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During
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
, around 200,000 ethnic Polish children as well as an unspecified number of children of other ethnicities were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
for purposes of
forced labour Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of ex ...
,
medical experimentation Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietar ...
, or
Germanization Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In ling ...
. An aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children with purportedly
Aryan Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ...
- Nordic traits, who were considered by Nazi officials to be descendants of German settlers who had emigrated to Poland. Those labelled "racially valuable" were forcibly Germanized in centres and then sent to German families and SS Home Schools. An association, "Stolen Children: Forgotten Victims" (''Geraubte Kinder – Vergessene Opfer e.V.''), is active in Germany, representing victims of German kidnapping.


Background

In a well-known speech to his military commanders at Obersalzberg on 22 August 1939, Adolf Hitler condoned the killing without pity or mercy of all men, women, and children of Polish race or language. On 7 November 1939, Hitler decreed that
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
, whose German title at that time was Reichskomissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, would be responsible for policy regarding the population of occupied territories. The plan to kidnap Polish children most likely was created in a document titled ''Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP''. On 25 November 1939, Himmler was sent a 40-page document titled (in English translation) "The issue of the treatment of population in former Polish territories from a racial-political view." The last chapter of the document concerns "racially valuable" Polish children and plans to forcefully acquire them for German plans and purposes: On 15 May 1940, in a document titled (in German) ''Einige Gedanken ueber die Behandlung der Fremdenvoelker im Osten'' ("A Few Thoughts about the Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East"), and in another "top-secret memorandum with limited distribution, dated 25 May 1940", titled (in English translation) "The Treatment of Racial Aliens in the East", Himmler defined special directives for the kidnapping of Polish children. Himmler "also outlined the administration of incorporated Poland and the
General Government The General Government (german: Generalgouvernement, pl, Generalne Gubernatorstwo, uk, Генеральна губернія), also referred to as the General Governorate for the Occupied Polish Region (german: Generalgouvernement für die be ...
, where Poles were to be assigned to compulsory labor, and racially selected children were to be abducted and Germanized." Among Himmler's core points: * In the territory of Poland, only four
grade schools A primary school (in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, and South Africa), junior school (in Australia), elementary school or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ed ...
would remain, in which education would be strictly limited. Children would be taught to count only to 500, to write their own names, and that God commanded Poles to serve Germans. Writing was determined to be unnecessary for the Polish population. * Parents who desired better education for their children would have to apply to the SS and police for a special permit. The permit would be awarded to children deemed "racially valuable". Those children would be taken to Germany to be Germanised. Even then, the fate of each child would be determined by the loyalty and obedience to the German state of his or her parents. A child determined to be "of little racial value" would not receive any further education. * Annual selection would be made every year among children from six to ten years of age according to German racial standards. Children deemed adequately German would be taken to Germany, given new names and further Germanised. The aim of the plan was to destroy " Polish" as an ethnic group, and leave within Poland a considerable slave population to be used up over the next 10 years. Within 15 to 20 years, Poles would be completely eradicated. On 20 June 1940, Hitler approved Himmler's directives, ordering copies to be sent to chief organs of the SS, to
Gauleiter A ''Gauleiter'' () was a regional leader of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as the head of a '' Gau'' or '' Reichsgau''. ''Gauleiter'' was the third-highest rank in the Nazi political leadership, subordinate only to '' Reichsleiter'' and to ...
s in German-occupied territories in Central Europe, and to the governor of General Government, and commanding that the operation of kidnapping Polish children in order to seek Aryan descendants for Germanisation be a priority in those territories. Himmler mused on initiating similar projects in
German-occupied France The Military Administration in France (german: Militärverwaltung in Frankreich; french: Occupation de la France par l'Allemagne) was an interim occupation authority established by Nazi Germany during World War II to administer the occupied z ...
. Hitler's Table Talk records him expressing his belief that "the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
problem" would be best solved by yearly extractions of a number of racially healthy children, chosen from "France's Germanic population". He preferred they be placed in German
boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of " room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exte ...
s, in order to separate them from their "incidental" French nationality, and to make them aware of their "Germanic blood". Hitler responded that the "religious
petit-bourgeois ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological s ...
tendencies of the French people" would make it almost impossible to "salvage the Germanic elements from the claws of the
ruling class In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society. In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the capitalist social class who own the means of production and by ex ...
of that country".Hitler, Adolf; Weinberg, Gerhard L. (2007). ''Hitler's table talk, 1941–1944: his private conversations'', p. 303. Enigma Books.
Martin Bormann Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945) was a German Nazi Party official and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery. He gained immense power by using his position as Adolf Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information ...
believed it to be an ingenious policy, noting it in the document record as a ic"sinister theory!".


