Dictatorships and authoritarian regimes, be it Nazi Germany, East Germany, Argentina or Russia, have always resorted to using children as weapons. The exhibition in Berlin tells about the tragic fate of abducted children from different countries, including Ukraine.
Leonardo Fossati Ortega traveled from Argentina to Berlin to tell his story in the Bundestag. The story of a kidnapped child. His fate is one of many that can be seen in the exhibition currently taking place at the Berlin City Hall. The organizers were the Federal Foundation for the Development of the SED Dictatorship (Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur) and the Elisabeth-Käsemann-Stiftung Foundation.
When Leonardo was born in 1977, his homeland of Argentina was under the brutal rule of a military dictatorship. His mother Ines was still a teenager and active in a youth organization. Her boyfriend Ruben - Leonardo's father - studied at the university. They became victims of the bloody junta and are still considered missing, most likely killed. Like many other Argentines until the end of the dictatorship in 1983.
“I always doubted my identity”
Leonardo himself grew up among strangers. “I always doubted my identity because my parents, compared to my friends’ parents, were more like grandparents. I also could not find any similarity in their appearance,” he shared his memories. Only as a 20-year-old boy did Leonardo dare to ask his “fathers.” “Then they told me the truth,” he says.
They said a nearby midwife told them that he was the abandoned child of a young woman from La Plata who allegedly did not want to leave her child. Leonardo tried to find a midwife - to no avail. A decisive clue in finding his real relatives was given to him by a friend from a theater school in Buenos Aires, namely, to contact the organization “Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.”
Children abducted and born in prison
This group of brave and courageous women was founded during the military dictatorship and demanded full information from the authorities about the whereabouts of their children and grandchildren who were abducted or born in prison. After the fall of the dictatorship, the "Grannies of the Plaza de Mayo" initiated the creation of a genetic database using blood samples.
This allowed Leonardo to unravel the mystery of his true identity. “My biological family, whose blood was stored in the database, had been searching for me for almost 28 years,” he explained. As an adult, Leonardo met his grandparents. From his biological father there was only one photo left, which is also shown here at the exhibition in Berlin, from his mother - not even this was left.
Many “kidnapped children” are still looking for their parents.
Leonardo is glad that now he knows the truth. “For the first time, I understand the similarities with other people—my family,” he says. About 130 of the approximately 500 children abducted during Argentina's military dictatorship had similar experiences. The fates of others are still unknown, and many will likely remain unknown.
Despite this, Leonardo is not going to fall into hopelessness and sees himself as part of a community of people connected by a common, albeit tragic, fate. “It is very important for us to continue to search, find new friends and establish new close contacts,” says the 46-year-old man.
Place of birth - special camp
Alexander Latotzky is already 75 years old, he is a kidnapped child from Germany. His story in the exhibition is typical of many similar tragic fates that befell many people after the end of World War II in the Soviet occupation zone, and subsequently in the GDR.
Alexander was born in the Bautzen special camp, where his mother was imprisoned on charges of spying for foreign intelligence services. Sentence: 15 years in prison and forced labor. The boy spent the first two years of his life in three different camps, and then he was sent to an orphanage.
His father was deported to Germany by the Nazis.
Only in 1956 was he allowed to return to his mother, who was fired early due to a serious illness. She died at the age of 41, as a direct consequence of her imprisonment. His mother never saw her son's father. He came from Ukraine and was deported by the Nazis to Germany in 1943, that is, at the height of World War II, for forced labor.
“This exhibition is incredibly important to me because I have been trying for decades to draw attention to the plight of children and political prisoners,” Alexander Latotsky told DW. Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, many were certainly interested in this taboo topic, but then attention to this issue faded. “Somehow I get the feeling that people don’t think this issue is that important anymore,” Latotsky says.
The GDR regime threatened forced adoption.
Alexander Latotzky knows from his bitter experience that children are always the weakest members of society. During the socialist dictatorship in the GDR, women were often threatened with forcible deprivation of their maternal rights and their children being adopted by other families if they did not agree to cooperate. In most cases this meant cooperation with the GDR ministry, or “Stasi” for short.
“This is one of many examples of techniques that dictators use again and again to put pressure on their opponents,” Latotzky says.
Alexander Latotsky was born in 1948 in the Soviet special camp Bautzen and was forced to spend many years in orphanages.
Photo: Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung Evelyn Zupke knows many such stories. She is authorized by the German Bundestag for victims of the SED dictatorship. The acronym SED stands for Socialist Unity Party of Germany, whose dominance in East Germany was only overthrown during the peaceful revolution of 1989.
Victims Breaking the Silence
“It always moves me when I talk to victims about what happened to them,” says Evelyn Zupke. – Ending the silence is a great challenge to victims. And great benefit for our society.”
People such as Alexander Latotzky from Germany and Leonardo Fossati Ortega from Argentina illustrate their often abstract life stories. Many of the biographies featured in Berlin's Kidnapped Children exhibition also come from other countries, notably the former Soviet Union, El Salvador and Canada.
Children abducted by Russia from Ukraine
“Forcible divorce of parents and children is not a thing of the past,” says the text panel of the exhibition. “Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, thousands of children have been abducted from eastern Ukraine to Russia. Chinese authorities are deporting Uighur children to re-education camps, and terrorist organizations such as Boko Haram are deliberately kidnapping girls in Nigeria.
The modular principle of the exhibition, which is currently taking place at the Berlin Town Hall, is designed to facilitate its travel from the German capital to other countries around the world.
