38. For a broader discussion of Jehovah’s Witnesses under National Socialism, see Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich, trans. Dagmar G. Grimm (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2008).
Even before the establishment of the Third Reich, Jehovah’s Witnesses figured as objects of prejudice. Germany’s mainstream Catholic and Protestant churches disparaged the movement as a cult, while many ordinary citizens found the Witnesses’ house-to-house proselytizing intrusive. Individual German state jurisdictions often enforced strict bans on such solicitation and prohibited the distribution of Witness literature, such as the movement’s official journal, The Watchtower. While the Weimar period brought broader official acceptance of religious minorities, the National Socialist regime revived old prejudices and intensified persecution of the Earnest Bible Students (Ernste Bibelforscher), as the group was known in Germany. The international tenor of the Witness movement inspired immediate distrust among Nazi authorities. The Witnesses’ reliance on Old Testament texts suggested to them a connection to international Jewry, the bête noire of Nazi ideology. National Socialist officials perceived as treasonous the Witnesses’ refusal to swear allegiance to the Nazi regime or to demonstrate the outward manifestations of that loyalty through the Hitler salute (the so-called German greeting) or through the singing of the national anthem. When the Nazi state reintroduced conscription in 1935, most Jehovah’s Witnesses refused to enlist or serve. German authorities prosecuted all Witnesses failing to report for the draft or declining to join the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or DAF) whose membership became mandatory for all salaried employees following the Nazi ban on trade unions. Nazi authorities often incarcerated Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps following service of their prison terms. The vast majority of Witnesses refused to abandon their faith, despite persecution, the imposition of prison sentences, and confinement in the Nazi concentration camp system. Of thirty thousand members of the sect in Germany in 1933, some 10 percent languished in camps during the war years. Approximately one thousand of their number perished during their imprisonment, as did four hundred Witnesses from other nations. In addition, some 250 German Witnesses were executed, most under the authority of military tribunals, for refusing to serve in the German armed forces.
The children of committed Jehovah’s Witnesses also faced persecution under the Nazi regime. Refusing, like their parents, to give the “German greeting” or to participate in patriotic or school ceremonies, young Witnesses often found themselves expelled from school. During the Nazi era, 850 Witness children were removed from their parental homes and placed in reformatory schools or foster homes. One of these youngsters was Willi Seitz, a young follower of the movement born in Karlsruhe on March 11, 1923. At age fourteen, school authorities expelled him from the local Volksschule for repeatedly failing to give the Hitler salute and refusing to take part in Nazi-inspired classroom activities. His father, Franz Josef Seitz, was a devout and active Witness. His fervent belief had come at a price, for in 1936 he was removed from his civil service post with the municipal waterworks administration; in July of that year he received a four-month sentence from a Mannheim court for his continued religious activities. Wishing to make an example of Seitz, local officials sued him in juvenile court in January 1937, shortly after his release from prison, in order to remove fourteen-year-old Willi Seitz from parental custody. On April 6, the district court ruled that the young boy should be transferred to a reformatory school and eventually placed with a German family that might inculcate in the youngster the proper respect for his country and its principles. Franz Josef Seitz appealed this decision, but on April 15, 1937, a superior court in Karlsruhe upheld the earlier judgment. The Seitz family ultimately succeeded in removing Willi from the reformatory school and sending him to Strasbourg in Alsace, beyond the reach of local authorities. Through the help of Swiss Witnesses, the youth settled with a family in Bern, in neutral Switzerland, where he remained until the end of the war. Shortly after his appeal to the juvenile court in Karlsruhe, Franz Josef Seitz refused to appear for a physical examination conditional for military service and was arrested shortly thereafter for distributing “subversive” literature. After he had served an eighteen-month sentence, Gestapo officials transferred Seitz to Buchenwald, where he was incarcerated until the liberation of that camp in April 1945. He and Willi were reunited after the war, having been apart for eight years.39
39. Franz Josef Seitz, “Meine Erlebnisse im Dritten Reich,” U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, RG-32.008*01 (Willi Seitz Collection).
Document 7-12. Decision of the State Court, Karlsruhe, concerning the appeal of Franz Josef Seitz against the removal of parental custody, Karlsruhe, April 15, 1937, USHMMA, RG-32.008*01, Willi Seitz Collection (translated from the German).
State Court [Landgericht] Karlsruhe, April 15, 1937
Civil Court I
1 ZFH 33/37Parental authority concerning Willi Josef Seitz, born March 11, 1923
Decree
The appeal of the stoker Franz Josef Seitz in Karlsruhe, Kriegsstrasse 171, against the decision of the District Court [Amtsgericht] B III Karlsruhe of April 6, 1937 is dismissed with costs [to plaintiff].
Grounds
On April 6, 1937, the District Court B III Karlsruhe removed from the stoker Franz Josef Seitz parental custody of his son Willi Josef and ordered in the same instance that the boy be removed temporarily to the observation station of the Schloss Flehingen reformatory school. Concerning the circumstances which led to this measure, a detailed statement of the district court is appended to this decree.
