. NMT04-T0636
Volume IV · Page 636
| hereditary and biological point of view" and
to take care of pregnant women and their children. The prerequisite of this
care was an assurance through racial and health examinations of these women and
their mates that the parents were of good health and race and that the future
children would possess the same qualities. Lebensborn tried to make more attractive the idea that it was no disgrace for a German girl to bear an illegitimate child, provided she picked a healthy young Nazi to be the father. In a statement that attracted adverse comment even in Germany, Himmler once stated that it might be regarded as a noble duty for German women of good blood "in all moral seriousness" to become mothers of children by men about to leave for the front "outside the limits of perhaps otherwise necessary bourgeois laws and conventions". The general program of Germanization called for a special effort to be made to get "racially valuable" children who could be bred as a contribution to the Greater German Reich. Moreover, children of foreign birth could be molded and shaped into Nazis much more easily than their parents. Thus, it came about that Lebensborn took over the kidnapping of so-called "racially valuable" foreign children. The Chairman of the Board (Vorstand) of Lebensborn was Himmler. The Board itself included Dr. Grawitz, Reich Physician SS and Police; Gottlob Bergen,¹ Chief of the SS Central Office; Oswald Pohl², Chief of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) ; the defendant Ebner; and the Chief of RuSHA, that is, first the defendant Hofmann and then the defendant Hildebrandt. The defendant Sollmann became the managing director of Lebensborn on 15 May 1940. The defendant Ebner was the head of the Main Health Department and, for a short time, of Main Department "A". The defendant Tesch joined Lebensborn in 1941. He was Sollmann's personal legal adviser and acted as Sollmann's deputy. When the Main Legal Department was set up, Tesch became head of that department. The defendant Viermetz joined Lebensborn in September 1938. Soon after the outbreak of the war she reorganized and was placed in charge of the employment office for Lebensborn mothers. Early in 1940 she reorganized the department dealing with Homes and Adoptions and was in charge of both this department and the Employment Department until the beginning of 1941. Subsequently, the defendant Viermetz was placed in charge of the Main Department A which was set up in September 1941. The Main De- [...partment] |
¹ Defendant in case of United States of America vs. Ernst von Weizsaecker, et al., Case 11, vols. XII, XIII, XIV, this series.
² Defendant in case of United States of America vs. Oswald Pohl, et al., Case 4. vol. V, this series.
