One Tiny Little Glimpse Into the European Soul


Children of the DDR in the ’70s

The video and article below concern the daycare system that was used in the German Democratic Republic (DDR, commonly known as East Germany) until the fall of the Wall.

Note: When I was editing the text, I had a lot of trouble picking out a phrase (adjusted from the translation) to render the all-week overnight daycare that was standard practice in the DDR. The Germans have a phrase for it, but we don’t have an equivalent, as far as I know. So the phrase I coined — “weeklong daycare” — was simply the best expedient I could think of.

Nash Montana, who translated the material, includes this explanatory note about German TV programming:

German TV is keen on reenactments of dramatic scenes, so every scene in this video is reenacted. It’s not real, but just for dramatic effect.

On TV they re-enact entire court cases from family and criminal court. For instance, the “Judge Judy” equivalent on German TV has every case re-enacted — it’s really horrible, not just because of the bad acting but because it’s literally made for 3-year-old children. It’s the worst form of brainwashing I have ever seen, and it happens every day on German TV.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

The accompanying article from Deutschlandfunk Kultur, also translated by Nash:

The weeklong daycare center kids of the DDR

By Lotta Wieden

Many children in the DDR spent their childhood in weeklong daycare centers, often with far-reaching consequences for their adult life. Research that indicated the negative aspects for the development of these children was suppressed in the DDR. Today, the affected children and new research are working out the consequences.

Most of the children are between 40 and 60 years old now. How many were there really? We will never know. To this day there is very little information about this topic. But it is generally believed that in the DDR territory in the years between 1949 to 1989 hundreds of thousands of babies and small children were given to these centers to be taken care of.

The DDR in the ‘50s affirmed that the construction of the socialist society had begun. The six-day work week was the rule, for mothers too. Article 7 of the still-young Constitution said: “Men and women have equal rights. All laws and decisions which are against women’s equal rights are hereby suspended.” But equal rights were only for women, and only at their place of work. And the question of who was going to care for their children was one that hit single mothers especially hard.


Until 1965 the DDR functioned under the six-day work week rule, even for mothers

Research under pressure

Within five years, so the Constitution said, the DDR had to establish 160,000 kindergarten seats, 40,000 daycare seats, and 60,000 care seats for babies and toddlers. As a consequence, the number of weeklong care centers alone for babies and toddlers rose from 2,500 in the year 1950 to about 14,300 in the year 1955. Ten years later in 1965, Statistics show 37,900 for weeklong care centers for children under the age of three. And the entire massive expansion was accompanied by an equally massive daily propaganda machine. Until the mid-’60s these toddler weeklong care centers were propagandized as equal, if not the better alternative, to familial care.

The mid-’50s the East Berlin Humboldt University began with the first scientific examination into the development of care center children of the DDR. The leading doctor is Eva Schmidt-Kolmer who later became the director of the Institute for the Hygiene of Children and Youths in Berlin. She had documented the development of more than 1,700 children between the ages of zero and three. The random sample group had 440 weeklong care center kids in it. It was examined how well children could orient themselves and move about in a room, and how far their speech and vocabulary and their social skills were developed. The results of that examination revealed grave deficits among the weeklong care center kids in all of the tested subjects.

Mommy as the stranger

Only a few years later such interpretations were almost completely removed from the DDR scientific literature. As well as [studies of] the various forms of institutionalization, which also disappeared: Small children staring blankly ahead, rocking their upper bodies back and forth, or turning their heads side to side in their little cribs — such things couldn’t be shown or written about anymore after the building of the Wall.

René Grünewald spent the first few years of his life in a weeklong care center. Just how deeply this time has marked the now 46-year-old is hard to say today. He doesn’t have any memory of it. But he does remember the day his time in the center suddenly ended: “I was at the weeklong care center for three and a half years, and I can remember the day when I was told that I didn’t have to go back there again. It was a day where I rode my tricycle all by myself in the back of a Berlin courtyard, in front of a garage. And in a loop I said to myself that that woman was my mommy, and that I was living there. That was a very unrealistic feeling, because the woman who had given birth to me and then took me to her apartment, to me she was a strange woman.”

Promises made to DDR society

Were DDR parents just especially heartless? Karsten Laudien, professor of the evangelical college Berlin, has done research about the history of the DDR and the way it raised its children. He is skeptical. He says one should not forget that the DDR made grand promises, especially for women: the promise to co-create and to co-determine, professional self-determination, and financial independence. Modern women who didn’t just want to just give up their place in society of course — unlike West Germans — went to work. And finally: Even the way children were looked upon had changed drastically. They morphed from being the object of parental control to the subject whose optimal developmental chances for many parents stood at the center of their existence. The rest was ideology.

[Photo of holding hands (not used), caption: Developmental/educational theory in the DDR was suppressed]

Up until the ‘80s developmental/educational theory in the DDR was suppressed, which primarily said that a child’s need for intense emotional closeness is inherent. And that without such closeness, a child can’t develop optimally. At least the direct propaganda for weeklong care centers in the DDR had drastically been reduced by the mid-’60s, but what remained was the ideal picture of full-time working parents and the double burden for women.

