Children during the Holocaust

by Heberer, Patricia;

  When the child is assisted in time, she does not soil her bed. The child is for the most part very trusting and good-natured; only on occasion is she temperamental for a short while and somewhat more difficult.

  Given the nature of the illness, frankly there is unfortunately very little hope for the future.

  Heil Hitler!

  Signed Faltlhauser

  Director

  Dear Mr. Hart!May 15, 1943

  In the case of your child Anita, she suffers from blindness caused by encephalitis and meningitis contracted in early childhood. The blindness is caused by an atrophy of the optic nerve, which is in any case the consequence of the aforementioned illness. The brain damage resulting from a swelling of the brain during this illness unfortunately cannot be reversed. As regrettable as it is, the prospects for the future of your child are extraordinarily bleak. Here the physician’s arts are at an end.

  Heil Hitler!

  Signed Faltlhauser

  Director of Kaufbeuren

  Telegram

  Erika HartWernerstrasse 62

  Ludwigsburg/Württemberg

  Anita dead. Burial, unless other arrangements are indicated by you, on Friday, 11:00 a.m. at Kaufbeuren.

  Mental Health Facility

  June 22, 1943.

  Death Certificate

  Copy 1

  Register No. 86Month: JuneYear: 1943

  Place of Death: KaufbeurenDistrict Police: Kaufbeuren

  Street: KermatherstrasseHouse No.: 16

  Parish: KaufbeurenCounty Registry District: Kaufbeuren

  Place of Residence: District Police: Ludwigsburg

  LudwigsburgStreet: WernerstrasseHouse No.: 62

  Surname: HartFirst Name: Anita Rosemarie

  Rank or Occupation: Child

  Age: 4 Yrs. 9 MonthsCivil Status: Single

  For children under the age of 15, it is to be specified whether legitimate or illegitimate: Legitimate

  Religion: Catholic

  Date and Hour of Death: June 22, 194311:45 a.m.

  Duration of Illness: Since early childhood

  Name of Illness (Main Cause): Consequences of early childhood meningitis-encephalitis

  Secondary Conditions: Idiocy,57 atrophy of the optic nerve

  57. In the German- and English-language contexts, “feeblemindedness,” that is cognitive impairment, was defined medically in three grades: Schwachsinn (moronism), its mildest form; Imbezilität (imbecility); and Idiotie (idiocy), the severest degree.

  Complications: Pneumonia

  Cause of Death: Pneumonia as a result of influenza (33a)

  According to Whose Diagnosis: Dr. med. Faltlhauser

  If Suicide, by What Means: ____________

  Probable Cause: ____________

  By Deadly Accident, Cause of Accident: [. . .]

  Labor or Industrial Accident: ____________

  Probable Burial Time: June 24–25, 1943, 11:45 a.m.

  Notations: Autopsy June 25, 1943

  The Danger of “Gypsy Blood”: Roma and Sinti

  Without question, Jews represented the most significant “enemy” within the National Socialist worldview and the chief target of their racial policy. Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) figured as another group of “biological enemies” singled out by Nazi authorities for persecution. Although the scope, dimension, and course of the two campaigns differed appreciably, the convergence of eugenic and racialist motivations formed a common link between anti-Jewish and anti-Roma policies.58 The proposed solution to the “Gypsy problem” varied not only among administrators in different regions but among top Nazi policy makers themselves, who divided sharply into those who saw Roma in unequivocally racial terms and those who believed Gypsies represented a criminal element best left to police officials.59

  58. See H. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide.

  59. See Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid: Die nationalsozialistische “Lösung der Zigeunerfrage” (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1996).

  The year 1936 marked a turning point in the Nazi persecution of Roma and Sinti. By this time, German officials had begun to concentrate German Sinti and Roma in so-called Gypsy camps. Furthermore, in November of that year, psychologist Dr. Robert Ritter assumed directorship of the newly established Eugenic and Population Biological Research Station attached to the Reich Public Health Office in Berlin. Ritter’s primary task was to register persons of “Gypsy blood” in the German Reich and to classify them in terms of their racial makeup and “purity.” In one sense, this was not a new phenomenon. Roma and Sinti had been registered in Germany since 1899, when the Bavarian State’s Ministry of the Interior created an Information Service for the Security Police in Reference to Gypsies. Certainly in pre-Nazi times, there had been ethnographical study of Roma and Sinti language, culture, and traditions that predated, however subtly, the racial concepts of the Nazi era. The innovative nature of Ritter’s efforts lay in categorizing Sinti and Roma according to a specifically eugenic worldview; in doing so, medical professionals and scientists could provide “evidence” of each individual’s racial inferiority through the lens of “science.”60 Ritter employed a team of trusted researchers, among them the nurse Eva Justin, who served as Ritter’s right hand and profited from her work with the Research Station by including a portion of its findings in her 1943 dissertation.

