The city’s promise sounds convincing: As early as November, a commission is to begin investigating crimes against former children in the home who were in the care of the Munich Youth Welfare Office between 1945 and 1999. The city council emphasizes the importance of shedding light on the dark past and promptly compensating those affected. How true.
But the difficult work is yet to come. Much of the abuse and mistreatment that former children in homes suffered decades ago in city facilities or homes under city supervision can hardly be reconstructed. Files of the youth welfare office? Are thinned out, gone or not even created. The memories of those affected? Often inaccurate. Potential witnesses and perpetrators? No longer tangible or dead. Against this background, it is likely to become extremely complicated to trace structural failures of authorities or even to uncover networks about which perpetrators may exchange information and bring children to each other – which is at least suspected.
The danger is very real that at the end of its work the commission will present a final report that does little more than dig deeper than the reports presented by many institutions of the often (rightly) scolded Catholic Church – albeit a decade ago.
If the commission really wants to contribute a new facet to coming to terms with the crimes against children in care, it is worth not only digging into the past, but also shedding light on the present: Why did the city not react in 2010 when the abuse in church institutions such as also became public in the Odenwald School? How can it be that an investigation report on the municipal facilities was only available four years later? Did the study commissioners really believe in the picture that was drawn there – the picture of a colorful and happy everyday life at home, slightly tarnished by unfortunate individual cases of violence and abuse?
These questions are also central to understanding the deeds of that time. And the chances of answering them would be much greater: there are witnesses and those responsible, they just have to be questioned.