Conditions of transfer

The conditions of transfer were very harsh, as the children did not receive food or water for many days. Many children died as a result of suffocation in the summer and cold in the winter.Richard C. Lukas, ''Forgotten Holocaust'' p. 22, . Polish railway workers, often risking their lives, tried to feed the imprisoned children or to give them warm clothes. Sometimes the German guards could be bribed with jewelry or gold to allow the supplies to go through, and in other cases they sold some of the children to Poles. In
Bydgoszcz Bydgoszcz ( , , ; german: Bromberg) is a city in northern Poland, straddling the meeting of the River Vistula with its left-bank tributary, the Brda. With a city population of 339,053 as of December 2021 and an urban agglomeration with mor ...
and
Gdynia Gdynia ( ; ; german: Gdingen (currently), (1939–1945); csb, Gdiniô, , , ) is a city in northern Poland and a seaport on the Baltic Sea coast. With a population of 243,918, it is the 12th-largest city in Poland and the second-largest in th ...
, Poles bought children for 40 Reichsmarks. In some places the German price for a Polish child was 25 zlotys. The children were kidnapped by force, often after their parents had been murdered in concentration camps or shot as "partisans", including a handful of the children of
Lidice Lidice (, german: Liditz) is a municipality and village in Kladno District in the Central Bohemian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 600 inhabitants. Lidice is built near the site of the previous village of the same name, which was co ...
. These children would not be permitted to remain even with other living relatives. Some were purportedly from German soldiers and foreign mothers, and others were declared "German orphans" who had been raised by non-German families. Limited preview.
Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
.
Indeed, orphanages and children's homes, along with children living with foster parents, were among the first groups targeted, in the belief that Poles deliberately and systemically Polonized ethnically German children. Later the children were sent to special centres and institutions or to, as Germans called them, "children education camps" (''Kindererziehungslager''), which, in reality, were selection camps where their "racial values" were tested, their original metrics of birth destroyed, and their Polish names changed to German names, as part of
Germanisation Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, people and culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nationalism went hand in hand. In lin ...
. Those children who were classified as "of little value" were sent to
Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 Nazi concentration camps, concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany, occupied Poland (in a portion annexed int ...
or to
Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The cam ...
.


