The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

In the spring of 1944, the German Ninth Army, then stationed in the Bobruisk area of Belorussia, faced the problem that children were becoming an ever-growing share of the remaining civilian population. While the Germans were transporting 35,000–45,000 people to Ozarichi (the figures are uncertain; see Endlager Ozarichi in this volume), the German staff noted that almost 50 percent of these “useless mouths” were children of the age of 13 years or less.¹ In April, Army Group Center created a plan to concentrate, indoctrinate, and train Soviet children in occupied territory, by organizing “children’s villages.”² In accordance with that plan, the German Ninth Army took steps to create several youth education camps (Jugenderziehungslager, JEL) in villages in the army’s rear area, in which army personnel would concentrate the children. The children were to be “raised in the spirit of a future White Ruthenia under German administration.”³

On May 14, Ninth Army headquarters issued the order to erect the first of these camps. It was to be installed in the village of Skobrovka, approximately 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Minsk and close to the local commandant’s office (Ortskommandantur) I/252 in Mar’ina Gorka (today Maryina Horka, Belarus) (map 9b). The Germans ordered the village to be prepared for the admission of 1,000 adolescents.⁴ Between May 15 and May 17, the Germans removed the inhabitants of the village, except for its northwestern part. Some villagers and prisoners of war were also held just outside the village. Entry into the children’s camp was forbidden to anyone, even German soldiers. A Ninth Army staff officer characterized the facility in Skobrovka in the following way:

For the accommodation of mainly parentless children aged 8–14 years, a “youth village” has been erected, in which they are to be schooled and trained in handicrafts. The selection is conducted from the standpoint of health and race. An effort is to be made to collect children aged 8–14 years on a larger scale and accommodate them in the rear areas, to remove them from the grasp of the Russians.⁵

As of May 1944, the Germans planned to remove about 40,000 children from the territory occupied by the Ninth Army and send 30,000 of them to Pomerania, for the disposal of the Reichsjugendführer.⁶ In fact, they were only able to deport about 4,000 children, due to the successful Soviet summer offensive.⁷

The XXXV Army Corps received an order to select 200 healthy and “racially valuable” children from its area and prepare them for transport to Skobrovka by May 25.⁸ The Germans first concentrated the children in detention or transit camps, such as the one at Krasnyi Bereg.⁹ The LV Army Corps acted likewise and collected children on May 20. The 102nd Infantry Divison rounded up 302 boys and 248 girls aged 8–14 years and sent them to a camp at Koptsevichi for delousing, medical checks, and registration. Of the girls, the Germans released 28 on May 22, having classified them as unfit, while all the others went on via Mar’ina Gorka to Skobrovka, in order to become inmates of the children’s village.¹⁰

After having installed all the necessary facilities, the Ninth Army opened the camp with a celebration on May 27. On June 3, the Germans handed over administration of the camp to the “Fighting League for Combatting Bolshevism (Kampfbund zur Bekämpfung des Bolschewismus),” a local organization of Soviet citizens who were collaborating with the Nazis. From this point forward, the Ninth Army withdrew almost completely from involvement with the children’s village. Only one German stayed on as a liaison; the camp’s commandant, Lieutenant Gradiushko, was responsible to him.¹¹ The Germans were very proud of their experiment, which had cost them quite a lot of money and effort, and the Wehrmacht hoped to be able to exploit it in propagandistic terms.¹²

When the camp officially started to operate, the children allegedly numbered 420 boys and 280 girls. The total number of inmates in the camp rose as time went on and fluctuated between 1,300 and 1,800 children, who had to live in the village’s 57 peasant huts. Between 20 and 36 children lived in each hut, separated by gender and under the leadership of one of their own as well as one educator.¹³

The Germans undertook their next collection of children for Skobrovka nearly a month later, on June 15. In the area under the control of the LV Army Corps, the 102nd Infantry Division gathered 715 boys and girls, while the 292nd [End Page 574] Infantry Division managed to collect 694 youngsters as well as 13 women for caretaking. The Germans expected to have to release 10 percent of the children, because they would not meet the Germans’ requirements. Again the children underwent the procedure of delousing and treatment of scabies in the reception camps. On June 21, the older children went on to Crimmitschau in Saxony while all those aged eight or nine stayed in Skobrovka.¹⁴

Although the Germans made considerable efforts to explain the necessity and alleged benefits of the evacuation to the children’s parents, in at least one case there were violent clashes between civilians and soldiers during the entrainment.¹⁵ The authorities then ordered that, every week, some parents should be able to visit their children in Skobrovka for a period of six days, in order to be able to convince themselves their offspring were receiving proper care.¹⁶

Every day followed a set routine in the children’s camp. At seven in the morning, the kids were woken up and, after a little breakfast, had to assemble on the central square of their village for mustering. Next the children broke into detachments, which went into the streets and the vegetable gardens. Before and after lunch, the same mustering process had to be repeated, and only after supper, after having collectively sung a song, was the day done. Corporal punishment included physical exercise and beating.¹⁷

Although the Wehrmacht purportedly planned to raise the imprisoned children’s food allowance to an adequate, officially defined level (Verpflegungssatz II),¹⁸ their nourishment was poor. One day’s ration consisted of 200 grams (7 ounces) of bread, some kind of bitter coffee, cabbage, and sorrel. On rare occasions the children received some soup, meat, or milk. Often, they had to sneak out of the camp in order to beg for food in the huts still inhabited by villagers. These escapes were possible, although an armed guard patrolled the street, and the camp was surrounded by a double wooden wall filled with earth in which embrasures had been installed. No barbed wire was used, however.

Some children in the camp died of typhus. Rumors were common that the children of the camp in Skobrovka were being killed by forced blood donations. When being interviewed about this allegation on July 8, 1944, after the liberation of the camp by troops of the Red Army, the villagers stated, however, that no blood donations had taken place.¹⁹ It is likely that the purposeful selection of “Aryan” children in regard to their racial qualities (their “blood”) had been misunderstood.

When the Soviet 1944 summer offensive began, the children were ordered to wreck the whole village. They filled wells with sand or rendered them unusable by dumping litter and fuel cans into them. Fields and orchards were torched. Also, the villagers’ gardens were destroyed, windows smashed, and household goods burned. The German troops withdrew, and the overseers quickly abandoned the camp. The children were left behind and dispersed.²⁰

After the war, the Soviets held a show trial in Briansk for Generalleutnant Adolf Hamann, the commandant of Bobruisk when the city fell to the Red Army in 1944. Among other crimes, they accused him of complicity in the deportation of children to the camp in Skobrovka. He labeled the children’s village as a recreation camp,²¹ but the court believed it to have been a sort of concentration camp where Soviet children were abused as blood donors and killed deliberately. Hamann was convicted and publicly hanged on December 30, 1945.