Background The
Lebensborn e.V. (e.V. stands for
eingetragener Verein or registered association), meaning "fount of life", was founded on 12 December 1935, to counteract falling birth rates in
Germany, and to promote
Nazi eugenics. Located in
Munich, the organization was partly an office within the
Schutzstaffel (SS) responsible for certain family welfare programs, and partly a society for Nazi leaders. On 13 September 1936,
Heinrich Himmler wrote the following to members of the SS: In 1939, membership stood at 8,000, of which 3,500 were SS leaders. The
Lebensborn office was part of
SS Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (
SS Race and Settlement Main Office) until 1938, when it was transferred to
Hauptamt Persönlicher Stab Reichsführer-SS (
Personal Staff of the Reichführer-SS), i.e., directly overseen by Himmler. Leaders of
Lebensborn e.V. were
SS-Standartenführer and
SS-Oberführer Dr.
Gregor Ebner.
Implementation region Initially the programme served as a welfare institution for wives of SS officers; the organization ran facilitiesprimarily
maternity homeswhere 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 without
social stigma. In case the mothers wanted to give up the children, the program also had orphanages and an adoption service. When dealing with non-SS members, parents and children were usually examined by SS doctors before admission. The first
Lebensborn home (known as "Heim Hochland") opened in 1936, in
Steinhöring, a tiny village not far from Munich. The first home outside of Germany opened in
Norway in 1941. Many of these facilities were established in confiscated houses and former
nursing homes owned by Jews. While
Lebensborn e.V. established facilities in several occupied countries, its activities were concentrated around Germany, Norway and occupied
northeastern Europe, mainly
Poland. The main focus in
occupied 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.
Lebensborn e.V. had or planned to have facilities in the following countries (some were merely field offices): • Germany: 10 •
Austria: 3 • Poland (
General Governmentthe occupied Polish territory and annexed lands of Poland): 6 (8 if
Stettin and
Bad Polzin are included.) • Norway: 9 • Denmark: 2 • France: 1 (February 1944August 1944)in
Lamorlaye • Belgium: 1 (March 1943September 1944)in
Wégimont, in the municipality of
Soumagne • Netherlands: 1 •
Luxembourg: 1 About 8,000 children were born in
Lebensborn homes in Germany, and a similar number in Norway. Elsewhere the total number of births was much lower. for the
Lebensborn 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. The Nazis would seize children in full view of the parents. The kidnapped children were administered several tests and were categorised into three groups: • Those considered desirable to be included into the German population. • Those who were acceptable. • The unwanted. The children classified as unwanted were taken to
concentration 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 of
foster child status. Children of ages 6 to 12 were placed in German
boarding 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 resisted
Germanisation were beaten and, if a child continued to rebel, they would be sent to a concentration camp. 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.
Post-war Kidnapping charges at Nuremberg After the war, the branch of the
Lebensborn organisation operating in northeastern 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 the
Lebensborn organisation (
United States of America v. Ulrich Greifelt, et al.), the court found that 340 had been handled by
Lebensborn e.V. The accused were acquitted on charges of kidnapping. The court found ample evidence of an existing programme of the kidnapping or forced movement of children in northeastern Europe, but concluded that these activities were carried out by individuals who were not members of
Lebensborn. Exactly how many children were moved by
Lebensborn or other organisations remains unknown due to the destruction of archives by SS members prior to fleeing the advancing Allied forces. From the trial's transcript: The prosecution has failed to prove with the requisite certainty the participation of
Lebensborn, 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 into
Lebensborn. And of this number only in isolated instances did
Lebensborn take children who had a living parent. The majority of those children in any way connected with
Lebensborn were orphans of ethnic Germans. Upon the evidence submitted, the defendant Sollmann is found not guilty on counts one and two of the indictment.
Treatment of children 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. 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. Many
Lebensborn children were born to unwed mothers. After the war,
Lebensborn survivors were often subjected to ostracization.
False assumptions Himmler's effort to secure a "racially pure"
Greater Germany, sloppy
journalism 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 that
Lebensborn was a coercive breeding programme can be found in the German-language magazine
Revue, which ran a series on the subject in the 1950s. The programme did intend to promote the growth of Aryan populations, through encouraging relationships between German soldiers and Nordic women in occupied countries. Access to
Lebensborn was restricted in accordance with the
Nordicist eugenic and racial policies of
Nazism, which could be referred to as supervised
selective breeding. Recently discovered records and ongoing testimony of
Lebensborn childrenand some of their parentsshows that some SS men did sire children in Himmler's
Lebensborn program. This was widely rumored within Germany during the period of the programme. ==Self-help groups and aftermath==