Selection

The children were placed in special temporary camps of the health department, or
Lebensborn Lebensborn e.V. (literally: "Fount of Life") was an SS-initiated, state-supported, registered association in Nazi Germany with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure" and "hea ...
e.V., called in German ''Kindererziehungslager'' ("children's education camps"). Afterwards they went through special "quality selection" or "racial selection" – a detailed racial examination, combined with psychological tests and medical exams made by experts from
RuSHA The SS Race and Settlement Main Office (''Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS'', RuSHA) was the organization responsible for "safeguarding the racial 'purity' of the SS" within Nazi Germany. One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS p ...
or doctors from Gesundheitsamt (health department). A child's "racial value" would determine to which of 11 racial types it was assigned, including 62 points assessing body proportions, eye colour, hair colour, and the shape of the skull. During this testing process, children were divided into three groups (in English translation): # "desired population growth" (); # "acceptable population growth" (); and # "undesired population growth" (). The failures that could result in a child, otherwise fitting all racial criteria, into the second group included such traits as "round-headed" referring to the skull shape. Children could be declared the third group for
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, ...
, "degenerate" skull shape, or for "Gypsy characteristics".Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' pp. 250–251 A girl who was later identified by a small birthmark would have been rejected had the birthmark been much larger. Gitta Sereny
"Stolen Children"
rpt. in ''
Jewish Virtual Library Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...
'' (
American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise , native_name_lang = , image = , caption = , population = 110,000–150,000 , popplace = New York metropolitan area, Los Angeles metropolitan area, Miami metropolitan area, and other large metropolitan are ...
). Accessed September 15, 2008. (Reprinted by permission of the author from ''Talk'' ovember 1999)
These racial exams determined the fate of children: whether they would be killed, or sent to concentration camps, or experience other consequences. For example, after forcibly taking a child away from his or her parents, "medical exams" could be performed in secret and in disguise. Many Nazis were astounded at the number of Polish children found to exhibit "Nordic" traits, but assumed that all such children were genuinely German children, who had been
Polonized Polonization (or Polonisation; pl, polonizacja)In Polish historiography, particularly pre-WWII (e.g., L. Wasilewski. As noted in Смалянчук А. Ф. (Smalyanchuk 2001) Паміж краёвасцю і нацыянальнай ідэя� ...
;
Hans Frank Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Par ...
summoned up such views when he declared, "When we see a blue-eyed child we are surprised that he is speaking Polish." Among those children thought to be genuinely German were children whose parents had been executed for resisting Germanization.


German documentation

Once selected, the children between six and twelve were sent to special homes. Their names were altered to similar-sounding German ones. They were compelled to learn German and beaten if they persisted in speaking Polish. They were informed their parents were dead even if they were not. Children who would not learn German or remembered their Polish origin were sent back to youth camps in Poland.Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' p. 250 In some cases, the efforts were so successful that the children lived and died believing themselves to be Germans. The authorities were reluctant to let the children be officially adopted, as the proceedings might reveal their Polish origin. Indeed, some children were maltreated when their adoptive parents learned that they were Polish. Adoption was also problematic because surveillance or more information might reveal problems with the child. When it was learned that Rosalie K's mother was epileptic, for instance, it was immediately concluded, despite the wishes of her German foster parents, that Germanization, education and adoption were therefore not justifiable. When adoptive parents demanded adoption certificates, such records were forged for them.


German medical experiments

Those children who did not pass harsh Nazi exams and criteria and who were therefore selected during the operation, were sent as test subjects for experiments in special centres. Children sent there ranged from eight months to 18 years. Two such centres were located in German-occupied Poland. One of them, Medizinische Kinderheilanstalt, was in
Lubliniec Lubliniec (german: Lublinitz) is a town in southern Poland with 23,784 inhabitants (2019). It is the capital of Lubliniec County, part of Silesian Voivodeship (since 1999); previously it was in Częstochowa Voivodeship (1975–1998). Geograp ...
in
Upper Silesia Upper Silesia ( pl, Górny Śląsk; szl, Gůrny Ślůnsk, Gōrny Ślōnsk; cs, Horní Slezsko; german: Oberschlesien; Silesian German: ; la, Silesia Superior) is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia, locate ...
– in this centre children were also subject to forced "
euthanasia Euthanasia (from el, εὐθανασία 'good death': εὖ, ''eu'' 'well, good' + θάνατος, ''thanatos'' 'death') is the practice of intentionally ending life to eliminate pain and suffering. Different countries have different eut ...
"; while the second was located in
Cieszyn Cieszyn ( , ; cs, Těšín ; german: Teschen; la, Tessin; szl, Ćeszyn) is a border town in southern Poland on the east bank of the Olza River, and the administrative seat of Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship. The town has 33,500 inhabitan ...
. Children were given
psychoactive A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance, that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior. Th ...
drugs, chemicals and other substances for medical tests, although it was generally known that the true purpose of those procedures was their mass extermination.


