Article

In the shadow of the holocaust:
A cover-up of institutional abuse in Germany after World War II
by Sieglinde Alexander

Very little is written in English speaking newspapers about Germany’s Human Rights violations after World War II.

An estimated 500,000 children were abused and callously used in religious and state institution in Germany after 1945. They were drugged, labeled as imbeciles and some found mentally incompetent. Others were called criminals or unfit to live or considered a disturbance for society. They were hauled away to labor as child-slaves for state or religious institutions. The method of the 3rd Reich continued. Nuns, Christian brothers, and state employees disgraced and mutilated innocent children. Under their care, they were sexually, mentally and physically abused and some forcibly drugged until they reached adulthood.

These childhood abused adults live today with an active trauma inflicted in their childhood or youth, and face in addition to their trauma, the reality that their years of laboring for the institutions are years missing in their social security coverage.

The early experienced abuse dominates their adult lives and many never had a real chance to establish a functional life. Some of them are living today on the edges of society, a society that together with the politicians’ blindness and/or their justification, contributed to make them to outsiders from birth. Nobody chose to see that these children came from abusive and dysfunctional homes, or were simply unwanted children. Child protection agencies all over Germany locked them up in orphanages and homes for the dysfunctional, out of sight from the “righteous” German citizens who enjoyed the economic boom developing at the time and cared nothing, it seems, about their children. And so Germany created a 500,000 strong disabled generation who today face instead of the right of human law, the inhumane statute of limitations that prevents them legal recourse in their abusive histories.

For years the former children of intuitional abuse have tried to get public and political attention. No one reacted, no politician found it necessary to investigate, while society continued labeling, blaming and shaming the once innocent children who today must live out broken lives.

The recently published book, "Schläge im Namen des Herrn" by Spiegel Verlag, one of the leading magazine publishers in Germany, finally raised attention to the horrendous crimes committed after the Second World War. However, it was not the first book published about the institutional horror. The abused cried out for years and in many ways for justice, fundamental human rights and help in their lifelong depression and despair.

Even now, after the truth can no longer be hidden, what has the German Government done to apply restitution? Not much. So far only one government branch, the LVA Hessen, has publicly apologized to the abused, misused and traumatized. The rest of the German politicians hide behind a wall of silence.

An apology is a beginning. Though an apology alone cannot eliminate the years of suffering, the reoccurring triggers of previous trauma. It will not bring healing to severe anxiety and PTSD experienced by the abused. There has been no reimbursement for years of child labour, no payment of missing social security, no restitution for inflicted pain. There is no government acknowledgement that a crime was committed.

These institutions that covered or initiated abuse have broken the human rights laws established in 1949, and are today are one of the richest religious organizations, who build this wealth in the past with child laborers. Very little cooperation is provided by the institutions where these children were abused. Only two government branches opened their doors for communication while the remaining branches in other regions remain in complete denial or hide in a silence, hoping the truth will go away.

For instance, the “Rummelsberger Anstalten” a religious organization in the state of Bayern, hands out a pacifier of ‘good will’ without delivering results. See: “A Never-ending Pain or From the Frying Pan to Hell” http://www.boxbook.com/Writing_table/writings/a_never.htm

Some victims have requested their institutional records or any evidence of being in this institution. No records can be found. The date and duration people were institutionalized can be only confirmed by witnesses, if any can be found. Some German government agencies, such as child protection agencies, refuse to answer letters from some victims altogether. But that is not the end of the story: Some of the abused searched one another out and have founded (in 2004) an organization, “Verein ehemaliger Heimkinder” that should help support their claims and fight for their rights. The organization has no money, no government support, no legal advice or psychological counseling in how to deal with childhood-traumatized adults. Besides the lack of qualified leadership in the organization, the two leaders of the organization and one employee have understandably been more interested in displaying their own stories, disregarding best practices of an organization and caused more friction among the institutionally abused.
The question must be asked: If three non-swimmers try to save 500,000 drowning what is the likely result?

As long as there is no independent investigation, legal representation for the deprived, the half a million human beings, the child laborers and the psychologically oppressed, the physically and sexually abused, will enter history as victims of yet another kind of German holocaust.

Other articles:
Postwar abuse http://www.theweekmagazine.com/glance_view.aspx?g_date=2/17/2006%2012:00:00%20AM
Berlin

At least a half-million children were neglected and abused in church-run children’s homes after World War II, a historical account published last week claims. Peter Wensierski’s Beaten in God’s Name is based on dozens of interviews with former charges in Protestant and Catholic facilities who are now in their 60s. “Many are so ashamed that they have not even been able to tell their own children or spouses about what happened to them,” Wensierski said. “Being interviewed for the book was simply a release.” In one typical story, a teenager in a home run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy was forced to work silently in the laundry for 10 hours a day. The nuns beat her with broomsticks if she spoke.

Die Weltwoche, 17.02.2006 (Switzerland)
http://www.signandsight.com/features/622.html

Peter Wensierski's book "Schläge im Namen des Herrn" (blows in the name of the Lord) has not yet been reviewed in Germany. Reinhard Mohr is shocked at the book, which investigates violence in Church orphanages in the postwar period. "Most of the sisters were not at all qualified in childcare, and some of their methods were directly taken over from Nazi practices. More than that: in the 'Kalmenhof' orphanage in Idstein, for example, at least one thousand children were murdered between 1941 and 1945 in the context of the institution's forced sterilisation and euthanasia programmes. Many of the 'educators' and staff from this time remained employed until the 1960s. And it was only in the 80s that the mass grave containing children's skeletons was uncovered."