In the church? At the baptismal font? Or maybe in some chapel? Not at all. Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler put it completely different. It needed neither a priest, nor a pastor, nor holy water. All it took was a young one, representatives of the SS order, a few props and ... the Nazi baptism could begin!
According to the chief of police, the SS and the Gestapo, a real German (i.e. a member of Schutzstaffel - the essence of Germanness!), It was not proper to go to church or congregation. Even less so, it would not be appropriate for the most important moments in his life to be accompanied by the Bible and holy water.
All family celebrations were to take place in the privacy of the family, or ... with great pomp among colleagues from the SS!
Heinrich Himmler believed that a true Nazi could not baptize his children in a church or congregation, so he invented his own ritual (source:Bundesarchiv; lic. CC AS 3.0).
So big, so small… can there be in SS?
The SS was a kind of order with an extensive ideology that extended to almost all aspects of life. Even for the adoption of a newborn representative of the "master race" into the community of "superhumans" a special ritual was devised that had very little to do with the Christian.
At the beginning, the Aryan toddler was wrapped - not in a white cloth, but in a scarf with the symbol of SS, that is, the two well-known "lightning bolts" (in Nazi symbolism these were runes signifying victory). The child prepared in this way was then placed on the altar covered with the flag of the Third Reich. Once this was done, it was time for the actual "baptism".
In the presence of the newly minted parents, a special formula was read along with a blessing, after which the superior of the happy daddy touched the baby with the [sic!] SS dagger. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want someone to tickle my baby with a blade! At the end of the ceremony, the toddler also received gifts:a silver bowl, a spoon made of the same metal and a silk handkerchief.
Swastika? Is! Mein Kampf? It lies! Portrait of the Führer? Of course it is! The ceremony can begin!
The ceremony was conducted by someone resembling a "godfather". As Jens-Jürgen Ventzki, author of the book "The Shadow of the Father" writes, this Nazi celebrant, who was always an SS officer, uttered a peculiar profession of faith during the ritual:
We believe in God in the universe
And the mission of our German blood,
Who grows young in German soil.
We believe in the blood carrier
And in the Führer appointed to us by God .
The article is based mainly on the book "Cień Ojców" by Jens-Jürgen Ventzki (Literatura Fakt PWN, 2012).
Vantzki's description is supplemented with some important details by Karol Grünberg in his book "SS. Hitler's Black Guard. It states that the naming ceremony she had to meet two more conditions. First of all - it took place in front of the portrait of beloved Führer . After all, it was for him that the generations of perfect and racially pure grew Germans. The second condition was presence - in the place of honor! - Nazi bible "Mein Kampf".
Daddy with a swastika in his heart
Let us stop for a moment, however, with the author of "Father's Shadow". Jens-Jürgen Ventzki is the son of Werner Ventzki, mayor of Litzmannstadt, i.e. occupied Łódź (from 1941).
The man only learned several decades after his birth that he had not been baptized at all, but had undergone a Nazi ceremony during which he was consecrated to the Führer . Understandably, after the lost war, the Nazis (and Jens-Jürgen's parents were outspoken supporters of Hitlerism) were reluctant to admit to similar practices. When the man tried to find out from whom he got his silver spoon (one of the baby's naming gifts), the mother unconvincingly lied that it was from his father's best friend ...
And in a moment another little Aryan will be included in the community of "superhumans".
"Baptized" by the SS in 1944, Ventzki tried to cover up his parents' mistakes after many years. In 1960, after two years of confirmation, he officially converted to Christianity in the Berlin Church of the Holy Cross. But it didn't help him to forget about his father's past and that his life could have been decided ... by Himmler's orders!
In his memoirs, he noted:
Heinrich Himmler's "Fertility Order", who during the war imposed an obligation on every member of the SS to take care of numerous offspring, and thus the supply of "good blood", could in fact constitute in the eyes of my parents an additional argument and decide about my birth . They had to know the specific principles of the SS in the laws of family policy, and they undoubtedly corresponded to their beliefs.