the SS were given war victims' pensions, while children torn from their home countries and families received neither pensions nor compensation.
Most recently, those affected had relied on achieving at least legal success on the basis of an individual case. With the support of the association, the former "Lebensborn" child Hermann Lüdeking took the Federal Republic to court. Despite years of private research, Lüdeking still does not know when he was born, what his original name was, who his parents were and what his mother tongue was. ( Read more about this case here. )
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However, he failed in several legal proceedings, almost two years ago the North Rhine-Westphalian Higher Administrative Court in Münster passed an incontestable judgment : kidnapped children have never received such benefits, and in his case there was no violation of the Basic Law.
The current advance of the association around Christoph Schwarz is an attempt to change the legal basis of such court decisions. The letter to the Bundestag even contains a proposal as to how the compensation then due to former “Lebensborn” children should be financed: with the help of the AfD, at least indirectly.
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