The father appealed against this ruling with the petition that the judgment be reversed. He disputes that the criteria for an infraction according to §1666 of the Civil Code [Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch] are not met. He insists that he has not endangered the emotional or physical well-being of his son or abused the rights of parental custody vested in him. The son had a strict upbringing and is deeply religious. Since his expulsion from school, he has taken up an apprenticeship. There have been no complaints against his son either during his schooling or during his apprenticeship. He does not deny that his son refused to take part in patriotic school festivals, refuses to give the “German greeting,” and refuses to salute the flag. But this purportedly does not stem from [the father’s] influence. He says he did not prevail upon his son in any manner and left it up to him as to how he should behave. He himself formerly belonged to the Association of Earnest Bible Students and still belongs today to the confession of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Reference to the circumstances of the case and the charge made by the complainant will be made in detail in the file.
According to the findings, whose correctness is not disputed by the father, the boy refused to participate in patriotic ceremonies at school, [refused] to salute the flag, to give the “German greeting,” and to sing the national anthems.40 He explained to the school director that he would not become a soldier and, besides this, set down in two essays his opinion of current events. Consistent with his entire manner of behavior and according to opinions expressed in his school essays, the minor is not able to feel himself a German or even to evince respect for the great German men and their deeds or consciously to dedicate himself to his duties to his people [Volk] and his country. It is the specific duty of the parents to bring their children up in a way which does not alienate them from their German nature, to raise their children according to German customs and precepts, and to educate them spiritually and morally in the spirit of National Socialism in the service of the people [Volk] and the Volksgemeinschaft (Preamble and §2, Law Concerning the Hitler Youth of December 1, 1936, Reich Law Gazette I, p. 993). An offense against this duty must be seen as a subjective failure of the parents in the interpretation of §1666 of the Civil Code. Contrary to the statements of the father, the court is convinced that the
attitude of the son can be traced to the influence of the parents. The father is still a member of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. He was released from his post because of his activities as a Jehovah’s Witness and also served a jail term for this [offense]. The mother holds the same opinions as the father. It is obvious that a youth at this age does not think for himself but adopts the convictions of his parents. In consideration of his behavior, he has additionally been expelled from school. [Because of this] it would therefore be impossible for him to receive the necessary further education in order to attain any career position. For all of this, [the court] acknowledges and rules with the district court that there exist the necessary preconditions to take legal measures according to §1666 of the Civil Code. Because those measures ordered by the district court do not exceed the requisite mandated by the unusual circumstances, the appeal must be rejected.
40. This refers to the official German national anthem, the so-called “Deutschlandlied” (“Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles”), followed by the “Horst Wessel Song” (“Horst-Wessel-Lied”), a song composed by early Nazi Party martyr Horst Wessel and embraced as the Party anthem.
German Children and the War
Marion Lubien41 was one of many young Germans who kept a wartime diary. Like most of her adult contemporaries, the fourteen-year-old seemed fascinated by firsthand accounts of distant battles and intoxicated by the string of early victories. For Marion and her generation, the war was a source of genuine excitement. While grown-ups may not have shared their enthusiasm, youngsters often relished the exciting novelties that the new conflict ushered in: blackouts, gas mask and civil defense drills, letters and presents from absent fathers postmarked from Poland and France. Besides the sense of sacrifice that rationing and conservation engendered in young patriots, wartime privation also produced its own small dividends. As school buildings began to perform double duty as first aid stations, military registration centers, and distribution points for ration coupons, school hours were altered or curtailed, while early shortages in coal and fuel products produced lengthy “coal holidays” for school children in the coldest winter months. Wartime infused the structured activities of the Nazi youth organizations with a greater sense of purpose. Young people did their part for the Fatherland by participating in scrap-metal and rubber recycling campaigns and collecting clothing and donations for the National Socialist Winter Relief (Winterhilfe) association. Young boys felt connected to troops in the field through their own paramilitary training and drilling with the Hitler Youth. Under the auspices of the League of German Girls, teenage girls ran charity drives, wrote letters to convalescent soldiers, and assembled care packages for frontline troops.
41. Marion Lubien (a pseudoynm to protect the child diarist’s privacy) was born in 1928 in Essen. In 1943, she was evacuated with her Realschule class to Bad-Bohdanetsch (today Lázně Bohdaneč), near Prague, in order to escape Allied bombing. She returned home to Essen in February 1945 and survived the war.
Document 7-13. Members of the Hitler Youth practice donning gas masks during an air raid drill, c. 1937, USHMMPA WS# 31512, courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Although many youngsters felt themselves engaged in some manner in the war effort, from their vantage point on the home front, the war—at least in its initial stages—still seemed so far away. Marion Lubien dutifully recorded in her diary the stream of military developments and ringing victories as these played out in the early years of the conflict. Her journal entries often emulated the news accounts of the day with their terse and authoritative prose. Lubien’s tone remained neutral and unemotional, and she made little reference to her personal experiences—until British Royal Air Force (RAF) bombs began to rain down on the teenager’s home city of Essen.42
42. See Nicholas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2006).
For most German youngsters, the Allied bombing of German urban centers and industrial sectors often represented their first genuine encounter with the realities of warfare. With the vital exception of those children who had lost fathers, brothers, or other male relatives in the Polish or western campaigns, many young people faced for the first time the immediate possibility of loss of home and family as the aerial raids literally brought the war home to them.
