{"id":88043,"date":"2020-08-11T08:41:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-11T13:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=88043"},"modified":"2020-08-11T08:41:24","modified_gmt":"2020-08-11T13:41:24","slug":"auto-draft-141","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/08\/11\/auto-draft-141\/","title":{"rendered":"Nazi war criminals ran children&#8217;s homes in post-war Germany: new research"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-88044 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals.jpg 600w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-24x16.jpg 24w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-36x24.jpg 36w, https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Nazi-War-Criminals-48x32.jpg 48w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/strong>DW \u2014 Millions of West German children were sent to brutal &#8220;spa&#8221; homes between the 1950s and 1980s that left them traumatized, a new report alleges. Many of the homes were run by former Nazis.<\/p>\n<div class=\"group\">\n<div class=\"longText\">\n<p>Nazi war criminals were allowed to run children&#8217;s holiday homes in postwar Germany\u00a0where draconian corporal punishment and bullying were normal, new research by public broadcaster ARD has shown.<\/p>\n<p>ARD&#8217;s investigative TV show <em>Report Mainz<\/em> has discovered that former SS officer Werner Scheu, convicted for his part in the murder of 220 Lithuanian Jews in 1941, ran a children&#8217;s home named &#8220;M\u00f6wennest&#8221; (Seagull&#8217;s Nest) on the German North Sea island of Borkum (pictured above) after serving his sentence.<\/p>\n<div class=\"picBox full\">\n<div id=\"twtr-1292823275584856064\" class=\"group embeddedTweet\">\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\"><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-0\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/index.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-0&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1292823275584856064&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fen%2Fnazi-war-criminals-ran-childrens-homes-in-post-war-germany-new-research%2Fa-54518440&amp;siteScreenName=dwnews&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&amp;width=550px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1292823275584856064\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>One woman described being made to stand barefoot on a cold floor for hours overnight and on one occasion was locked in a sauna.<\/p>\n<p>Another children&#8217;s home director was Albert Viethen, a doctor and member of several Nazi organizations who was accused of euthanizing around 20 children under the Nazi regime. According to ARD, he was charged with accessory to murder in 1963 but the case against him was dropped for lack of evidence. Viethen ran a children&#8217;s spa home named &#8220;Sch\u00f6nsicht&#8221; in Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, where several survivors described routine abuse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New light shed\u00a0on\u00a0dark practice<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The revelations add a new dimension to the experiences of so-called &#8220;<em>Verschickungskinder<\/em>&#8221; (&#8220;sent-away children&#8221;) and the special educational homes that existed in West Germany from the 1950s to the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>A newly-founded survivors&#8217; initiative and self-help group has estimated that as many as 8-12 million children were sent to such homes in that period, often on the recommendation of doctors, schools, and youth welfare authorities, as &#8220;spa treatment&#8221; for young children paid for by public health insurers.<\/p>\n<div class=\"picBox full\">\n<div id=\"twtr-1191269687004405760\" class=\"group embeddedTweet\">\n<div class=\"twitter-tweet twitter-tweet-rendered\"><iframe id=\"twitter-widget-1\" class=\"\" title=\"Twitter Tweet\" src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/embed\/index.html?dnt=false&amp;embedId=twitter-widget-1&amp;frame=false&amp;hideCard=false&amp;hideThread=false&amp;id=1191269687004405760&amp;lang=en&amp;origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dw.com%2Fen%2Fnazi-war-criminals-ran-childrens-homes-in-post-war-germany-new-research%2Fa-54518440&amp;siteScreenName=dwnews&amp;theme=light&amp;widgetsVersion=223fc1c4%3A1596143124634&amp;width=550px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\" data-tweet-id=\"1191269687004405760\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The stories of abuse have only just started to emerge in the media in the past few years, partly because local authorities have often denied the stories, on the grounds, for instance, that &#8220;these are memories, not evidence,&#8221;\u00a0as journalist Lena Gilhaus was told in 2017, when she wrote about her father&#8217;s experience for broadcaster <em>Deutschlandfunk<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Much of the evidence for the new investigation was based on the research of Anja R\u00f6hl, herself a survivor of a home in Hamburg, who collected 250 firsthand accounts over the past 10 years after she published an article in 2009 about her own experience. Her <em>Verschickungskinder <\/em>organization, which was founded two years ago, now has over 3,000 members.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was five years old when they sent me,&#8221; she told DW. &#8220;On the first day all the children were tied to their beds, and I got such shock. We were punished just for talking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Read more:<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/daddy-was-a-man-of-honor-daughter-of-nazi-ss-officer-insists\/a-51853837\">&#8216;Daddy was a man of honor,&#8217; daughter of Nazi officer insists<\/a><\/p>\n<p>R\u00f6hl says the stories she collected were backed up by documents she found \u2014 particularly complaints filed by parents and youth welfare authorities. &#8220;The children came back sicker than when they left, they were malnourished, had to be hospitalized,&#8221; said R\u00f6hl. &#8220;Sometimes they were so disturbed they didn&#8217;t recognize their parents.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"picBox full\nrechts\n\"><\/p>\n<p>Anja R\u00f6hl has founded the &#8216;Verschickungskinder&#8217; organization for victims \u2014 and it got 3,000 members within two years<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>These letters were often simply ignored by home directors, who were apparently protected by political interests, R\u00f6hl suspects. But most of the children, she says, were too ashamed or traumatized to talk about their experiences themselves.<\/p>\n<p>In one particularly horrifying case described in by <em>Report Mainz<\/em>, one survivor reported eating the sleeve of his pajamas at the home and being too ashamed to tell his mother what had happened. In other cases, parents simply didn&#8217;t believe their children&#8217;s accounts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nazi connection<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>R\u00f6hl believes the connection between these homes to the old Nazi regime was strong, partly because the system of child holiday homes was originally founded in the 1930s. &#8220;We believe that female personnel from concentration camps used the children&#8217;s homes as places to flee to, where they could find work,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But we don&#8217;t know that for sure.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>Read more:<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/confronting-a-disturbing-truth-my-father-was-in-the-ss\/a-53199086\">Confronting a disturbing truth \u2014 &#8216;My father was in the SS&#8217;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Nazi concept of human beings played a big role here we think,&#8221; added R\u00f6hl, partly because the staff at the homes had largely been brought up under the Nazi regime.<\/p>\n<p>The hundreds of memories she collected shared many common features: Children were subjected to a regime of extreme discipline, frequent corporal punishment, were separated from siblings, being left in solitary confinement, or made to sleep in the same room as older children who bullied them.<\/p>\n<p>Terrible food was also a constant theme \u2014 survivors described being force-fed by having their hair tied to a table and tipped back, or being forced to eat their own vomit.<\/p>\n<p>R\u00f6hl described how young children often returned from these homes traumatized; she heard stories of suicide attempts, of children who experienced depression, became aggressive, or did not speak for a year after returning home.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We came back different to how we went in,&#8221; R\u00f6hl said. &#8220;We came back injured and wounded, in our souls and physically.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>R\u00f6hl has now founded an initiative, which is calling for state governments to establish archives of documents related to the homes, along with survivors&#8217; centers manned by survivor volunteers who can answer\u00a0phone lines for people to report their own stories.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DW \u2014 Millions of West German children were sent to brutal &#8220;spa&#8221; homes between the 1950s and 1980s that left them traumatized, a new report alleges. Many of the homes were run by former Nazis. Nazi war criminals were allowed to run children&#8217;s holiday homes in postwar Germany\u00a0where draconian corporal punishment and bullying were normal, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88046,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88043\/revisions\/88046"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}