Ex-nazis ‘ran scandal-hit children’s health spas’

SENIOR former Nazis were allowed to run German health resorts where children were abused after the Second World War, a documentary claims.

A Nazi doctor accused of sending at least seven children to die under a eugenics programme and a former SS officer who took part in the murder of Lithuanian Jews are featured in the programme. Both were allowed to hold senior positions at children’s health spas in post-war West Germany, the film for ARD television’s Report Mainz found. Until the Eighties, it was common for West German children to be sent to health spas for issues as trivial as bed-wetting or being overweight.

Documentaries uncovered how children were beaten, sedated and injected with drugs. A report broadcast yesterday investigated how former Nazis were in positions of authority at spas until as recently as the Seventies.

Hugo Kraas was a senior SS general and commander of the “Hitler Youth” Panzer Division and knew Hitler and

Goebbels personally. According to the documentary, he was a staunch Nazi until his death. Yet he was appointed director of a spa where children suffered abuse in the North Sea resort of St Peter-ording in 1969, the report claims.

Werner Scheu, another former SS officer, was allowed to run a spa on the nearby island of Borkum in the Fifties.

He was later convicted of war crimes over the shooting of 220 Lithuanian Jews and sentenced to life in prison.

German authorities have pledged to investigate abuse at the health resorts.