Pfaffenwald. One camp, multiple crimes

“Maternity hospital”
 

Pregnancies among Polish and Eastern European forced labourers were undesirable for the National Socialist regime for two reasons. Firstly, the women were unable to work either temporarily or throughout pregnancy. Secondly, their babies were seen as representing undesirable growth of the “racially inferior” population. For economic as well as racist reasons, the regime wanted to prevent both consequences. In the early years of the forced labour system, pregnant Polish women were still usually sent back home. But the policy changed in 1943. The Reich Ministry of Labour decided that pregnant Poles and Soviet citizens were not to be sent home, but should rather give birth near their place of work. The regional employment offices in cooperation with businesses were to ensure that suitable and accessible places were set up for this purpose. Pfaffenwald camp with the train line in nearby Asbach was deemed ideally suited for this task, and thus a “maternity hospital” was set up there for Eastern European women coming from North Hesse region. The first babies were born there in September 1942. A total of 758 births at the camp were registered by the authorities, of which officially 53 children died.[15] The number of stillbirths is not included in this figure; presumably such cases were not even recorded. As Pfaffenwald fell under the responsibility of the registry offices in Hersfeld and Kerspenhausen, births and deaths were recorded there. At least 114 of the children were of Polish origin.[16] The Polish database straty.pl (“Losses”) records numerous births registered as merely “Hersfeld-Beiershausen” or “Hersfeld”. However, it can be assumed that these entries refer to the Pfaffenwald camp.[17] More than 50 years later, some of the survivors, who were Polish children at the time, were able to claim compensation thanks to payments by the Foundation for Polish-German Reconciliation. At the Archive of Modern Records (Archiwum Akt Nowych) in Warsaw there is an inventory detailing the claims for compensation. These valuable autobiographical testimonies could provide a starting point for future research into the history of the Pfaffenwald camp and its victims. 

However, little is known about the fate of most children born there. What is certain is that many children in Pfaffenwald died within just a few weeks or months of being born, which indicates that they must have lived there under terrible conditions. Some children survived just a few days, such as Krystyna Derejak, who was born in the camp on 4 March 1945 and died on 21 March, shortly before the arrival of the Americans, of “heart failure”.[18] It cannot be ruled out that some of the children were deliberately killed by injection or pseudomedical experiments. Susanne Hohlmann thus includes Pfaffenwald in the list of places “in which the systematic extermination of the so-called ‘undesirable people’ (‘unerwünschtes Volkstum’)” took place.[19]

Some mothers were able to take their children with them to what had been their place of work. As their labour was deemed essential, their children were often taken away from them and placed in “care facilities for foreign children” (Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätten).[20] The mortality rate there was particularly high. Only in rare cases were women able to bring their children with them to work. Anastazja S. gave birth in Pfaffenwald. She worked as a farm labourer near Wiesbaden and was brought by the employment office to Pfaffenwald to deliver her child in September 1944. Very soon after giving birth she returned with her new-born son to her employer. Her child lived only three months. It presumably never managed to recover from the terrible conditions in Pfaffenwald.[21]

Eugenia B. was more fortunate. Born in Pfaffenwald on 27 May 1944, she and her mother arrived at a Catholic children’s home in Marburg one week later. On 8 June 1944, mother and child returned to Allendorf. Eugenia’s father, Stanisław B., had been forced to work there as a prisoner of war since early 1940. Eugenia’s mother, also called Eugenia, lived in her native village of Osuchy in the Biłgoraj district until August 1943. When the Germans carried out brutal deportations as part of their ethnic cleansing programme “Aktion Zamość”, she fled with her one-year-old son Stanisław to his father in Allendorf and also worked there. After the war, when Polish couples were finally allowed to marry, she got married – no coincidence – on 27 May 1945, her daughter’s first birthday. In 1947, her third child, Barbara, was born at the Wildflecken displaced persons (DP) camp. The family and their three children emigrated from Wildflecken to Australia in 1949.[22]

Being placed at the Pfaffenwald maternity camp was a tragedy for parents-to-be and babies, as is illustrated by the history of Katarzyna W. and Antoni S. Both persons came from the same region in the General Government (part of Poland under Nazi occupation), and both were forced to work for the same farmer in Sontra-Hornel in North Hesse. Katarzyna was deported for forced labour in May 1940. Antoni fought in the Polish army, was taken into captivity as a prisoner of war by the Germans after capitulation, was initially sent to the Stalag Altengrabow camp then interned in Stalag Ziegenhain from 1940. The work and hardship that both Katarzyna and Antoni endured brought them closer together. Before long, the couple were expecting a child. In accordance with the above-mentioned decree, Katarzyna was brought to Pfaffenwald. Her son Antoni was born there in October 1943, but lived only five days. Following this traumatic experience, Katarzyna returned to her employer and the child’s father Antoni. In late 1944, they both came to another farm in the same area, and their second son, Marian, was born there in February 1945. It is safe to assume that they did everything to ensure that the baby was born at the farm where they lived and worked, rather than in Pfaffenwald again. Their second child survived. Katarzyna and Antoni married soon after the war ended, and at the DP camp in Coburg applied for permission to emigrate with their son to the USA, as the post-war political situation meant returning to Poland was not an option.[23]

In the Pfaffenwald camp, as in other racist institutions of this sort, the medical and human needs of heavily pregnant Poles and other forced labourers from Eastern Europe were disregarded, meaning that many women died while giving birth. The top priority was to force the women back to work as quickly as possible after giving birth. Many women spent several months of their pregnancy in Pfaffenwald and worked there until giving birth. They suffered from hunger, cold, and exhaustion.