Children of forced labourers born on Third Reich territory posed a problem for the German slave labour system. By order of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler of 27 July 1943. 'on the treatment of pregnant foreign female workers and children born of these workers', children of 'racial worthlessness' - primarily from Poland and the Soviet Union - were to be sent to centres for the care of foreign children. Newborns were taken away from their mothers, who had to return to work immediately. The care of the children placed in the orphanages was reduced to a minimum, and the allotted insufficient food rations resulted in the slow death of the children from starvation and deliberate neglect.

The "Lindenhof" orphanage in Spital am Pyhrn operated from March 1943 until January 1945. It was the largest centre of its kind in the "Oberdonau" district, which covered most of what is now Lower Austria. It is estimated that 97 children were admitted to Lindenhof between June 1943 and January 1945. It was established that 36 children, mostly Polish and Ukrainian, died. Today, the personalities of only some of them are known. The deceased children were buried unnamed in the local cemetery around the St. Leonhard Church.

The names of the children who died in the Lindenhof orphanage come from the database strat.pl. According to the data there, several children staying at the orphanage died in Steyr. It is not known where they were buried.

In 2012, a plaque in Polish and German dedicated to the deceased children was unveiled on the southern wall of the church in Spital am Phyrn, placed there through the efforts of the Council for the Protection of Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom and the Polish Embassy in Vienna. It bears the text: "To the memory of the Polish infants/ taken from their mothers/ forced labourers/ who died in Spital am Pyhrn/ in 1943./ Zum Gedenken an die polnischen Säulinge/ die ihren Müttern/ den Zwangsarbeiterinnen weggenommen wurden/ und im Jahr 1943 in Spital am Pyhrn/ starbe/ Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa w Warszawie/ Rat zur Bewahrung des Gedenksens an Kampfs und Martyrium/ in Warschau/ 2012 ".

Next to it is a plaque in German: "Zum Gedenken an die Säulinge und Kleinkinder ausländischer Zwangsarbeiterinnen,/ die in den Jahren 1943-1945/ im nationalsozilistischen / "Fremdvölkischen Säulingsheim"/ in Spital am Pyhrn/ durch Vernachlässigung/ ums Leben Kamen/ Das Land Oberösterreich" (In memory of the infants and young children of foreign forced labourers/ who lost their lives through negligence between 1943 and 1945 in the National Socialist orphanage for children of foreign nationality in Spital am Pyhrn. Land Upper Austria).

Photos of plaques: Isiwal, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Filialkirche_Hl._Leonhard_(Spital_am_Pyhrn)?uselang=de