Nazi birthing centres for foreign workers

Nazi birthing centres for foreign workers
Commemorative plaque at the entrance to the former NSDAP home in Velpke where 76 Polish and 15 Soviet babies were killed by starvation in 1944

During World War II, Nazi birthing centres for foreign workers, known in German as Ausländerkinder-Pflegestätte (literally "foreign children nurseries"), Ostarbeiterkinderpflegestätten ("eastern worker children nurseries"), or Säuglingsheim ("baby home") were German institutions used as stations for abandoned infants, Nazi Party facilities established in the heartland of Nazi Germany for the so-called 'troublesome' babies according to Himmler's decree, the offspring born to foreign women and girls servicing the German war economy, including Polish and Eastern European female forced labour. The babies and children, most of them resulting from rape at the place of enslavement, were abducted en masse between 1943 and 1945. At some locations, up to 90 percent of infants died a torturous death due to calculated neglect (see also Nazi crimes against children.).