Children regarded as "racially pure" and abducted by the SS are not entitled to compensation, a German court has ruled. Up to 200,000 children were kidnapped and forcibly Germanized during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
Image: DW/M. Sieradzka
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As a child in 1942, Hermann Lüdeking was abducted from Nazi-occupied Poland, robbed of his identity and forcibly Germanized. He grew up in Lemgo, never knowing anything about his true roots.
"I still suffer from not knowing who my parents are," said Hermann Lüdeking, now a retired engineer from Bad Dürrheim in the Black Forest.
Although thousands of victims may have similar stories, few have the courage to talk about it the way Lüdeking has. In his lawsuit, he applied for "a one-time grant of state aid" for the kidnapping. But he said money is not the main issue. Instead, it's about "Germany recognizing us as victims."
Lüdeking said he was bitterly disappointed at the beginning of July when the Cologne administrative court's decision was finally handed down.
"In a few years, there won't be any of us left, so the problem will solve itself. Is that what Germany wants?" he asked.
As the abducted children age, some find Germany could be waiting out the issue of compensationImage: DW/M. Sieradzka
Court: A considerable injustice
According to the court, the plaintiff was gravely wronged by his forced "Germanization." However, no compensation has been paid so far to "stolen children," the court explained, adding that it could not expand the class of victims who receive federal compensation.
Germany pays compensation to victims of unjust Nazi actions as defined by the General War Consequences Law. It calls for payments to be made to people "who were targeted by the Nazi regime because of social or personal attitudes or special personal characteristics such as intellectual disabilities." According to the court, however, Lüdeking does not fall into this category.
Abducted children are not 'inferior'
At the hearing, the Cologne judges attempted to explain to the plaintiff which categories of people could be compensated under the guidelines. One example was homosexuals, regarded by the Nazis as "inferior human material" and persecuted for "their characteristics." According to Nazi ideology, however, Lüdeking was not considered "inferior," but quite "high quality" as the kidnapped children were those Nazis believed would strengthen the "Aryan race."
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler declared in 1938, "I really do have the intention to gather Germanic blood from the whole world, to rob it, to steal it wherever I can."
In central and eastern European countries occupied by the Nazis, children were snatched from their parents or taken from orphanages and brought to the German Reich.
Many cases similar to Lüdeking's have been documented and victims have so far also been denied compensaionImage: Ewelina Karpińska-Morek
They were then "Germanized" using brutal methods, in homes belonging to the SS association "Lebensborn," or "Fount of Life," a Nazi organization for raising the birth rate of "Aryan" children. The Lebensborn program also forged names and presented the abducted children as "children from the east." In this way, it concealed the truth from the German families who took care of the abducted children and allowed the adults to believe they were raising children of ethnic Germans in the occupied territories.
Lüdeking said it found it "absurd and disgraceful" that victims are not being compensated now because the Nazis regarded them "of high quality." Although he is disappointed with the Cologne court's reasoning, it came as no great surprise to him. For years he has been involved with the Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims association, which has already received numerous negative responses from authorities. The group was founded by Christoph Schwarz, teacher and hobby historian from Freiburg.
Some children were abducted while others were born into the Nazi Lebensborn programImage: picture-alliance/akg-images
"A great injustice has happened to these children," Schwarz said. "They were robbed of their childhood and remain the last group of Nazi victims without recognition and compensation."
In 2013, for example, the federal finance ministry wrote of the Lebensborn children: "Over the course of the war, fate affected a large number of families and served the war strategy. The primary goal was not to destroy the victims or rob them of their freedom, but to put them to use to benefit [National Socialist] ideals. This makes it a general consequence of war."
The Petitions Committee of the Bundestag has also refused to seek a political solution.
The struggle continues
"The fact that the victims now, decades later, are once again confronted with a dismissive position on the part of the authorities is a humiliation and a renewed trauma for them," Schwarz said.
He and Lüdeking said they intend to appeal the decision of the Cologne Administrative Court.
"It can't be that we just sink into oblivion and are not recognized as victims by Germany," Lüdeking said. "I won't give up."
'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27. Numerous memorials across Germany ensure the millions of victims are not forgotten.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Schreiber
Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site
A large sculpture stands in front of Dachau. Located just outside Munich, it was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power, it was used by the paramilitary SS Schutzstaffel to imprison, torture and kill political opponents of the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Wannsee House
The villa on Berlin's Wannsee lake was pivotal in the planning of the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to devise what became known as the "Final Solution," the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Holocaust Memorial in Berlin
Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated 60 years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground "Place of Information" holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Memorial to Persecuted Homosexuals
Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The 4-meter high (13-foot) monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin's Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.
Image: picture alliance/Markus C. Hurek
Documentation center on Nazi Party rally grounds
Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of World War II. The annual Nazi Party congress, as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants, took place on the 11-square-kilometer (4.25-square-mile) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.
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German Resistance Memorial Center
The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Hitler that ultimately failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock. Today, it's the German Resistance Memorial Center.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, and many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 people killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame after her diary was published posthumously.
Image: picture alliance/Klaus Nowottnick
Buchenwald Memorial
Located near the Thuringian town of Weimar, Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe to the camp and murdered 64,000 of them before the camp was liberated by US soldiers in 1945. The site now serves as a memorial to the victims.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims
Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool, the poem "Auschwitz" by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani. "Gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears," it reads.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
'Stolpersteine' — stumbling blocks as memorials
In the 1990s, artist Gunter Demnig began the project to confront Germany's Nazi past. The brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former homes of Nazi victims show their names, details about their deportation, and murder, if known. As of early 2022, some 100,000 "Stolpersteine" have been laid in over 25 countries across Europe. It's the world's largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Brown House in Munich
Right next to the "Führerbau," where Adolf Hitler had his office in Munich, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party, called the Brown House. A white cube now occupies the place where it once stood. In it, the "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