The pedagogue and lecturer Ute Stary begins from the premise that hundreds of thousands of children who were taken and raised in weeklong care centers today are between the ages of 40 and 60 years old. Even as a student she wanted to know: What consequences did the DDR care centers leave behind? It was a question that she had investigated in numerous individual one-on-one interviews:

“They tell of difficult relationships to their biological parents, that they experience that relationship as rather tense, this feeling that for the most part they are foreign to each other. And also they speak of difficulties in getting into and maintaining relationships, and most of all in meeting the needs of their own children.”

Competence advantage of the educators

Ute Stray had published the results of her investigation in a textbook. Further scientific research on the topic of weeklong care centers doesn’t exist at this point, unfortunately. It’s a shame, Ute says, because it would be helpful, especially now when the federal ministry heavily invests in these 24-hour Kitas (daycares) and in the so-called unusual hours of evenings and nights.

In 1968 a manual appeared in the DDR entitled “Pedogogical duties and practices of care centers”. The manual contained mandatory educational duties for each individual quarter-year of life for children. With its help the pedagogical program had been increasingly harmonized in child and weeklong care centers. Everywhere in the country the same daily plans were applied. The educators had “to exert influence” that sleeping and eating times were maintained even on weekends when children were at home. Special emphasis was put on an “imperative necessity” for a synchronized process between the care centers and the parental home. And so each month the educators were a step ahead in competence when dealing with their own children.

Says the researcher Lauen: “No generation believes that they do wrong. Everybody puts in great efforts. All humans believe and want to believe that what they are doing is the right thing to do. The question that always remains is, can you establish interesting thoughts: for instance, is it something that you would do today? And why would you do it today? And can one live with the fact that today we have a different yardstick — without judging others? Can we reconcile with that?”

An afterword from Nash Montana:

I have long maintained that day care centers even here in the United States are part and parcel of brainwashing children into a society that does not want individuality nor individual thought and feeling. I have seen with my own eyes the difference between children who were raised in daycare and those raised at home with their parents. My daughter is a home-raised child. She is empathetic and warm. She goes to a private school that teaches classical education, including Latin. She is miles ahead of her peers who go to public school, even though her IQ is not specifically higher than any regular child. She’s not a genius. She’s just raised NORMALLY.

I remember when I was growing up in Switzerland, we too had these weeklong daycare centers. Where parents dropped off their kid for the entire week, and they only got to come home on the weekends. It wasn’t because Switzerland was a socialist country like the DDR. It was because parents COULD.

I had friends in school who saw their parents only on the weekend. I always felt sad for them. I grew up as an adopted child. I know all about loss. I was four when I was ripped away from my mother’s arms into the foster-care system, and then later on I was adopted by my family, who were loving and took good care of me. I understood back then that my mother wasn’t able to raise me, and I never felt that the people who raised me weren’t the right people for me. They were. They did everything right, and I had a mom who stayed home while Dad worked. I had three brothers and a sister.

But I heavily doubted a system that so nonchalantly could decide that a woman is not able to raise her child, and therefore you take it away from her and put it into the foster-care system. My birth mother never was right in the head; I know that. The first four years of my life were marked by social depravity, and it was a hot mess. My bathroom was the balcony of our apartment, for instance. I have memories of using it for my potty place, like a puppy. I didn’t speak until after I was taken from her; all I did was bark. Every day my birth mother had people over and they did drugs and God only knows what. All I remember is a lot of naked people everywhere all the time in a tiny apartment.

Europe was a [sump] then, and it is a [sump] now. Socialism has made every country into a Socialist [sump], even if most countries didn’t operate under a Socialist regime like the DDR. I have a deep-seated hatred for anything even remotely Socialist. It’s why I want to punch college kids in the face when they tell me Socialism is the way. I want to punch them until they’re on the ground and then I want to stomp them into the ground. And for good measure, I want to run them over with my 3500 MEGA CAB DODGE DIESEL DUALLY.

But I digress…

Fast-forward to today. Well, first, look at these broken women in that short video clip. They all are unable to make and sustain meaningful connections. I mean, I’m sure they have children of their own now and they probably did a lot of things a lot more right than their parents could. Their parents had no choice; they were mere wheels in the Socialist machine called the DDR. But fast-forward now to today in Germany. How do you think Germany has let itself become the paradise for all the scum of the earth? People always ask me: why are Germans so dumb? Because they’re really not dumb; I mean, look at the cars they build, and what about German ingenuity and perfection?

I always only have one answer: Socialism. You can take the Socialism out of a country, but you can’t take the country out of Socialism. It stays with the people, like cancer. And like cancer, it could come back any day, as it will always be right there under the surface.

A few days ago I translated a video of man-in-the-street interviews and I noted in Gates of Vienna comments that the number one thing that stood out for me was how Germans said, “as long as those refugees don’t draw attention” or the famous “as long as they obey the law”. Those were the two number one concerns Germans have with newcomers. It’s not that these millions of Muslim invaders take away German culture and destroy everything good and decent. No. It’s that they shouldn’t draw attention. Just like children in olden days. They should be seen but not heard. Because that’s how they were raised, these Germans. That is exactly how we Europeans have been raised.

