Persecution Continues in Germany

Yet another report of homeschooling persecution in Germany comes to us from HSDLA. A related article can be found on the website of the Network for Freedom of Education, headquartered in Nuremberg. Adolph Hitler outlawed home education and that prohibition is still enforced in Germany today. I am so grateful that I live in the United States!

The situation for homeschoolers in Germany is getting worse each week. Just last Thursday, a 17-year old homeschooled girl was forcibly removed from her parent’s custody by over 15 police officers. The homeschooled girl has been place in the child psychiatry unit of the Nuremberg clinic.

Homeschooling is not legal in germany. There are over 40 cases currently in court or being appealed. Christian families are fleeing Germany for safety in nearby countries. The unconscionable treatment of sincere and faithful Christian homeschool families is a sad legacy from Germany’s past. Homeschooling was first banned under Adolf Hitler, and that ban is still enforced today.

Many families who have had their children forcibly taken from their home each day and taken to government school have since fled Germany, but there are still homeschoolers. The latest incident involves 17-year old Melissa Busekros, the girl sent to the Nuremberg psychiatry unit. What is being done to this sensitive girl --- just to set an example of enforcing the compulsory schooling at all costs --- is reprehensible and causing trauma to unassuming and lovable Melissa.

In the summer of 2005, when Melissa was 15, she was told she would have to repeat the seventh grade at the government school because she was failing math and Latin. She had good grades in the rest of her classes, so her parents tutored her at home for those two subjects. When school officials found out, they were angry and then expelled Melissa, so the family began to homeschool full time.

However, the Youth Welfare office then took the family to court because they were homeschooling. Then, on Tuesday, January 30, 2007, social workers and police officers came to the Busekros home and forcibly took Melissa to the child psychiatric unit where she was questioned for four hours before she was returned home. Then two days later, 15 police officers and social workers came to the Busekros home and took Melissa away from her parents by force and places her in the child psychiatric unit.

According to Melissa’s father, Hubert Busekros, this treatment was justified by the psychiatrist’s finding two days previously that Melissa was supposedly developmentally delayed by one year and that she suffered from school phobia.

Nevertheless, one organization concerned with education expressed outrage at the treatment of Melissa Busekro.

“The Netzwerk Bildungsfreiheit [The Network for Freedom of Education] condemns this inconsiderate and totally incommensurate behavior on the part of the officials involved and demands that they give Melissa her freedom and return her to her family immediately,” the group was quoted in an article on its website.

An additional article about this situation can be found at the Free Republic: Police Take Home-Taught Student to Psych Ward.