Between Forced Labor and Racial Policies: Children of Female Slave Laborers from Eastern Europe and Forced Abortions in National Socialism

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Isabel Heinemann
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397505968

Researching the fate of children born to slave laborers from Poland or the Soviet Union in NS-Germany and the occupied regions during the Second World War, the proposed project addresses the crucial relation between labor force exploitation and racial policies. Children deemed of lesser racial value by SS racial experts were singled out by patrons and members of the labor administration, separated from their mothers/parents and sent to so called homes for non-german children (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten). There, most of the infants died due to neglect, lack of nutrition and dire conditions. Also, German authorities sought to foster forced abortions on slave laborers to prevent the birth of further racially unwanted offspring. Racially wanted newborns, however, were placed in German childrens homes under care of the National Socialist Welfare Organization (NSV) or of the SS-association Lebensborn e.V.. Following the intentions of SS-chief Heinrich Himmler, they were to be educated into proper Germans. While Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten as well as the race exams performed on pregnant slave laborers and the ensuing forced abortions (often late-term abortions up to the 7th month of pregnancy) addressed a central element of NS extermination policies, deeply rooted in ideology, policies, and war economy, only a few regional studies have so far dealt with the topic. The current proposal thus seeks to develop a new perspective on the fate of those Polish and Soviet children and their mothers. Investigating these marginalized victims of NS racial and exploitation policies for the first time in a comprehensive manner, the project will significantly contribute to the history of gender policies and everyday-life under National Socialism, especially regarding the history of reproductive decision-making in a dictatorship that inflicted all sorts of coercive measures on those considered unwanted. New sources available through the International Tracing Services (Bad Arolsen) and discovered in largely un-researched court files from British war crimes trials and Polish investigations on the fate of stolen children (London, Washington, Warsaw) provide a unique starting point for an investigation of those policies in the later British occupation zone (North-Western Germany). Specific emphasis is placed upon the negotiation processes between racial policies on the one hand side and economic considerations on the other, taking into account the institutions, places, victims and perpetrators involved.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants