Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) camp staffing?

[FaustWolf]

I've recently become interested in learning more about the Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) program that sent children from air raid-prone areas into the German countryside and lower-risk occupied territories. It seems that the KLV camps were staffed by adult teachers as well as HJ, the latter of which exercised enough power to make the places a living hell for the occupants if they so wished.

From what I gather, the camp teachers were transplanted from the city of origin of the camp occupants (e.g., if kids from Hamburg happened to be evacuated, their teachers would travel with them from Hamburg). I'm still a bit confused about the origins of the HJ who staffed the camps -- would any of the HJ staff in a KLV camp have been local to the village the KLV camp was located in? Or would all the HJ staff also have been, say, from Hamburg if that was the city of origin of the camp occupants? Would the local HJ have been called in to assist with the camp at all?

Also, anyone know of sources of info about the KLV program? The only info sources I know of in English are Jost Hermand and Ilse Koehn.

[jona]

I have spent a few months in a klv "camp"and I'll be glad to answer any question.

Regards, Jona

[FaustWolf]

Hello Jona, thank you so much for sharing your experiences!

Did the local Hitler Youth (HJ) in the town where the Kinderlandverschickung (KLV) camp was located play any role in camp staffing? Or did HJ staff travel along with the children and their teachers from the city to the camp?

[jona]

Hello Faustwolf,

Sorry for late reply. Accompanied by a teacher with his wife and two members from the HJ, we travelled by train from Duisburg to a small town in Thuringia, where we stayed at one of the two hotels. I don't remember ever having seen anyone from the local HJ. If you are interested, I can send you some pictures by E-mail.

Regards, jona

[FaustWolf]

Thanks Jona! Some pictures would be great. Did you remember having any interaction with the NSV or people in the local town where you stayed?

[jona]

Hello Faustwolf,

I will be out of town for the next few days. I can only send you the pictures to your E-mail address, since I don't know yet how to upload them. We had no contact whatsoever with any of the local HJ, NSV or other party members.

Regards, Horst

[FaustWolf]

When you get back jona, you can send the pictures to [email protected]

[jona]

On the way. Horst

[KuteBuster]

I know I am a few years behind on this post--but I'm wondering if either of you would be willing to send me the information you have on the KLV in Germany. I am a PhD in German History and am writing part of my dissertation on the Kinderlandverschikung and would really love any information of your experiences, Jona, or Any photos you may have.

I hope I am not too late. If anyone is able to help me, please email me: [email protected]
Your help is very much appreciated.

Best,
Dallas

[jona]

Hello Dallas,

You may expect the requested info within the next few days.

Regards, Horst

[Yaldy50]

Greetings all,

I'm late in this post but this subject is also of great interest to me. I had a few questions about how exactly did these kids got back to Germany (train, truck) and when did these kids return? Did all the German kids return to Berlin and most importantly - what did they do in Berlin or other areas if these kids were not able to be reunited with their families?

Horst I would enjoy speaking to you about your experiences and thank you for sharing on this site.

Rob

[Cerdic]

I can only presume that the children were sent back to their original residences, or wherever their surviving parent(s) were now living. There were however, many missing and orphaned children.

If this is any help, I have archived some KLV information from the now defunct Exulanten site. *

The Kinderlandverschickung, or evacuation of German children was the largest inland migration in human history to date but you won't read much about it. This is another area, like German civilian bombing fatalities, in which the numbers of victims are consistently revised downward in recent time in a hostile refusal to acknowledge or underplay any German suffering. Children were evacuated from cities being violently and repeatedly bombed. Initially, the evacuation of children applied only to Berlin and Hamburg, and over 200.000 small children were evacuated from Berlin alone between September and November of 1940. Then they were evacuated from cities such as Essen, Cologne and Dusseldorf and then from Schleswig-Holstein, Lower Saxony and Westphalia. As air attacks increased, children at risk in other various German cities were sent away for their safety. After the beginning of 1941, there were already up to an estimated 300,000 children evacuated. Among the host areas for the year 1941 were parts of Bavaria, Salzburg, Styria, West Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, the Sudetenland, Slovakia, East Prussia and parts of Saxony, as well as "safe countries" such as Hungary, areas in the present day Czech Republic and Denmark. In the summer of 1943, the increased air attacks on the civilian residential area of cities, particularly in the Rhine-Ruhr area, made a broader mass evacuation of woman and children necessary.

In addition to the use of requisitioned homes and rooms, a number of special evacuation camps were arranged which even contained schools and medical facilities (KLV camps). In the last years of war, some children spent more than 18 months in the camps. By the end of the war, up to 2,000,000 children aged ten to fourteen years lived at least for a time in over 2,000 camps. According to most sources, these camps were by and large as pleasant as they could be under the circumstances of war and they were not "indoctrination" facilities.

Suddenly, after the German defeat at Stalingrad, Germany had to evacuate the more distant evacuation camps such as those which had been established in Bulgaria and Romania, and new camps were built in Bohemia and Moravia, then thought to be safe areas. Nothing would be safe for long, however. For instance, there were still 26 camps in the Czech border regions holding a total of around 850,000 children up until the end of the war. Both the Soviet and the western Allied forces overran many of the KLV camps in the last months of the war and thousands of children were killed. Many of the Ruhr children who were sent to Thuringia for safety ended up being trapped there later when the Red Army began its violent sweep. In such areas, some children went along with other frantic refugees, but the fates of many others is unknown.

Apart from a very low estimate of 75,000 documented German children killed or maimed by violent Allied terror bombing (and this figure does not count all of the undocumented refugee children), thousands of others found themselves abandoned, orphaned, lost and even stolen. The death rate in 1945 reached a similar level to the Thirty Years War nearly 300 years earlier, at one point taking 4,000 people a day in places such as Berlin. Victims of unchecked disease, untreated injuries, illness and starvation, many children were left to starve or fend for themselves at the mercy of the elements or predators. Thousands never saw their homes, friends, parents or relatives again and the fates of many thousands of children was never learned. Posters of missing children were put up all over Germany and Austria. At war's end, there were at the very least 53, 000 orphans from German cities, many roaming the devastated countryside, living wherever they could find shelter: in holes in the ground or hollows of trees, in boxes, old barns and sheds and bomb-damaged buildings.

In East Prussia and other Baltic areas where Germans were murdered or had fled from the Red Army, a population of around 25,000 orphaned or abandoned children alone were left behind in the areas taken by Poland and Lithuania in just the time from 1945 to 1947. Sadly, of the many children from the Ruhr area who had been sent to East Prussia for safety from the bombing in the West, approximately 2,000 to 3,000 were captured here and sent to Russian internment camps where many soon died of intentional starvation, exploitation and disease. Some were "pimped out" to do slave labor on farms of the new populations in former German areas and many starved to death or were abused for being German, or even forced into dreadful occupations. Even in "civilized" Europe children were treated poorly. 10,000 German refugee children perished in camps in Denmark from intentional neglect and starvation.

* If anyone is aware of a full backup of this website originally at http://www.exulanten.com/hell.html, please PM me.

[Cerdic]

This book may also be of help:
"For Their Own Good": Civilian Evacuations in Germany and France, 1939-1945
http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/F ... edir_esc=y