ABSTRACT
A spread of nine photos taken by Robert Capa dominates page 37 of the August 13, 1945 edition of LIFE Magazine. The images are of toddlers looking at the camera, six of them more or less preoccupied with food or with eating. Under these photos we fi nd the following caption: “The Hohenhorst [sic] bastards of Himmler’s men are blue-eyed, fl axen and pig fat. They must eat porridge whether they want or not.” This leads into a short comment:
“SUPER BABIES” Illegitimate children of SS men are housed in a German chateau Last fortnight LIFE photographer Robert Capa visited a German chateau which housed a Nazi establishment known as Lebensborn, or “Well-of-Life,” home. At the Hohenhorst Lebensborn home, as in many such institutions in Germany, live dozens of illegitimate babies who have no father or mother but the now-defunct Nazi state. They are the products of an offi cial government policy of encouraging
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illegitimacy to keep up the country’s birth rate. Soldiers going off to war were urged to do their bit, whether married or not. The government promised to care for the illegitimate offspring, to honor and respect unwed mothers. The Nazi bastards at Hohenhorst, aged 2 to 5, are the children of SS men encouraged by Heinrich Himmler to father “super babies.” Grown pig-fat under care and overstuffi ng of Nazi nurses, they now pose for the Allies a problem yet to be solved.1
