East German Hospital Reportedly Used to Drown Tiniest Newborns

Some premature babies born at a hospital in former East Germany were drowned and officially listed as “abortions,” a newsmagazine reported Saturday.

According to Der Spiegel, the drownings were carried out in the city of Erfurt, where the hospital director was quoted as saying he assumed it was standard practice nationwide because of the lack of medical equipment to keep the small babies alive.

The victims were babies weighing less than 2.2 pounds. The practice ended at the Erfurt hospital in the early 1980s, said the report, which will appear in Der Spiegel’s Monday editions.

Der Spiegel said listing the killings as abortions helped improve East Germany’s live birth statistics. The magazine did not provide an estimate of how many babies were killed.

A midwife who had worked at Erfurt’s Women’s Hospital in the 1960s and returned to work there in 1982 was quoted as saying she had often witnessed the drowning of weak, underweight babies in buckets of water.

When she found the practice still in use in 1982, she complained to the hospital director.

The magazine quoted the hospital director, Erich Wagner, as saying he immediately issued a written order to ban the practice.

“I was against this water method because every child, regardless how old, must have a chance,” he was quoted as saying.