  60. See Patricia Heberer, “Roma and Sinti in Light of Nazi Medical and Eugenic Policy,” in The Genocide of Roma during World War II, ed. Jana Horváthová (Prague: Office of the President of the Czech Republic and the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, 2004), 132–38.

  As Ritter’s work increasingly became the basis for implementing a radicalizing Nazi policy toward Gypsies, his office was absorbed into the Reich Office of the Criminal Police (Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, or RKPA),61 and in 1941, Ritter came to direct the Criminal Biological Institute of the Security Police. Ritter and his researchers continued to register and classify Roma and Sinti by charting genealogical data, tracing members of extended families, documenting marriages to “outsiders,” and recording information on physical health, education, criminal activity, and social interaction. In the field, the researchers exploited their knowledge of Sinti culture, speaking fluent Romani, distributing candy and trinkets to youngsters, and coaxing information from suspicious adults and guileless children. When their subjects arrived at the Research Station for blood samples, assessment of body features, and anthropometric measurement, team members were often less genial, using humiliation and threats to elicit responses to their numerous questions.62

  61. This was Office V of the Reich Security Main Office, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt.

  62. See Reimar Gilsenbach, “Wie Lolitschai zur Doktorwürde kam,” in Feinderklärung und Prävention: Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik, ed. Götz Aly et al. Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 6 (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1988), 101–34.

  In the end, the findings of Ritter and his team were a matter of life and death. On December 16, 1942, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler issued his infamous Auschwitz Decree, ordering the deportation of all German “Gypsy mixed-breeds” (Zigeunermischlinge) to Auschwitz. There were, of course, exceptions to Himmler’s directive: “racially pure” Gypsies were exempt from the decree, as were Roma and Sinti who could show consistent employment and fixed residence,63 those serving in the German army,64 and those laborers whose employers could demonstrate that they were essential to the war effort. The decree provided specifically that all those individuals above the age of twelve who remained in Germany should be immediately sterilized. Most of the deportation lists for the twenty-three thousand German Sinti and Roma transferred to Auschwitz were compiled on the basis of Ritter’s “scientific�
�� efforts. Ritter and his team were conscientious in their task until the end: in the days before deportation of Sinti from Magdeburg began, Ritter and Eva Justin were seen at the Gross Silberberg and Sülze Gypsy camps, dutifully verifying their classification against transport rosters. Justin also spent the busy month of March 1943 doing similar work at the Feldberg and Marzahn camps, in southwestern Germany and outside Berlin, respectively.65

  63. The overwhelming majority of Sinti and Roma did not meet this criterion, even if they once could have, for by the time of the deportations, most were already in collection camps, which did not count as a form of permanent or fixed residence.

  64. Veterans and decorated individuals were also exempted.

  65. Gilsenbach, “Wie Lolitschai,” 110.

  Because, in the course of his research, Ritter had concluded that most of the Roma and Sinti he had categorized did not represent “racially pure” Gypsies but “mixed-breeds” who continued to intermarry among themselves, the vast majority of German Sinti registered by the Ritter team were deported to Auschwitz, where nineteen thousand perished from starvation, disease, or gassing during the liquidation of the Gypsy family camp in Auschwitz II–Birkenau on August 2, 1944.66 One group of Mischlinge, however, was spared the 1943 deportations: forty “Gypsy hybrid” children housed at the Catholic orphanage Sankt Josefspflege in Mulfingen in southwestern Germany. These youngsters figured as the subject of Eva Justin’s dissertation research and so were carefully shielded from transfer. By safeguarding them at the orphanage, Justin meant to preserve her living test subjects while she defended her doctoral thesis at the University of Berlin. In May 1944, shortly following the publication of her dissertation—the juncture at which a German doctoral title is officially awarded—the children were registered by local officials and likewise deported to Auschwitz.67 Three of the older children were retained and sterilized as a condition of their deferment. All but four of those transferred to Auschwitz met their deaths in the gas chamber in Birkenau.

