Trauma children's cure: Two million children sent to homes

Created: 01/17/2022, 12:47 p.m

The historic postcard shows the children's sanatorium "Waldhaus" in Bad Salzdetfurth.

© Hauke-Christian Dittrich/dpa/symbol image

The North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of Health and Social Affairs has presented a study on the processing of the suffering of millions of so-called deported children with concrete figures.

According to this, in North Rhine-Westphalia alone between 1949 and 1990 trips were organized for more than 2.1 million spa children to the often notorious spa or convalescent homes.

In 1962 alone, almost 100.

Dusseldorf - 000 children and young people from North Rhine-Westphalia sent.

The scientists could not find out how many children came to the spa several times during this period.

For many children, the stay in the sanatorium became an ordeal that left a traumatic burden on them well into adulthood.

The authors of the study describe the eyewitness accounts of violence, beatings, food and sleep deprivation, isolation and humiliation in the sanatoriums as “highly credible”.

The Internet portal "Verschickungsheime.de" alone now has almost 2,000 such reports.

more on the subject

Ministry of Health: Every second Saarlander boosted

Poverty rate in Saarland remains at a high level

Corona incidence in NRW continues to fall - more than 20,000 deaths

"In the 1960s and 1970s, the children's spa was an experience for many," the study said at the beginning.

“In the collective memory of the affected age groups, it is also present that quite a few associated negative experiences with their treatment at the time.

Homesickness, an authoritarian upbringing style, stupid leisure activities and miserable food are typical motives when people born between 1950 and 1970 talk about their own spa experience.”

"Our country must and will also deal with the dark chapters of our national history," said Health and Social Affairs Minister Karl-Josef Laumann (CDU).

"We owe that above all to those who have suffered injustice." NRW will set up a round table "to bring some light into the darkness".

dpa