. NMT05-T0112
Volume V · Page 112
strains for the strengthening of our people, and to accomplish a complete elimination of everything racially inferior." |
| The desired result of this systematic program
of abortions was (a) to keep the Eastern laborers available as slave labor; and
(b) to hamper and reduce the reproduction of the population of the Eastern
nations. Since one of the main defenses to this specific charge is the contention that abortions were performed in all cases only on a voluntary basis, by the express consent of the women involved, we quote another document which clearly refutes this contention: |
"It is known that racially inferior offspring of Eastern workers and Poles is to be avoided if at all possible. Although pregnancy interruptions ought to be carried out on a voluntary basis only, pressure is to be applied in each of these cases. * * *" |
| TAKING AWAY INFANTS OF
EASTERN WORKERS |
| Closely linked to the program of abortions
was that of stealing children born to Eastern workers. Notwithstanding the
abortion program, it often happened that a case of pregnancy was not discovered
until it was too late to perform an abortion or the child was born before
pregnancy was actually discovered. Therefore, the Nazis conceived it to be
necessary to deal with this situation. They solved it by simply, in many cases,
stealing the child and sending the mother back to labor for the Reich.
The procedure of taking away infants of Eastern workers is clearly outlined in a decree issued by Kaltenbrunner on 27 July 1943. This decree, among other things, provided: |
"Relative to the question of the treatment of pregnant foreign women and the children born in the Reich by foreign working women, I give the following directives in accordance with the respective central offices which, on their part, will give corresponding instructions to their subordinate offices: |
‘After giving birth the foreign working women have to resume work as soon as possible according to the instructions of the Plenipotentiary for the assignment of labor. * * *’ |
"The children born by the foreign working women may in no case be attended by German institutions, be taken into German children’s homes, or else be reared and educated together with German children. Therefore, special infant-attendance institutions of the simplest kind — so-called ‘foreigners’ children's nursing homes — have been erected within the billets where these children of foreigners are attended to by female members of the respective nationality. Foreign population is |