There is a reason so many people left for the promised land a long time ago, and ended up on Ellis Island. Europe was oppressive then, and it is oppressive now. It is one big continent filled with oppression and a constant soundtrack of “behave yourself”, “don’t draw attention”, “obey and follow”. It is the reason I left Switzerland. But the eye-opening reality only really hit me once I went back to Switzerland with my family, presumably to live there and give my daughter a good Swiss education, or what I thought was good education. Needless to say I had completely underestimated the transformation that my home country had made in the twenty years since I left.

When we arrived back in Switzerland in December of 2013, within two weeks I wanted to go home to Montana. So many examples. Like walking my Golden Retriever dog Joy on a trail, throwing her a ball, only to be yelled at by someone that this trail was only for walking not for playing! Riding my mom’s horse with a giant garbage bag because it is your duty to pick up horse apples. Never to use your car, even when it’s freezing cold out or blistering hot, when all you want to do is throw a letter in the box by the post office.

There are no drive-throughs because that’s American and we don’t want that. Wanting to get some variety for home shopping became a difficult task that involved driving a lot of miles from one town to the next because every store only has one brand and that’s it. And then you can’t just buy the TV or the washing machine that you dream of; no, you have to buy the one that is acceptable in the apartment you live in or that is acceptable in the local community.

The smallness of everything, including minds, is astonishing. But not so much when you realize: Feudalism. Socialism. Fascism. In that order. In everyone’s heads. Not just back in the DDR. These are constructs that are deeply engrained in the European soul.

I always said: it doesn’t matter once Obama steps down in the USA, because now everyone is Obama in the White House. And of course, I was right to a degree, though the great disruptor Trump has kind of put a stop to that. We’ve actually got a bit of a break until the next Democrat president, and then there will be hell to pay. But at least we have a CHOICE for now!

Now imagine every single European country. They don’t have these choices. This was all taken away from them a long time ago. They only think they have choices. Americans only think we have choices, too, but we actually still do have choices, such as the Second Amendment. Sure, it’s a joke; the Constitution has been shredded, yada yada, but I need to constantly remind my American brethren that the USA is INDEED NOT yet where Sweden is, or Germany, or France. We’re headed there, but NOT YET! We always still have that small glimmer of hope. The glimmer that has long been extinguished for Europeans in Europe. And under the Eye of Sauron, they are now watched and controlled in every step they take.

So the reason I translated this video, even though there is nothing in there about the refugee “crisis” in Germany, is precisely because it gives you answers as to WHY and WHAT is going on in Germany today, in a small way. I leave it up to your imagination as to how to interpret it all. This is just one tiny little glimpse into the European soul.

If you think this is just a glimpse into the German DDR soul, you’re wrong. And if you want to have a look into the future of what your kids and grandkids will face should there be a Democrat president after Trump, here it is.

But I’m sure won’t be so bad. After all, Socialism hasn’t really been tried yet the way it should. This time we’ll get it right. Right?

Video transcript:

0:03   I grew up in a weeklong daycare group.
0:06   The biggest feeling that I got from this… facility
0:09   was the feeling of being abandoned,
0:12   and that felt like mortal terror.
0:18   I believe this is…
0:21   …absolutely impossible to even replace parental proximity.
0:24   You are not the mother. You’re the care worker.
0:28   It was in 1973,
0:31   in September, I gave him to a weeklong daycare.
0:34   I’ve always blamed myself a bit
0:37   For doing that.
0:43   I believe what I missed most was affection,
0:46   …love…
0:49   …warmth…
0:52   and until my parents died,
0:55   they were strangers to me, anyway.
1:01   When parents are strangers.
1:04   Heike Liebsch was given to a weeklong daycare
1:07   in 1964 in Dresden. She was barely
1:10   six weeks old.
1:13   My mother worked at the police,
1:16   and my father was a factory shift worker, and therefore it was
1:19   already a given that they couldn’t take care of me all day.
1:22   For these reasons it was decided
1:25   that the weeklong daycare would be the best solution.
1:30   For the state too. Because according to
1:33   the DDR Constitution it was said that each person had the right,
1:36   but also the duty, to work and to offer their labour power to the collective.
1:39   That was the reason more than 100,000 children
1:42   were living in weeklong daycares.
1:46   Heike was one of them.
1:49   She was looked after by care workers from Monday morning 7am
1:52   until Friday evening at 6pm, but they were foreigners to her.
1:55   Her parents only picked her up on the weekends.
2:02   We spent the whole day together,
2:05   the whole night,
2:08   and that meant that at night, basically we were alone,
2:11   in the large dorm room, but that there would be
2:14   someone with us to read us a book
2:17   or to chase away the monsters of the night, that didn’t happen.
2:20   And so, how can a child escape from that?
2:32   Little Heike escaped by withdrawing into herself.
2:35   She was a very quiet child, and didn’t start talking
2:38   until she was two and a half years old.
2:41   Why should I talk? For what reason? I think that
2:44   there simply was no need for me to try
2:47   to communicate with anyone because
2:50   I had already learned that nothing came of it,
2:53   because… such a small child just doesn’t have
2:56   the ability to express its needs, other than to cry (scream),
2:59   and to quickly learn that crying
3:02   doesn’t do anything but create problems,
3:05   and so you stop crying (screaming)
3:08   and you become good.
3:11   In four years of weeklong daycare Heike learns
3:14   that her needs are only being met when the care workers
3:17   aren’t currently busy caring for one of the many other children.
3:20   She experiences daily what it feels like to be left alone.
3:23   That has left a deep mark.
3:29   I do think that this experience of disappointment…
3:32   the fact that someone isn’t there when I have the need
3:35   for someone to be there, that that leads to the feeling
3:38   of, OK, I can’t depend on anyone but myself.
3:41   I can remember clearly as I got older, when my parents would go out
3:44   in the evening, when I was already 14 years old or so,
3:47   that I would stand there by the window the entire time until they came back.
3:50   The emotional and sensitive care,
3:53   to be in physical and emotional contact with the baby,
3:56   that just isn’t possible in that way of course,
3:59   it’s not like when the mother or the father
4:02   can have one on one contact with the child.
4:05   Therefore the children aren’t emotionally taken care of very well,
4:08   and that in turn leads to complications in their emotional
4:11   and psychological development later in life.
4:14   Doris Schiller studies engineering.
4:17   She learned engineering theory in Eisleben [famous as Martin Luther’s hometown],
4:20   and applied engineering in Leipzig.
4:23   Therefore, because she couldn’t be home every night,
4:26   the single mother had to make a decision.
4:29   Either to quit her study, or to bring her son to a weeklong daycare.
4:32   The decision, especially when
4:35   you have to carry it by yourself, too,
4:38   it is very very difficult, I just have to say.
4:41   And I…
4:44   how should I say that… I was not… happy about that.
4:47   I can honestly say that.
4:50   Even today it’s hard for me to think about it,
4:53   but… it’s just how it was then.
4:56   I had to make a decision and live with it.
4:59   When her son turned four months, the time came.
5:02   Time for goodbye and giving him to the weeklong daycare.
5:05   It was a ritual of goodbyes that from now on
5:08   would repeat itself for the next year every Monday.
5:11   He would grab onto my neck,
5:14   early every Monday morning,
5:17   and it was… it was terrible, and then,
5:20   someone would take the child away from you.
5:23   And he would reach out with his tiny little arms to me
5:26   but… I couldn’t keep him. We both cried.
5:29   He cried because some stranger aunt suddenly
5:32   took him in her arms, and I cried because I had to let him go…
5:35   With help of the weeklong care Doris Schiller
5:38   could successfully graduate from her studies.
5:41   But in her thoughts she was always with her son.
5:44   This was a permanent longing, thinking what’s he doing right now,
5:47   how is he being treated, and so on,
5:50   and sometimes he was… very sore, and…
5:53   then…
5:56   I had always him back only on the weekends,
5:59   to make sure that his skin could…
6:02   heal again…
6:05   And that was — it really bothered you.
6:08   You’re constantly worried, anyway,
6:11   when your own child is in foreign hands.
6:14   Because… I asked myself all the time,
6:17   did they take proper care of him?
6:21   The time in the care center has left deep marks
6:24   On mother and son.
6:27   He would look at me like I was a stranger.
6:30   And that in turn was very painful again,
6:33   and then, sure, at home we
6:36   would be together day and night, hour after hour,
6:39   where I’d take care of him, and it would come back to him
6:42   that I was his mommy, but that too took its time,
6:45   and so it was always one goodbye after another goodbye
6:48   it was very hard for both of us.
6:51   Mother and son survived this only
6:54   because Doris Schiller tried to keep him with her at home as much as she could.
6:57   She worked longer hours in the evenings,
7:00   so that she could pick him up a day earlier, on Thursday, from the care center.
7:03   And during her semester vacations she always had him with her the entire time.
7:09   Ulrike Weichelt worked as an educator in the ’80s
7:12   in a week kindergarten in Potsdam.
7:15   She took care of 12 children daily, in changing shifts.
7:21   It was impossible. This…
7:24   individual attention,
7:27   to pat them all on the head…
7:30   or to…
7:33   tell one kid one more personal story,
7:36   to sing a song, you would realize very quickly
7:39   that the other kids immediately got jealous,
7:42   and they wanted more attention too,
7:45   and that… it was always the most difficult thing for me,
7:48   and children who were more quiet, and who were sad,
7:51   they were just kind of left by the wayside.
7:54   The daily routine followed a strict educational plan.
7:57   All children had to do the same things at the exact same time.
8:00   This really was said in those education plans.
8:03   We always had to turn these plans in to our head manageress,
8:06   and so we were strictly controlled too, whether everything was correct,
8:09   what we did, and what we wrote in there.
8:12   In there it said that at age four one learns
8:15   how to paint a tree,
8:18   and the tree has a trunk, which is brown,
8:21   and then the branches, which are also brown,
8:24   and then there are leaves and they are green, and then, that is a tree.
8:27   I’m sure each child could’ve figured out
8:30   how to paint a tree for themselves.
8:33   In the DDR, there was a clearly defined image of humanity,
8:36   and how a child in every age at every stage
8:39   was supposed to have developed.
8:42   All totalitarian regimes
8:45   pay very detailed attention
8:48   that there is no individual education,
8:51   but that there is a collective pre-determined rhythm,
8:54   because in classical fashion children will then assimilate,
8:57   and will be moldable in all their other needs very easily as well,
9:00   and that of course provides a big advantage later on
9:03   as they are asked to become assimilated and obedient citizens
9:06   for the state and its organizations.
9:12   Silent, Peterle, Silent…
9:15   the moon
9:18   is going to travel…
9:21   “Silent Peterle Silent” that was a… this good-night song
9:24   that was sung to us,
9:27   I also remember a garden, and trees,
9:30   and the moonlight in this big dorm room,
9:33   Silent, Peterle, Silent…
9:36   Probably when one…
9:39   is in one of those
9:42   weeklong daycare centers,
9:45   and…. lies in bed…
9:48   then probably that is really the time
9:51   when one misses the parents and home the most.
9:57   And… that is why that song is so haunting.
10:00   This nursery song…
10:03   it certainly was a sad feeling.
10:09   Renate Wullstein was three years old in 1955 when
10:12   she was taken to the week kindergarten center at Villa Schöningen
10:15   in Potsdam. Her parents were studying;
10:18   they had no time during the week to care for their daughter.
10:30   This must have been the headmistress
10:33   of the Villa Schöningen.
10:36   When I see myself, it makes me think
10:39   that child is much too small, that girl. [whispers: Renate]
10:45   What I was missing was,
10:48   very bluntly, love.
10:51   I did not get to know that,
10:54   and I can say that even today
10:57   with certainty that this is what’s been missing for me.
11:00   Back then… I didn’t know what it meant.
11:03   Renate was longing for contact.
11:06   Every day. Even daily little things like tying her shoe laces
11:09   became for her a replacement.
11:12   I remember how I would sit
11:15   on the bedside cabinet, it was downright physically comfortable,
11:18   how my shoes were… how I received this attention,
11:21   when my shoes were tied.
11:24   I mean, they didn’t caress me, or touch me,
11:27   it was only the tying of my shoe laces,
11:30   but I know that to me this is an extremely
11:33   pleasant memory, and I believe I had also
11:36   thought that I was the only one
11:39   whose shoes were tied and…
11:42   that I was unique, and I was being paid attention to.
11:45   To feel unique, instead of
11:48   being one among many.
11:51   For Renate it would’ve been so important.
11:54   I remember that all of us always had to
11:57   do everything at the same time, like the toilet,
12:00   at a certain time, now everyone goes to the toilet,
12:03   and all… together… brush their teeth,
12:06   and it was somehow something that really bothered me…
12:09   When all are the same,
12:12   the individual is unseen. Heike Liebsch assimilated.
12:15   She didn’t even try to draw attention. Even today.
12:18   Even today.
12:21   I’m thinking that this locking up of feelings
12:24   for me is a life-saving measure.
12:27   Fear of disappointment, fear of…
12:30   dangers of all kinds… fear of myself…
12:33   those are my main fears, and…
12:36   of course this entails that if one gets disappointed
12:39   that one could get angry,
12:42   but if I show anger then that means very clearly
12:45   that if I show this anger the other person
12:48   will cut me off, cut contact off, so I will not show anger.
12:51   When children grow up under these
12:54   forced collective systems, with this kind of emotional neglect,
12:57   then this is absolutely a form of emotional violence.
13:00   And this has lifelong consequences for them
13:03   on their psychological health,
13:06   the psychological resilience of a person,
13:09   and you can see that even as they are adults.
13:18   I do not know if I will be able to someday cross that barrier
13:21   and to let myself get into a deep relationship with
13:24   another human being, I don’t know that.
13:28   Therefore, loneliness is a price…
13:31   that I have to pay for that.
 

