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Stolen children of the GDR

A rough estimate (because there are still no reliable statistics) is that somewhere between several hundred and as many as 2,000 East German children fell victim to politically motivated forced adoptions. In East Germany, the state expected parents to teach their children the principles of communism and loyalty to the regime. If the parents spoke against that regime or attempted to flee the country to the West – they were “unfit” to raise their children properly and the state “stepped in”.

Stolen children of the GDR
Stolen children of the GDR

Children, from newborns to those of primary school age, were forcefully taken from their parents. Many mothers were, shortly after giving birth, told that their babies had died but were then prevented from seeing the body. Children were put into foster or adoptive homes. Only couples who were loyal to the party were considered as adoptive parents. The East German Ministry of Education was in charge of those forced adoptions, and the Head of that Ministry (from 1963 to 1989) was none other than the Margot Honecker, the wife of Erich Honecker, who was the Head of State for most of that time.

Only after the collapse of East Germany in 1989 did many of these forced adoption cases come to light. Today, an organization called “Stolen Children of East Germany”, which has more than 1,700 members, is fighting for an official investigation and access to archives to find out what happened to their children.

See a documentary film, “East Germany’s Stolen Children” on YouTube or listen to a tragic audio story, “What happened to Christoph?” (the boy in the photo).