In the inhuman ideology of the Nazi regime, children born to female prisoners in camps or forced laborers in the factories were not granted the right to live. The children should and had to die. Their parents had no means of saving their lives.
The municipality of Puerten was responsible for the maternity home at the Kraiburg factory. From 1942 to 1945, 52 births and 29 deaths of children belonging to the French, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian nations are recorded in the registry office’s register of births.
At the Puerten parish cemetery
Puerten’s priest Johann Gasser was able to baptize 13 children of forced labourers. In the death register of the parish of Pürten, however, only two burials of children in the parish cemetery are recorded. It is not known where the other babies were laid to rest. Here is a quote from a monthly report from the Kraiburg gendarmerie post in charge: “On July 24, 1944, the children of the Eastern workers employed at the Kraiburg plant were taken to the children’s home for foreigners in Gendorf. After this placement, however, several Eastern workers brought their children back to Kraiburg. The reason given was the poor treatment. However, the children were returned to the Gendorf camp on August 3.”
Working when pregnant
During the Second World War (1939-1945), the Nazi regime in the occupied countries of Europe deported millions of people to Germany for forced labor. Thousands of men and women were also employed in the districts of Altötting and Mühldorf, mainly in agriculture and in the armaments factories in Gendorf, Kraiburg and Aschau. The work in the factories was very strenuous and dangerous for the mostly young people, especially for women, while the accommodation and food were inadequate. Until 1942, pregnant women were allowed to give birth to their children at home. Due to the labor shortage, Reichsführer of the SS Heinrich Himmler decreed in 1943 that women were not allowed to leave their workplaces during pregnancies.
Temporary maternity wards
For this reason, temporary maternity wards were set up in the forced labor camps at the plants in Gendorf and Kraiburg from August 1943. These were housed in wooden barracks that did not meet the minimum standards of equipment that were common at the time. This meant that there was a lack of medical and sanitary equipment and facilities. The rooms were not heated. The mothers had to return to work after just a few days. They were unable to look after their newborns themselves.
From the summer of 1944, a so-called “foreigners’ children’s nursing home” was set up in a barrack at the Gendorf plant, where the births of forced laborers from both districts were now also carried out. The children in this home usually only survived for a few days or weeks due to a lack of food, care and warmth. In Gendorf alone, 160 children (74 children from Poland, 48 from Ukraine, 18 from Russia and 20 from other nations) had died by the end of the war at the beginning of May 1945. 200 births were recorded in the birth register of the responsible registry office in Burgkirchen an der Alz.
There is a memorial in the parish cemetery in Burgkirchen an der Alz, where 152 children were buried. Near the site where the children’s home barracks stood in Gendorf, an information board and a memorial stone have commemorated the fate of the children since 2019. After the children’s home was closed on May 2, 1945, some of the children died as a result of the poor treatment and were buried in various cemeteries in the area. The exact number is not known. Neither the interrogations by the American military government in 1945/1946, nor later investigations by the Bavarian criminal investigation department in 1961 were able to clarify the school issue. Those responsible were not found legally guilty, they were only morally complicit.
Further reading can be found on the German version of this website.