Murder of Zamość children in Auschwitz

At
Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. I ...
200 to 300 Polish children from the
Zamość Zamość (; yi, זאמאשטש, Zamoshtsh; la, Zamoscia) is a historical city in southeastern Poland. It is situated in the southern part of Lublin Voivodeship, about from Lublin, from Warsaw. In 2021, the population of Zamość was 62,021. ...
area were murdered by the Nazis by
phenol Phenol (also called carbolic acid) is an aromatic organic compound with the molecular formula . It is a white crystalline solid that is volatile. The molecule consists of a phenyl group () bonded to a hydroxy group (). Mildly acidic, it r ...
injections. The child was placed on a stool, occasionally blindfolded with a piece of a towel. The person performing the execution then placed one of his hands on the back of the child's neck and another behind the shoulder blade. As the child's chest was thrust out a long needle was used to inject a toxic dose of phenol into the chest. The children usually died in minutes. A witness described the process as deadly efficient: "As a rule not even a moan would be heard. And they did not wait until the doomed person really died. During his agony, he was taken from both sides under the armpits and thrown into a pile of corpses in another room… And the next victim took his place on the stool." To trick the soon-to-be murdered children into obedience Germans promised them that they would work at a brickyard. However another group of children, young boys by the age of 8 to 12, managed to warn their fellow child inmates by calling for help when they were being killed by the Nazis: "Mamo! Mamo!" ('Mom! Mom!'), the dying screams of the youngsters, were heard by several inmates and made an indelible haunting impression on them.'"


Post-war repatriation efforts

The extent of the program became clear to Allied forces over the course of months, as they found groups of "Germanized" children and became aware that many more were in the German population. Locating these children turned up their stories of forcible instruction in the German language and how the failures were killed. Teams were constituted to search for the children, a particularly important point when dealing with institutions, where a single investigator could only interview a few children before all the rest were coached to provide false information. Many children had to be lured into speaking the truth; as for instance complimenting their German and asking how long they had spoken it, and only when told that a nine-year-old had spoken German for four years, pointing out that they must have spoken before then, whereupon the child could be brought to admit to having spoken Polish. Some children suffered emotional trauma when they were removed from their adoptive German parents, often the only parents they remembered, and returned to their biological parents, when they no longer remembered Polish, only German. The older children generally remembered Poland; ones as young as ten had forgotten much, but could often be reminded by such things as Polish nursery rhymes; the youngest had no memories that could be recalled. Allied forces made efforts to repatriate them. However, many children, particularly Polish and Yugoslavian who were among the first taken, declared on being found that they were German. Russian and Ukrainian children, while not gotten to this stage, still had been taught to hate their native countries and did not want to return.Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' p. 479 While many foster parents voluntarily brought forth well-cared-for children, other children proved to be abused or used for labour, and still others went to great efforts to hide the children. After the war, The United States of America v. Ulrich Greifelt, et al., or the RuSHA Trial, the eighth of the twelve
Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
, dealt with the kidnapping of children by the Nazis. Many children testified, although many of their parents were afraid to let them return to Germany. From 1947 to 1948, the
Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies of World War II, Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in World War II. Between 1939 and 1945 ...
ruled that the abductions, exterminations, and Germanization constituted
genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the ...
. Only 10 to 15 percent of those abducted returned to their homes. When Allied effort to identify such children ceased, 13,517 inquiries were still open, and it was clear that German authorities would not be returning them.


