The Friedrichfeld Cemetery in Hunxe Germany was one of the creepiest places I sketched. In front of the monument I drew was a field of tiny headstones lying in the grass all of which were for children who were less than 1 year old. I didn’t know the story behind these children until I got home and did some research.
In World War I Frederichfeld was the site of a prisoner of war camp run by the Germans. What I sketched was a memorial for the 246 French prisoners who died in the War of 1870–71. In 1916 a memorial was erected for the prisoners of war from the German Frederichfeld POW camp. French, British, Italian, Russian, Spanish Serbian, and Portuguese prisoners who died in the camp were all buried here. Memorial plaques in the cemetery were mutilated by vandals. One plaque said, “To their comrades who, after fighting bravely, lie in exile, their comrades erected this memorial with the greatest reverence, in remembrance in the year 1916.”
During World War II all the forced laborers from the present day city of Voerde Germany were buried in the cemetery. Men and women were forced to work in the armaments industry in Krupp and Essen Germany. The forced laborers camp was build in Voerde in 1944. Most were from the Ukraine and were buried here. There are 99 graves for children who died in the Camp. They died mainly of malnutrition and infectious diseases in the winter of 1944-45.
The Voerde camp served as a collection center for babies born to Eastern European (primarily Polish and Soviet) forced laborers employed in the German war industry. German pure blood doctrine considered Soviets and Polish to be inferior races. The camp was designed to ensure the children of “racially inferior” forced laborers would not survive, reconciling the Nazi need for labor with their goals of racial cleansing. The makeshift nurseries guaranteed the infants’ death if “race experts” determined the child was not capable of “Germanization”. Some women tried to sneak into the camp to steel back their children. An unsuccessful attempt would mean certain death. It would be a rare miracle for a mother and her baby to be reunited.
Women in Nazi forced laborer camps were also systematically subjected to forced sterilization, both as part of the broader eugenics program and through brutal medical experimentation.
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