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my adjutants. I can promise you she won’t regret it!” He also stressed Reichsführer Himmler’s concern with the problem of increasing the German population and the improvement of the NM. It was Himmler who promised the Führer to populate Germany—by 1980—with a hundred and twenty million Nordic Germans. He madehimself the godfather of all children born on October 7, his own birthday. These children were to receive a lamp as a gift from Himmler, and one Deutsche mark and a candle on every subsequent birthday. The first hundred thousand lamps were manufactured by the prisoners at Dachau. As Himmler used to say, “If Frau Anna Magdalena Bach had stopped with the fifth child, Bach would not have come into the world!” Himmler was also extremely interested in folk customs that fostered male offspring, and the results of his “research” were officially circulated in the SS. More than once he complained that SS men were not interested in respectable Nordic girls and preferred plump, short-legged women. Deserving of mention for their part in the attempt to improve the strain are the institutions known as the Lebensborn, founded by the SS at Himmler’s instigation. Lebensborn (meaning “lifestream”) is what the maternity homes established by Himmler throughout the Reich were called. These “human breeding farms” served both as orphanages and as brothels, and were intended to breed the new master race according to the racial standards of the Reich. To this end, hundreds of thousands of children classified as “racially valuable” were kidnapped by the Germans and raised on farms for crossbreeding with pure-blooded Germans and each other. The chief director of these institutions was Max Solman (Nazi Party membership number 14528), who joined the SS in 1937. Frau Inge Wirmitz was in charge of resettling the kidnapped children among childless SS families. The SS breeding farms received children hunted in Eastern and Northern Europe. The kidnapping squads were ordered to steal only the most attractive children. Their method was simple: spotting a child in the street who seemed to fill the racial requirements, they tempted the child with sweets, and learned his name and address. The information was then passed on to the kidnapping squads. This method allowed them to kidnap several children from the same family. Unsuitable children were put to death. Parents were usually killed too so the children could be taken without any unnecessary complications. Once kidnapped, the children were subjected to psychological pressure to repress their origins and hate their parents. They were told continually that their parents were sick criminals, that their fathers were drunken murderers and their mothers “sluts who died of tuberculosis and alcoholism.” The children were not permitted to speak their mother tongue. They were tortured if they ever dared to mention their origins. The author of a book called Childrenof the SS met a woman in Germany who at age five had been shown the stone casket of an archbishop and told by the SS that her mother was buried inside. After the war her mother found her (she had been in a concentration camp), but the child refused to go back to her. “I saw my mother die once,” she explained, “I didn’t want to see her die again.” The Lebensborn organization also dealt in Norwegian, Dutch, and French women pregnant by German soldiers, for Himmler did not want to lose high-quality offspring to other nations. These women were transferred—sometimes against their will—to the institutions in Germany, where they were given appropriate treatment. Children born flawed from the point of view of racial requirements were put to death. Children from orphanages in all occupied countries were kidnapped as well and sent to Lebensborn institutions. In Hungary and the Ukraine alone more than fifty thousand children were kidnapped; in Poland, about two hundred thousand. The children were immediately examined for racial traits. Measurements were taken of their skulls, chests, penises (boys), and pelvises (girls), the ostensible intention being to crossbreed them as soon as they reached sexual maturity. The girls were given hormone injections to accelerate the onset of puberty. At the age of fifteen they were to be inseminated by SS men. This is how the Lebensborn centers turned into semiofficial brothels for SS men, who made free use of them. Kidnapped children were branded on the neck and arms. Himmler himself supervised the institutions down to the most minute details: there is a cable of congratulations from him—preserved in the archives—to Frau Annie 0. (the full name is missing), who in a single week, between the first and seventh of January 1940, yielded 27,870 grams of milk as a wet-nurse at the Lebensborn! Himmler likewise encouraged births among unmarried mothers and promised them the economic support of the Reich. He addressed German girls with a request “not to be so scrupulously modest and pure in these times of war,” and asked them “to be patient with the demands of our young men going off to fight on the front for the Führer.” Today, decades after the war, kidnapped children and their parents from all over Europe are still searching for each other. At the Nuremberg trials in October 1947, those responsible for the Lebensborn institutions were found guilty of membership in the SS. No other charges were brought against them.

CHUFSHA

LEAVE (military)

An authorized absence from military duty.

Neigel’s leave was undoubtedly the turning point in Wasserman’s story. On the eve of his departure, Neigel ordered the Jew to continue telling the story of Kazik, who was by then around forty years old. Wasserman refused, for some reason, and insisted that he must now fill in some of the missing details for Neigel, e.g., why the Children of the Heart had banded together again for this last adventure, and whom they were fighting now [see under: HEART, REVIVAL OF THE CHILDREN OF THE]. Without this information, he explained, the story “will never be properly cooked.” Neigel was furious. He accused Wasserman of BETRAYAL [q.v.], but Wasserman refused