Heuaktion

In a plan called "
Heuaktion ''Heuaktion'' (German: "hay harvest", or "hay operation") was a World War II Nazi German operation in which 40,000 to 50,000 Polish children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by German occupation forces and transported to Germany as slave laboure ...
", described in a "top secret" memorandum submitted to German
Interior Minister An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...
on 10 June 1944, SSObergruppenfuehrer
Gottlob Berger Gottlob Christian Berger (16 July 1896 – 5 January 1975) was a senior German Nazi official who held the rank of '' SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS'' (lieutenant general) and was the chief of the SS Main Office responsible ...
– Chief of the Political Directing Staff (head of the SS main leadership office in Berlin), a co-author of Himmler's pamphlet ''Der
Untermensch ''Untermensch'' (, ; plural: ''Untermenschen'') is a Nazi term for non-Aryan "inferior people" who were often referred to as "the masses from the East", that is Jews, Roma, and Slavs (mainly ethnic Poles, Serbs, and later also Russians). The ...
'', and a promoter of the pamphlet ''Mit Schwert und Wiege'' (''With Sword and Cradle'') for the recruitment of non-Germans – proposed that the German 9th Army "evacuate" 40,000–50,000 children between 10 and 14 from the "territory of Army Group 'Centre'" to work for the Third Reich. Heuaktion was not widely implemented, due in part perhaps to the following arguments against it: "The Minister
immler Ferdinand "Fred" Immler (10 December 1880 –20 February 1965) was a German stage and film actor. Life Born in Coburg, as a young adult he worked from 1900 to 1902 at Deutsche Bank in Berlin and from 1902 to 1904 at Dresdner Bank. 1905 he retur ...
feared that the action would have most unfavourable political consequences, that it would be regarded as abduction of children, and that the juveniles did not represent a real asset to the enemy's military strength anyhow.... The Minister would like to see the action confined to the 15–17 year olds." Between March and October 1944, however, 28,000 children between the ages of 10 and 18 were deported from Belarus for work in the German arms industry..


Statistics

Between 1940 and 1945, according to official Polish estimates, approximately 200,000 Polish children were abducted by the Nazis.''Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN'' (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2004), 2: 613. . William Rubinstein cites the figure of up to 200,000 Polish children kidnapped by Nazis. According to
Dirk Moses Anthony Dirk Moses (born 1967) is an Australian scholar who researches various aspects of genocide. In 2022 he became the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, after having been the Frank Porter ...
' estimate, 20,000 children were abducted for such purposes from Poland, 20,000 from the Soviet Union, and 10,000 from
Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...
and
Southeast Europe Southeast Europe or Southeastern Europe (SEE) is a geographical subregion of Europe, consisting primarily of the Balkans. Sovereign states and territories that are included in the region are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia (a ...
. Limited preview.  
Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
.
Tadeusz Piotrowski in his book ''Poland's Holocaust'' states that 200,000 Polish children were kidnapped out of which only 15 to 20% were reclaimed by either parents or the Polish government after the war. According to
Tara Zahra Tara Elizabeth Zahra (born August 3, 1976) is an American academic who is a Livingston Professor of East European History at the University of Chicago. She graduated from Swarthmore College and from the University of Michigan with a PhD. She ha ...
, the number of children taken from their parents includes 40,000 to 50,000 children taken as part of Heuaktion for forced labour from Belarus, 28,000 Soviet youth "under the age of eighteen" taken for labour by the Luftwaffe, "tens of thousands" of Polish, Czech, Slovenian and Silesian children taken during evacuations after which they ended up in orphanages and Hitler Youth camps, unspecified number of children taken by force from women working as forced labour in Germany, and 20,000–50,000 "deliberately kidnapped" in Eastern Europe. Additional non-German-speaking children were evacuated along with German civilians, while tens of thousands of foreign children were recruited as forced labourers or born to female forced labourers in Germany. Confusion between ethnic German children from Eastern Europe and non-German children was another factor that led to inflated estimates. The modern association "Stolen children. Forgotten victims" representing victims of this operation presented the following estimates as of 2018: * Poland: 50,000–200,000 kidnapped children * Heuaktion in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus: 40,000–50,000 kidnapped children * Bohemia and Moravia: 1,000 kidnapped children * Slovenia: 1,100 kidnapped children Post-war estimates on kidnapped children vary depending on criteria used; Isabell Heinemann in the documentary ''"Kinderraub der Nazis. Die vergessenen Opfer"'' stated that her research team identified 20,000 Polish children kidnapped who passed the Germanization criteria and were integrated into the Lebensborn program. While Polish estimates, for example, include children taken under different conditions, such as those taken away forcefully from women working as forced labour in Germany. Precise numbers are difficult to ascertain and depend on classification of kidnapping and if one counts children born to parents used as forced labour.


