A bomb in the "Führer Headquarters" is supposed to kill Adolf Hitler in 1944. But the assassination attempt by the group led by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg failed. The resistance fighters are executed and their children are taken to Bad Sachsa.
Summer 1944:The Gestapo cleared a children's home in Bad Sachsa in the Borntal in the Harz Mountains. All children and young people and the caregivers are thrown out on the street. They have to give way to children who are to be taken into "family custody" here:the children of the Hitler assassins of July 20, 1944.
Just a few hours after the assassination, Hitler described the resistance fighters as "elements that are now being ruthlessly exterminated". "There is traitor's blood in there," explains Reich Minister of the Interior Heinrich Himmler, decreing "absolute clan liability" for the relatives. It is planned to intern up to 200 children and young people in Bad Sachsa. Robbed of their identity and given new names, they are later to be handed over to adoptive families. The goal:a complete re-education of the children for "Fuehrer, people and fatherland".
Exiled to Bad Sachsa by the Gestapo
Siblings were usually housed separately in different houses - here is a look at one of the dormitories.Between August and September 1944, the Nazis brought a total of 46 children of resistance fighters to Bad Sachsa. They are aged from 1 month to 15 years. Among them was the then seven-year-old Friedrich-Wilhelm von Hase. His father, the officer and resistance fighter Paul von Hase, was hanged by the Nazis in Berlin on August 8, 1944. Five weeks after the execution, the Gestapo snatched the boy out of his bed at night and took him to the children's home in Bad Sachsa.
"We have been robbed of our identity"
The boy is all alone. "My siblings were much older, they were in prison. My mother too, of course, and I was on my own here. It was a distressing situation because we had been robbed of our identities a child is of existential importance," recalls the then 82-year-old in 2019 in the NDR documentary "Hitler's Wrath - The Children of Bad Sachsa".
Abducted as a toddler
Rainer Goerdeler came to Bad Sachsa with his little brother Carl in February 1945.Bertold, Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg's son, was also deported to Bad Sachsa. Only late, on February 7, 1945, did the grandsons of Carl Goerdeler, who after a successful coup was intended to be the new Reich Chancellor and who was executed on February 2, 1945, come to Borntal. The older one, Rainer, was four years old at the time and his younger brother Carl was 16 months old. It was not until July 1945 that their mother Irma, who had been imprisoned herself, was allowed to pick up the brothers in Bad Sachsa. Decades later, the trauma of being abandoned still runs deep:"I have an inner chill from the strangeness I suffered," says Carl Goerdeler, describing his emotions in 2019 to NDR.
"I still feel the deep loneliness today"
Decades later, Helmtrud, the daughter of Albrecht von Hagen (here in the 1940s with her brother Albrecht), is still suffering from the experiences.Two other kidnapped children are Helmtrud, who was eight at the time, and her brother Albrecht. The siblings are given the surname "Schulz". Her father Albrecht von Hagen is one of the Hitler assassins and is executed, his wife Erica is arrested. But the children know nothing about it. Helmtrud feels abandoned by her parents:"I wrote letters full of expectation. It was very painful that there was no answer. That made the loneliness deeper every day. I still feel this deep loneliness today and it makes me a little suspicious of people opposite," she recalls.
April 1945:Nazis want to deport children to concentration camps
Instead of the originally planned 200 children, only 46 children will be accommodated in Bad Sachsa. From mid-February 1945, only 18 of them were held - the Nazis had already released most of them to go home. The remaining children only narrowly escaped death a few weeks later:shortly before the end of the war, on April 3, 1945, they were to be taken by train from Nordhausen to the Buchenwald concentration camp. But a bomb attack destroyed the train station the night before - instead of going to the concentration camp, the children come back to Bad Sachsa.
New mayor places children under personal protection
Shortly thereafter, the Americans occupy the place and appoint the Social Democrat Willy Müller as acting mayor. He puts the children under his personal protection. According to the diary entry of one of the children, he literally says:"And now your names are the same as before. You need not be ashamed of your names and fathers, because they were heroes."
Today, a permanent exhibition in Bad Sachsa provides information about the fate of the children in care homes.