Foreword to Broken Future
by Lidia Beccaria Rolfi and Bruno Maida

The international year of the child, 1979, ended with many words and commitments but few results. The fact that the collective conscience of all countries felt the need for such a celebration is in itself a depressing symptom. Obviously, the year of the child originated in a widespread feeling of guilt, in the awareness that to this day, even in the most advanced countries, there is no feeling of reverence toward children, as prescribed by the Gospels, and that adults are preparing, for today’s children, a future full of shadows. And yet love for children is inscribed in us; the proximity of a child, even an unknown child, makes us responsible, brings us joy, strength, and peace of mind. It’s an axiomatic love, unquestionable, a product of our remote evolutionary roots as nurturers of our newborns, but in the human species this love has been enriched with meanings and symbols. To us, the child is (or should be) the embodiment of innocence, of the boundless potential that can turn into anything, of the blank slate on which anything can be written.

There is and has been no civilization that hasn’t acknowledged and exalted this love, with the exception of the “civilization” established by National Socialism in the heart of Europe. On this point, as on many others, Nazism has become an unavoidable term of comparison, as “what shouldn’t happen,” and yet did happen. Its seeds survive, and Lidia Rolfi recognizes them under many guises in the world we live in. They are always, invariably, negative, precisely what is and shouldn’t be: the negation in deeds of the morality proclaimed in words.

But at the time of the Nazis words and deeds were consistent. The most unbelievable pages of this book come from Nazi sources, and they not only concern the treatment reserved for children of little or no “biological value” (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs) but extend the reach of violence to the children of pure Aryan and German blood. Of course, it’s a different kind of violence: not a drop of German blood must be lost; rather, it must be reclaimed whenever it has been mixed with less noble blood. In Poland, in Bohemia, in Ukraine, children who, according to the Handbook of Germanization, had the requisite genetic features were snatched from their parents and entrusted to German families or to the Lebensborn organization. As I said, this information—order sheets, treatises, even legal regulations—comes from German sources. Some remained in a nebulous draft state, because of their intrinsic absurdity; others were implemented with a maniacal and paranoid diligence that makes one wonder, considering that the fundamental feature required to qualify as a pure German was blond hair, while Hitler and his champion Himmler had brown hair.

In other words, children are subjected to a hierarchy of behaviors, on different levels, but with a single inspiration, which is to extend to the human species the practices of zootechnics. As if man, including National Socialist man, had no mind, no memory, feelings, or passions, and were nothing but living matter, to be accepted or rejected according to its appearance. Children of Germanic blood must become warriors if male, makers of warriors if female. “Germanizable” children must be Germanized. All others, according to their country of origin and their “race,” must be made to work, starting at the age of ten, deprived of any education, used in the Lager as guinea pigs in so-called medical experiments. Gypsies are to be confined to the Lager and later killed, Jews killed even before entering the Lager.

I don’t think that facilities for mass slaughter like those of the Nazis exist anywhere in the world today, nor do clear plans for genocide, immediate or deferred, like the ones described in this terrible book. However, children continue to suffer and die by the millions from hunger and disease, or are caught in the meshes of incomprehensible and cruel wars. As long as this happens, pages such as these must be read, even if they cannot be read without anguish: they are vital nourishment for those who wish to watch over the conscience and the future of the world.

Foreword to Il futuro spezzato: I bambini nei lager nazisti (Broken
Future: Children in the Nazi Camps), by Lucia Beccaria Rolfi and Bruno
Maida (Florence: La Giuntina, 1997); written in 1980