The RAF implemented the first significant strategic bombing of a German city, Berlin, on September 24, 1940. As was the case in Great Britain, the Nazi regime responded to the threat of future air raids with a plan to evacuate school-age children from areas potentially threatened by Allied bombardment. Since the late nineteenth century, various German governments had promoted the transfer of youngsters from urban centers for extended recreational stays in rural settings (Kinderlandverschickung, or KLV). The purpose of these endeavors—to provide youths from Germany’s polluted industrial areas the opportunity to spend their school and summer holidays in the fresh air and wholesome environment of the countryside—was immediately adopted as a policy by the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization (Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, or NSV43) shortly after the Nazis came to power in 1933. On September 27, 1940, three days after the first intensive bombing of the capital, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann,44 head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, issued a confidential circular decree ordering that children resident in regions threatened by Allied air raids might be temporarily relocated to safer areas within Reich territory.45 In its initial stages, this measure was completely voluntary and scheduled to continue for a period of only six months. To allay public fears of a potential prolonged assault by Allied air forces on German population centers, Bormann specifically forbade mention of an “evacuation” of German children. Rather officials were to couch the action in terms of an “expanded transfer of children to the countryside” (Erweiterte Kinderlandverschickung), suggesting an extension of the earlier social welfare program.
43. The NSV became the official welfare organization of the Nazi Party in 1933. Absorbing all non-Nazi charity organizations, it became the second-largest Nazi group organization by 1939, after the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or DAF).
44. Martin Bormann (1900–1945) served as head of the Party Chancellery (Parteikanzlei) and Hitler’s private secretary. As the Führer’s closest aide, he gained enormous bureaucratic power and influence through Hitler’s implicit trust and by controlling access to the German leader. On May 1, 1945, the day following Hitler’s suicide, Bormann, with other German personnel, fled the Führerbunker during the Battle of Berlin; he was never seen alive again. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted Bormann in absentia and sentenced him to death. In 1972, remains thought to be Bormann’s were uncovered in Berlin; these findings were confirmed by DNA testing in 1998.
45. By 1941, German children were also being relocated to German-occupied territories, such as Denmark, and to territories controlled by German allies, such as Slovakia and Hungary.
The former leader of the Hitler Youth, Baldur von Schirach, in his capacity as Reich Leader of Youth and Education of the Nazi Party, undertook the coordination of state, public, and party agencies participating in the effort. The NSV assumed responsibility for youngsters under the age of ten. Mothers generally accompanied infants and toddlers in these relocations46; together with elder siblings, they were usually housed with host families, who received a subsidy from the state. The NSV also settled children aged six to ten with foster families in locations where they might continue their elementary school education. Young people aged ten to fourteen fell under the jurisdiction of the Hitler Youth organization. Divided by gender, pupils in this age cohort traveled with their teachers from target cities such as Berlin, Essen, and Düsseldorf to rural areas in Bavaria, Austria, Saxony, and East Prussia. A majority of these children lodged in so-called KLV camps, which integrated classroom instruction and structured play with ideological indoctrination. The measure formall
y remained voluntary, although as the air war intensified, many students were compulsorily relocated to KLV camps to compensate for the closure of schools in bombed-out neighborhoods. Despite the hardship of separation, many German parents welcomed the chance to remove their children from harm’s way. The KLV effort did ensure its participants a safe environment, uninterrupted schooling, and access to better nutrition. The state absorbed all substantial costs for the program and, particularly in the last difficult years of the war, relieved hard-pressed families from the responsibility of child care. From October 1940 until war’s end, the Reich Office (Reichsdienststelle) KLV evacuated 2 million German children to safety and accommodated 850,000 school-age pupils between ten and fourteen in its nine thousand camps. In a class essay written in 1946, an eleven-year-old girl remembered her evacuation from her home city of Nuremberg to the Bavarian countryside.47
46. So-called mother-and-child transfers (Mutter-und-Kind-Verschickungen) were initially intended for small children aged three and younger; in later years, however, they encompassed children up to age six.
47. See Gerhard Kock, Der Führer sorgt für unsere Kinder: Die Kinderlandverschickung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 1997); Stargardt, Witnesses of War, esp. 229–88.
Document 7-14. School essay of an eleven-year-old girl, Nuremberg, 1946, in Emmy E. Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents: Children Witness World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 49.
We suffered several devastating air raids. My parents made up their minds to send me (aged 9) and my brother to the countryside. My mother packed our belongings. Then [. . .] on September 1, 1943, we departed. There were thirty of us, varying in age from six to fourteen, from the first to eighth grade. We were accompanied by a teacher from our school. We travelled by train to Weissenburg. There we were picked up by a bus and travelled to the village of Bergen. There we all stood around, waiting to get a number. That was the number of [the] house. When it was called, someone from the family came to meet us. My brother and I ended up on a large farm, with strangers. But they were very friendly to us. They fed us frequently and well. We helped on the farm and stayed nearly one and a half years in the village. Then our parents brought us back home.
Children during the Holocaust Page 39