  66. H. Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide, 252; Reimar Gilsenbach, “Die Verfolgung der Sinti—ein Weg, der nach Auschwitz führte,” in Feinderklärung und Prävention: Kriminalbiologie, Zigeunerforschung und Asozialenpolitik, ed. Götz Aly et al. Beiträge zur nationalsozialistischen Gesundheits- und Sozialpolitik 6 (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1988), 32. After the war both Ritter and Eva Justin were employed by the Frankfurt Public Health Office. In 1948, the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office opened an inquiry into Ritter’s Nazi-era activities but closed the case on the grounds of insufficient evidence in 1950. Ritter died in 1951. Eva Justin died of cancer in Offenbach, near Frankfurt, in 1966.

  67. Gilsenbach, “Wie Lolitschai,” 110–17.

  Document 6-9. ITO/ITS Report of Johannes Meister, children’s search officer, regarding Gypsy children of Sankt Josefspflege in Mulfingen, c. 1948, USHMMA, RG-07.004*01, Zigeunerkinder aus der Sankt Josefspflege in Mulfingen (translated from the German).

  Inventory

  The following children, examined by Dr. Ritter of Racial Hygiene Institute Berlin, in association with Dr. Eyrich, were transferred from St. Josefspflege to the camp at Auschwitz.68

  68. The surnames of these individuals have been replaced by pseudonyms to preserve their privacy.

  On January 20, [19]44:

  Steck, Siegfriedb. 01/19/1929in Wiesbaden

  Steck, Luanab. 05/04/1934in Wiesbaden

  (Parents: Franz Leonard and Johanna Dorf)

  Dorf, Rudolfb. 08/12/1935in Wiesbaden

  Dorf, Mariab. 11/12/1937in Wiesbaden

  (Mother: Johanna Dorf)

  On May 9, [19]44:

  Engel, Fritzb. 08/14/1928in Schmalfelden

  Engel, Martinb. 10/14/1931in Odenheim

  Engel, Amandusb. 07/11/1933in Busenbach

  near Ettlingen

  (Parents: Johann Engel and

  Beate Pfeiffer)

  Gross, Rosab. 10/28/1927in Weiler in

  den Bergen

  Gross, Sofieb. 07/04/1934in Wilsingen

  Gross, Ferdinandb. 09/11/1935in Gigen

  (Parents: Ferdinand Reiner and

  Friderike Gross)

  Kolb, Johannab. 05/22/1928in ?

  Kolb, Franzb. 04/30/1930in ?

  Kolb, Olgab. 11/06/1933in ?

  Kolb, Antonb. 09/19/1932in ?

  Kolb, Elisb. 05/28/1935in ?

  Kolb, Johannb. 07/12/1936in ?

  (Parents: Josef and Hilda Kolb)

  Kolb, Antonb. 12/07/1934in Ravensburg

  Kolb, Josefb. 01/03/1936in ?

  (Mother: Elisabeth Kolb, tradeswoman)

  Kern, Ottob. 06/06/1934in Stuttgart

  Kern, Soniab. 10/02/1935in Stuttgart

  Kern, Thomasb. 02/21/1937in Stuttgart

  (Parents: Otto and Franziska,

  née Pfeiffer)

  Mann, Luiseb. 08/20/1929in Baltringen

  Mann, Marthab. 11/08/1932in Dorndorf

  Mann, Karlb. 1933in ?

  Mann, Elisabethb. 07/29/1936in Ittenhausen

  (Mother: Ludwina Mann)

  Reiner, Amalieb. 01/18/1929in ?

  Reiner, Scholastikab. 08/02/1933in ?

  Reiner, Antonb. 04/04/1931in ?

  Reiner, Adolfb. 03/10/1936in Kirchdorf/Iller

  (Parents: Josef and Amalie Reiner)

  Reiner, Ottilieb. 12/16/1930in ?

  Reiner, Klarab. 08/11/1933in ?

