Documentary “Hitler’s Wrath — The Children of Bad Sachsa”
On July 20, 1944, a bomb exploded in the “Führer Headquarters” Wolfsschanze in East Prussia. She is supposed to kill Adolf Hitler. But the assassination attempt, planned by a resistance group led by Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, failed — Hitler survived. The resistance fighters were arrested and executed, and their families were taken into “family custody”: the wives were thrown into prison, and the children were taken to a Nazi children’s home in 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 must 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 attempt, Hitler had 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 “Führer, people and fatherland”.
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 must 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 attempt, Hitler had 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 “Führer, people and fatherland”.