39 thoughts on “One Tiny Little Glimpse Into the European Soul

  1. One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them,
    In the land of Mordor where the shadows lie.

    I think that Jack Tolkien was trying to warn us.

  2. This certainly touches a raw nerve in me, I’m in my early 50s I was born and grew up in Leipzig and my oldest memories are those care centers, the staff cold and aloof and how we were treated like like plants, I harbored a deep anger and resentment against my parents for that horrible upbringing, I vowed I’d never raise my kids the way I was raised. I had two daughters and they were and still are very close to me and my husband, I also have a gorgeous granddaughter and to people dismay I love to carry her in my arms , and they often tell me ” isn’t she too old for that?” and I am tempted to reply: No! she is only 3 years old , you moron!

  3. “… I had a lot of trouble picking out a phrase … to render the all-week overnight daycare that was standard practice in the DDR….”

    How about boarding daycare?

    • They wanted to keep them for a week – to counteract possible unwanted political or other influence by the parents. The less time spent with possibly not so reliable parents, the better for Socialists.

  4. Through no fault of my mother’s, I spent my childhood from age three or so to age five in foster homes. The childcare situations were always precarious in one way or another. At age six or so, on the advice of our family doctor (due to my anxiety) my mother reluctantly placed me in an orphanage run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. As soon as I was ten, it was legal to let me stay at home after school until Mother got home from work. Those years were a long haul.

    But I got to go home many weekends (as many as Mother could wrest from the orphanage). I never doubted my mother’s care and concern, or that my brother and I were treasured.

    Years later I read Viktor Frankl’s idea that children can put up with anything as long as they can see/feel a larger meaning. That idea had guided me throughout my childhood, though I didn’t know it. At age six, I set out to find something, anything, each and every day to which I could look forward: wearing my favorite dress, a spelling bee, a new book (new to me) to read. It kept me from falling into a pit of despondency.

  5. Democracy looks good on paper but if its constituents have no cow sense for reality, gravity wins.

    On a few occasions I felt inclined to let people I was talking to know that Germany has given the world something worse than Hitler. Namely Marx and Engels. The reaction was invariably blank stares of incomprehension and backing it up with victim numbers did nothing at all.

  6. “I have seen with my own eyes the difference between children who were raised in daycare and those raised at home with their parents. My daughter is a home-raised child. She is empathetic and warm.” I have to disagree, it has less to do daycares vs home-raising and more with how this or that parent does their job.

    I went to daycare and have no problems socializing, being empathetic, etc. whatsoever. I have many peers that are the same. We are all well educated as well. And I know some women that were home-raised and are some stone-cold […], who only think of themselves, are extremely moody and are generally a great ache in the south regions.

    Hence it has nothing to do with whether the child spends a few hours each day at a daycare or hanging on its mother’s skirt, the difference is made in the time when a parent is a parent. Someone who thinks of children as a nuisance won’t give them what they need no matter how much time they spent together, whilst a caring parent will give their children everything they need even if they only have a few hours for it.

    That said, over here daycares generally aren’t for babies though, because unlike America, our state pays women to look after their children for the first few years. And unlike in the DDR, this system is in place since 1950, got prolonged a few times to promote childbirth and from the earliest days was longer for women who bore twins (or triplets, etc.) or who were single mothers. So most children will be with their mothers for at least the first two (and up to four – or more, if another child is born into the household,) years of their lives.

    • Did your daycare force you to remain for an entire week each and every week?

      I think this is where the problem was in the DDR.

      For 10 years I worked in group homes for the physically and mentally handicapped. We often were able to readily know which folks were raised in the institutions, away from their parents, and who were raised at home with their parents.

      The institutionalised folks often had more emotional and personality disorders.

      • I wasn’t making an argument about the DDR system, Nash compared American daycares with homecare and I made the argument it’s not about attending this type of daycare or not, it’s about the parents doing their job or not when with the child.

        Stashing your kid away for the whole week isn’t exactly good for obvious reasons and the same is then most likely true for the handicapped you mentioned. But then it’s also the same for old folks, their families caring for them vs putting them into an institution. It doesn’t even mean the institution is bad, it simply means the workers there don’t have so much time (and understandably the ability) to spend quality time with every “patient” every day.
        On the other hand I know a case of a single mother with an autistic child and she got the chance to basically send him to a boarding school since he was 9 or so? He would come home for the weekends. And I feel like this was an improvement, because her stress levels went down immensely and she actually looked forward to be with her child during the weekends and the boy’s state also improved, because he was among his own, instead of being “the weird one” among healthy children.
        Generations of Brits grew up just fine at boarding schools too.
        So I would say in some sensitive cases this type of care isn’t bad at all, but it shouldn’t be done at an extremely young age and definitely not in a propaganda-heavy environment.

    • Thanks for your input here.

      I’d just emphasize that it’s a number of things, not just being home raised, that make a child a well rounded human being. Education is one of them.

      There are a lot of factors involved, and I have generalized, I admit it. But general trend and experience proves me right.

      Have to say though, your phrase “Hence it has nothing to do with whether the child spends a few hours each day at a daycare or hanging on its mother’s skirt,” says a lot. “Hanging on to their mother’s skirt” is something that every child does. Didn’t you? No? Good for you, you just turned out peachy anyway.

      I’ve found that people who were raised in daycare tend to become a tad defensive when the topic comes up. Just my opinion.

      • I agree there are many factors involved for a kid to become a proper adult. Even if everything went well in their early childhood, puberty can easily turn it on it’s head, especially if the child gets involved with peers that support unruly behavior. Or if the kid simply decides it’s parents know nothing and it has to rebel just because.

        Haha, doesn’t taking a figure of speech literally make your argument sort of defensive?
        What I meant with “hanging on their mother’s skirt” was, for example, the different level of socialization between children attending daycares and children being home (and maybe go to the playground for an hour or two).

        So neither is particularly good or bad, every parent should be free to decide whether or not they want to use a daycare or raise their child at home, because in the long run this decision has an insignificant influence on the child’s life as long as it’s parents were parents and not just adults living with a small human for a few years.
        And again, just to be sure everyone’s on the same page, I’m comparing home raising with daycares where the child goes only for a few hours every day, not with the week-long type.

