Remembering the Children of Papenhorst

How infants and young children of foreign forced laborers were subjected to systematic neglect in Nazi children’s homes

By the summer of 1944, there were around two million foreign forced laborers in the German Reich, most of them from Poland and the Soviet Union. Many were of childbearing age, but the Nazis went to great lengths to prevent pregnancies. This was partly for economic reasons, as pregnancies hindered the Nazis efforts to get us much work as possible out of female forced laborers. Above all, however, Nazi racial ideology regarded the children of forced laborers as completely undesirable.

Preventing pregnancies

Pregnancies were not uncommon among foreign forced laborers despite the various measures implemented by the Nazis in an effort to prevent them, which included providing contraceptives and separate accommodation for men and women. Some women were already pregnant when they were deported to the German Reich, while other pregnancies resulted from love affairs between forced laborers or from rape.

At first, any female forced laborers who were expecting a child were sent back to their countries of origin immediately. However, the Nazi authorities soon began to suspect that the women were deliberately getting pregnant in order to be sent home. And as the war dragged on, it became increasingly difficult to replace these women’s labor in armaments factories essential to the war effort or in agriculture. To deal with this problem, Fritz Sauckel, the General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, had the “repatriations” stopped by decree at the end of 1942. While abortions were prohibited for German women, measures were taken to make them more accessible to forced laborers from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and Poland. In some cases, women were even forced to terminate their pregnancies.

Nazi birthing centers and “foreign children’s nurseries”

If expectant mothers refused to have an abortion, they were required to give birth in birthing centers specially established for this purpose. The Nazis aimed to ensure that the women returned to work as quickly as possible. Babies who had a German father could be “Germanized,” but all the others were isolated from their mothers as soon as possible after birth and placed in collective camps for infants.

These “foreign children’s nurseries” were set up all over the German Reich from 1943 onwards. In general, the conditions were terrible. Between 50 and 90 percent of infants died due to malnutrition, poor hygiene, and neglect. It is hard to give an exact number today, as only a few of the deaths were documented. Historians estimate that there were 30,000 to 50,000 fatalities. While the deaths were not explicitly ordered, they were nonetheless an intended outcome, according to historian Jens-Christian Wagner.

Abused in full view of the neighbors

The “Polish children’s home” in Papenhorst, Nienhagen, was one such “foreign children’s nursery.” It was probably rented by the local agricultural association (Kreisbauernschaft), the professional association of farmers, in August 1944. It was managed by a German woman with two Polish forced laborers assigned to assist her. The first Polish and Russian children arrived in September 1944. A total of 48 “arrivals” are noted in the Nienhagen register of residents.

The inconspicuous half-timbered house at Papenhorst 9 A had previously served as a prisoner-of-war camp. According to contemporary witnesses, the rooms in the house were damp, and only the kitchen could be heated. There was a shortage of blankets, diapers, and clothing. The children were given less than one bottle of milk a day and the hygienic conditions must have been catastrophic.

Fifty-five years later, Siegfried Elsner, who grew up in the house next door and was eleven years old at the time, told the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung that he had heard screams and shouts from the property while playing: He believed that “The children were abused and beaten.” Other villagers are also likely to have heard about the conditions in the collective camp for children and infants. Sanna Gutzeit from Papenhorst, who was 12 years old at the time, remembers:

Given these catastrophic conditions, it is hardly surprising that many infants did not survive their time in Papenhorst, and only twelve children are known to have left the institution alive in 1945. There is official documentation of 28 deaths: the youngest child was only 18 days old, the oldest one year and eight months. The death certificates rarely include the cause of death. There are also no records of the burials – the gravestones for the children in the Nienhagen cemetery were only laid later. A memorial plaque commemorating their fate was put up in April 2000.

Hans-Werner Spieß, 72, who lives in the region, has been working for years to ensure that the children of Papenhorst are not forgotten: He visits their graves, lays flowers, and has painted a fieldstone for each child in bright colors. In August 2025, on his initiative, the Arolsen Archives began searching for relatives of the deceased children in Poland in order to tell them where their family members died.

The search for relatives begins

Little is known about the children’s mothers. Even researching their names in the archive proved complicated because the documents often contain different spellings or spelling mistakes. What is certain is that they were foreign forced laborers from all over the region. Most of the records list Celle as the children’s place of birth. Malgorzata Przybyla, an employee of the Arolsen Archives, is coordinating the search for families in Poland, where numerous volunteers are helping with the research.

Tracing the families will not be easy, as most of the mothers were single when they gave birth to these children. They probably got married and changed their name when they returned home. Another obstacle is that all these women were on average 20 years old. That means we won’t be able to find their birth certificates in the digital records of Polish registry offices. These are only made available to the public after 100 years.

Malgorzata Przybyla, Team Leader Tracing, Arolsen Archives

Search gets off to a promising start

Just a few weeks after the search began, Manuela Golc – one of the international volunteers supporting the team at the Arolsen Archives – managed to trace a relative of Bronisława Kucz in England. Bronisława was the mother of Regina, a little girl who was born in Celle on December 28, 1944, and died less than three months later in the Papenhorst children’s home. According to the relatives, Bronisława was their great-grandfather Mieczysław’s sister. She was buried in her home town in Poland.