A Microhistory of Rurality, Nazism, and Youth Sexuality. Romanian Reports of a Medical Examination Conducted on the German Youth of Orţişoara (1942)

Abstract As part of a pronatalist propaganda campaign taken by the German Ethnic Group of Romania in 1942, two members of the organization, a doctor and a woman, went to the predominantly German village known as Orţişoara in Romanian and Orzydorf in German under the guise of conducting a medical examination for the German girls aged 16 and boys aged 18. Upon arrival, they had the participants undress and stand naked during the examination. After the examination ended, the woman delivered a speech in which she urged the girls to have children, regardless of who the father was, and that there was no shame for girls so young to be pregnant. After her oration, a majority of the teenagers allegedly went to the backyard of the community center where they engaged in sexual intercourse. The only sources that mention this event are the reports of the local gendarmes and the testimonies given by four Romanian villagers. Using discourse analysis as an approach, this paper argues that the German Ethnic Group of Romania instrumentalized sexuality as a means by which to distance the youth from the Roman-Catholic Church and make them more committed National Socialists.