  7. And while many East-Germans and other citizens from the former Eastern Bloc are well aware of this dire facts because they witnessed and suffered them first hand, still the Western Socialists, adherants of Statism and Globalists propagate this concept of child care by the state as an ideal.

  8. These sound a lot like classic orphanages. Except that orphanages were designed for children without (effective) parents, and were always regarded as second best.

  9. My mother was the visiting doctor for orphanages in our district.She gave the immunizations and treated the babies and children when they were ill and checked on their general welfare.

    There was a policy that babies could only leave the orphanages to be placed with families when they reached a particular weight .

    My mother tried to persuade the carers to each feed the same babies on every shift so that they could bond and thrive.

    The carers maintained it was impossible to do so.

    There was a lovely family waiting to adopt and a baby just waiting to reach the right weight to be placed with them.

    It was a little girl baby .

    My mother sensed that the baby was suffering from maternal deprivation syndrome as there was no medical reason for her to fail to thrive.

    My mother brought the baby home so that she could give it some mothering.

    I was thrilled to bits .

    I had no idea that she would take the baby back as soon as it turned the corner so to speak.

    I told everyone that the baby was my new sister.

    My mother loved cuddled fed and bathed the new baby.

    I helped change the baby’s nappy.

    And one day I came home from school and Mum had taken the baby back to the orphanage.

    I was extremely disappointed .

    But then a month later we were shopping at the local grocery store and we saw the baby with her new family.

    They were doting on the baby ,totally focused on her beaming with happiness and contentment .

    Mum acted as if all her Christmases had come at once.

    For that was her reward ,to see one of her orphans,loved and cherished by an adoptive family who had waited patiently for years to get to the top of the list.

  10. In disarmed Europe, the socialist/conformist ratchet can be tightened from state to stage until arriving at tyranny. In France, yellow vests can have their eyes or hands blown off, but what can they do? Throw rocks.

    In the USA, our socialists would also enslave us step by step, but thanks to the foresight of our forefathers, they gave us two terrific defense lines: the first and second amendments. Despite MSM throttling and shadowbanning, we can still call our socialists would-be Communist mass murderers. And if they take us too far, we are armed to the teeth like no society in history, especially with long-range rifles.

    The Communists do not always win. They will try to take us there, but unlike Europe, in the USA we will have a full-blown civil war. This is why our socialists hate the 2nd amendment so much. They sense what is going to happen if they push Bubba too far: Bubba will push back, hard.

    • Matt I really hate to disagree with you about Europe, but in Europe, they will have civil war on steroids that will make the Balkans pale in both scope and scale. I am willing to bet that the French army won’t take much more before they remove Macron and company as things continue to spiral out of anyone’s control. The first sign of a French military coup will be when the Legion moves onto French soil, that will be the end of the 4th Republic. As for the Bundeswehr, the German intelligence services are trying their best to keep the military under surveillance and failing miserably at it because the military has come very adept at counter surveillance. Merkel and successor are scared out of their minds on what they will do. It will frankly be a night of the long knives operation and all former and reservist soldiers will be called up and the rest will be history. Then the Purge of all things 3rd world and green party members. That day is a lot closer that anyone could imagine. As for the communist in the US, they will continue to push until they reach that bridge to far, then all h&ll will come lose. God help them if they try to eliminate our President, for the wrath of American patriots I truly believe will then act.

      • G, I doubt that Europe will ever see a “civil war”. Maybe a few pockets here and there that resist, but all in all it’s too far gone. They will adapt to its new masters, as it has in the past.

        • Look at the level of resistance in France with huge violent pro France protests weekend after weekend for months on end led by Frenchmen and women

          Now compare the USA where its crickets.

          Look at the spread of movements like Soldiers of Odin and the Yellow Vests all over Europe.

          Now compare the US where its crickets.

          Compare Europe where despite efforts from globalists most nations have a clear ethnic and cultural identity, even Germans.

          Now the US. There is no us in the US, its a fake nation held together with money and force and when that stops, it has no reason to be.

          I think the US will split or implode into violence and Europe will end up with a nasty reboot.

          For the moment few think its necessary to go full bore all out war , the US got President Trump and Europe is getting more and more nationalist but when it pops?

          It will pop, probably when the US looks too weak to back up the globalists

          • AB Prosper. I disagree with your point about the US and I’ll tell you why. From a strategic level, the major cities in the US are not important and can be cut off and isolated for they are mostly on the east and left coasts and really are irrelevant as most of the food and manufacturing base is in flyover America. Cut off electricity, food and water to these metropolitan areas and restrict travel, they are back to the dark ages. So if or when the US gets a re-boot, I highly doubt it will be something we will recognize once the dust settles, but it will survive since there are millions of vets and patriots who will stand up and do something about the threat to their lives and living by communists do gooders.