  (Parents: Paul Reiner and Christine,

  née Gut)

  Wand, Karlb. 01/03/1933

  (Mother: Katharina Wand)

  Walther, Rosinab. 03/11/1933in Oberndorf

  Walther Mariab. 07/24/1932in Hohentengen

  Walther, Josefb. 10/30/1936Reinstetten

  (Parents: Franz Walther and Maria,

  née Kolb)

  Gross, Wilhelmb. 02/28/1929in ?

  Reiner, Andreasb. 08/16/1929in ?

  Gross, Patriskab. 06/26/1925in Baldern

  Came to the Braun family in Markelsheim on June 5, 1941, and were

  collected from there and sent to Auschwitz.

  Of these, the following children returned [from Auschwitz]:

  Reiner, Amalieb. 01/13/1929

  [here or above a mistake in the orignal]

  Mann, Luiseb. 08/20/1929

  Gross, Rosab. 10/28/1927

  The following were sterilized:

  Gross, Josefb. 03/09/1922

  Pfleger, Alfonsb. 08/24/1930

  Pfleger, Mathildeb. 10/28/1927

  Document 6-10. Sinti children pose with a nun at the St. Josefspflege home at Mulfingen, ca.1943–1944. The children, spared as “research material” from immediate deportation, were later transferred to Auschwitz, USHMMPA WS# 08632, courtesy of the Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma.

  In Germany, Roma policy followed a meandering, but ultimately, deadly course. In contrast to within Nazi Germany proper, Roma policy in German-occupied and Axis Europe varied from country to country and depended largely on local conditions. For example, authorities in Romania, a German ally, did not undertake a systematic killing of its Roma inhabitants per se. Instead, they deported some twenty-five thousand Roma to the Transnistrian Reservation, a section of southwestern Ukraine placed under Romanian administration, where eleven thousand Gypsies perished due to starvation, disease, and ill treatment beside deported Romanian Jews. Conversely, the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis satellite of Nazi Germany, virtually annihilated its national Roma population, murdering some twenty-six to twenty-eight thousand Gypsies, many at the infamous Jasenovac concentration camp complex.69 In the occupied Soviet Union, including the Baltic States, the mobile killing units of the Einsatzgruppen, together with German
police, SS units, and indigenous auxiliaries, shot members of local Gypsy communities beside Jews and political commissars, claiming the lives of at least thirty thousand Soviet and Baltic Roma. It is not known precisely how many Roma were killed in the Holocaust. While exact figures cannot be ascertained, historians estimate that the Germans and their Axis allies murdered 195,000 to 225,000 Gypsies, or some 25 percent of Europe’s Roma and Sinti population.

  69. See Marc Biondich, “Persecution of Roma-Sinti in Croatia, 1941–1945,” in Roma and Sinti: Understudied Victims of Nazism. Symposium Proceedings of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (Washington, DC: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2002).

  On the eve of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, some nine hundred Roma lived in the small Baltic nation of Estonia.70 In the first months of German occupation, no clear policy existed regarding this largely assimilated community, and the few Roma murdered in that period died at the hands of indigenous collaborators. This situation changed throughout 1942 as nomadic Gypsies fell prey to mobile killing units. In early 1943, all remaining Roma, without distinction to assimilation, were concentrated in camps in and around Tallinn, the Estonian capital. Here, Roma fit for work were mobilized for forced labor. In March 1943, a transport of “unfit” Roma—mainly the elderly, the ailing, and young children—found themselves transferred to the Jägala camp, 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from Tallinn. Upon their arrival, Ain-Ervin Mere,71 chief of the Security Police in Estonia, supervised a further selection, as he had recently done in the case of two previous transports of German and Czech Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto. As in the case of the Jewish deportees, Mere and three colleagues—Jägala camp commandant Aleksander Laak, deputy commandant Ralf Gerrets, and camp guard Jaan Viik—drove the fifty Roma prisoners by bus to nearby Kalevi-Liiva.72 Here camp authorities had dug a large burial pit, now filled with an early spring snow. Half of the captives were Roma women; the remainder were children under the age of five. In proceedings before the Supreme Court of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1961, Ralf Gerrets described to the state prosecutor the murder of the Roma children. Prominent in Gerret’s recollection of that day is the hesitancy of his commander, the bloodthirsty Lieutenant Laak, to shoot the youngsters.