Kinderland ist abgebrannt

The women in this film were all born around 1923 and 10 years old when the Nazis came to power in their native Germany in 1933. At that time, they all attended the same school in the souther German town of Ulm. And they are contemporaries of Sophie Scholl, who had moved Ulm in 1931 with her familiy. It was more than 60 years later, in the mid-1990s, when the women all more than 70 years old, that they agreed to be filmed. On camera, speaking to the daughter of one of their schoolmates, they recall their childhood and adolescence in Southern Germany. When they had entered school, it hadn't mattered whether one was Jewish or Christian, or what political background their parents had. But that changed dramatically in 1933. Within the shortest of time, the vast majority of children and adolescents were integrated into the Hitler Youth and its associations. From now on, Nazi-run organisations influenced the minds of the youth, often more than parents and teachers. The cult of an Aryan German youth was created, and had a massive effect on the children's daily lives with uniforms, marches, songs and group trips, duty missions and sporting events. Those who, according to Nazi ideology, had no place in Germany any longer, were at first excluded, and later viciously persecuted: children from Jewish families or those with communist or social democratic parents.