        • Nash, First of all, thank you very much for all the great translations you provide, for I do believe everyone here appreciates them. Secondly, I must disagree with your view that western European democracies will fall, and I will explain in short detail. The militaries of both Germany and France are old institutions that rely on the old customs and traditions that go back centuries, democracy is new to the game being less than 100 years old in France and 50 years in Germany, a country split in half by the war and very much different in outlook today. The current governments in both countries are cutting their militaries to the bone, the bloody Luftwaffe can’t even put 5 combat aircraft in the air. The militaries first duty is to their own people and not these 3rd world invaders and they see the writing on the wall and have planned accordingly. When the SHTF shortly, the militaries of both countries will take over the governments and institutions in very short order and commence Purging all those that wrought this against us. Think this can’t or won’t happen? History very much disagrees with you. Just because everyone thinks that we are too advanced and civilized for this to happen, doesn’t mean that one way or another human nature and our tribal instincts won’t come out to play, they will. All it takes is for the 2 per centers to act, another 10% to take over and the rest as they say, will be history. Mark my works my friend Nash, it is coming.

  11. I was told how my father made a huge scandal in the nursery, when he came to pick me up before the due time – the children were unkempt and dirty. Kindergarten workers put us in order only for the arrival of parents. We often got sick. It was in Moscow, where he studied at the academy. This story made him very angry, so he poisoned me in the Crimea – to my grandparents.

    And then I went to kindergarten at the age of five. I can’t say anything bad. I liked the children’s holidays – especially the silver crown and the white dress with a full skirt for the New Year. The food we had was tasty and healthy – not like in Putin’s Russia. (Recently there was a scandal with mass disintheria in the kindergartens of Moscow)
    I do not remember any problems, only the children were terribly annoying – they were naughty and screaming. This behavior in our home was considered indecent. The teachers treated me well, probably because I did not create problems.
    It seems to me that I was such a child, as Vonnegut describes them – they watch and spy on adults.

  12. Such a sad story, reminds me of stories you hear about in Russia with their orphanages. People don’t do very well without care, that’s for sure.

    As to the end of the story, I agree, we have a reprieve right now with Trump, however, he can only have one more term and that’s it. The rest of the Republicans don’t seem to be with him and there doesn’t seem to be any one of them who want to continue on what he’s been doing after him. If a democrat gets in, I agree, it will be bad what they will do to try to put the country “back” to the way they like. He may get a wall built, but who will be the first to tear it down? Everything done, can be undone especially when most in Washington agree.

    Then I think of Bible prophecy…lawlessness will increase and it will be a time unlike any other time in the history of the world…it seems that we are continually living out that time and there will be no human who can stop the increase in lawlessness where good is evil and evil is good. One day Jesus will put an end to this, but we will have to endure to the end….

  13. We have to compare this DDR child rearing with what our evolutionary constraints were for about the last 200-300,000 years. Fact one: our kids need 10-15 yrs of protection or we all disappear, we all go away and the species croaks. Fact two: We have evidence that we all lived in tribes of about 50-150 people. This means that almost all child rearing was done by related family members. Fact three: There is more love and cohesion and cooperation between genetically related people than between strangers.

    Thus we see great differences between this DDR style and what our natural style must have been when we were hunters and gatherers on the savannah or in the bush. …which had to be a lot of actual carrying and lugging around of the kid by the real mom—probably a lot of carrying strapped on the back—with the help of grandmothers and sisters and other children.

    All this:
    Very unnatural. Against our genes. Not following the recipe given us by our evolution. Thus, must have some unpredictable results. Most likely bad outcomes.

  14. Sorry to hear of your experiences, Nash (and Elena, and Dymphna- sorry if I’ve missed anyone).

    Even Israel, which I much admire, made the same mistake in its early days with the kibbutzes; children raised by the community grew up not bonding with their parents properly, and suffered psychological damage as a result.

    • The early kibbutzniks’ political opinions ranged from social democratic to out-and-out Stalinist.

      Even here in America, I’ve heard long-term daycare touted, along with free abortion, as the savior of women.

  15. Of course, it is much better for children to be brought up in the family and not in an institution. However, modern society is organised in such a way that most women have to go out to work and sometimes have no choice but to put their children in daycare institutions. Our society has grown increasingly anti-family and anti-child. If we want to survive as civilisation this has to be changed.

    • What is not done to increase family size is all the evidence we need of the hostility of elite. Tax exemption, cultural affirmation of motherhood, shutting down toxic femininity, non-celebration of homosexuality and abortion, etc. Instead, no such thing BUT rather importation of millions of primitives to solve the problem of demographic decline.

      • Misanthropy at the upper echelons of power must not be permitted to continue, but the individuals are so dissatisfied with collective effort they cannot collectivize even to save their own skins, let alone their posterity.

        Can you envision any satisfactory way out of this fatal dilemma short of divine intervention? I do not.

  16. You’re saying the people in the video are actors? Doesn’t make sense.
    And how is it made for 3-year-olds? I don’t get it.

  17. No. How did you make that leap? The SCENES are re-enactments IN the video, LOL. Did you watch it? Did you not see the “real-time” dramatic moving pictures in the background while the REAL women are talking of babies crying and women dressed in 70’s clothes?
    What I said is that German television is chock full of re-enactment of scenes for reality tv and documentaries. They literally reenact every single documentary which is very creepy, bad acting aside. They love the dramatic. The moving pictures so that even 3 year olds can get it. That’s all I’m saying, lol.

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