Memorials

After the war, a memorial plate was made in
Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...
dedicated to railway workers who tried to save Polish children from German captivity.


Remembrance

In 2017 the German broadcaster
Deutsche Welle Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave" in English), abbreviated to DW, is a German public, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the German federal tax budget. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite television service cons ...
and Polish journalists from
Interia.pl Interia, formerly Interia.pl, is a large Polish web portal created in 2000 in Kraków, Poland. It offers, among others: new email accounts, free web hosting, and domain name registration. The list of its 130 services includes the national and inte ...
engaged in a remembrance project documenting history and fate of kidnapped children. Journalists visited institutions, archives and foundations, as well as victims who are still alive today. Numerous surviving victims have been interviewed presenting their attempts to trace back their origins, claim compensation or present their story. Together, as part of this series, over 40 articles and 23 video documentaries were produced, culminating in a book and a movie documentary which was presented by German state broadcaster ARD.
Polen: Geraubte Kinder – vergessene Opfer. Deutsche Welle. 2017. Monika Sieradzka


Notes


References

* Hrabar, Roman Z., Zofia Tokarz, and Jacek E. Wilczur. ''The Fate of Polish Children During the Last War''. Trans. Bogdan Buczkowski and Lech Petrowicz. Rada Ochrony Pomników Walki i Męczeństwa. Warsaw: Interpress, 1981. . * Milton, Sybil.
"Non-Jewish Children in the Camps"
Museum of Tolerance, ''Multimedia Learning Center Online''. Annual 5, Chapter 2. Copyright © 1997, The
Simon Wiesenthal Center The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a Jewish human rights organization established in 1977 by Rabbi Marvin Hier. The center is known for Holocaust research and remembrance, hunting Nazi war criminals, combating anti-Semitism, tolerance educat ...
. Accessed September 25, 2008. * Richard C. Lukas
Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children
1939–1945. Hippocrene Books, New York, 2001
Nuremberg Trials Project: Overview
an
Nuremberg Trial Documents Bibliography
an
Nuremberg Trial Resources
– Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection at
Harvard University Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating la ...
Library (HLSL). ["Contents of the Collection: The Nuremberg Trials collection fills some 690 boxes, with an average box containing approximately 1500 pages of text (for a total estimated at 1,035,000 pages). The three largest groups of documents are: trial documents (primarily briefs and document books for trial exhibits) for the twelve NMT trials and the IMT trial (280 boxes); trial transcripts for the twelve NMT trials and the IMT trial (154 boxes); and evidence file documents (the photostats, typescripts, and evidence analyses from which the prosecution, and occasionally defendants, drew their exhibits) (200 boxes). ... The HLSL collection also includes documents from the IMT hearings on criminal organizations and miscellaneous papers concerning the trials. Most of the documents are in both English and German (and occasionally other languages). ... In this project only the English language trial documents and trial transcripts will be presented, but the evidence file documents are usually in both English and German."]
"The RuSHA Case:
D. Kidnapping of Children of Foreign Nationality: 3. Polish Children" (inactive URL). Cf. D. Kidnapping of Children of Foreign Nationality: 3. Polish Children" (Internet Archive URL). 993–1028 in ''Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg icMilitary Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10''. © Mazal Library, n.d. NMT04-C001. Nuernberg icMilitary Tribunal, Vol. IV, pp. vii–viii: "''The RuSHA Case''". . ''mazal.org''. Accessed September 15, 2008. (Trial documents.) [Note: "The Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals (NMT) differ from the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in a number of different ways...."] * ''Zbrodnia bez kary… : eksterminacja i cierpienie polskich dzieci pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945 (Crime without penalty... : extermination and suffering of Polish children during the German occupation of 1939–1945)'' editor Kostkiewicz Janina, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, 2020, {{adopt Poland in World War II Germany–Poland relations Nazi war crimes in Poland Adoption history Children in war Anti-Slavic sentiment Anti-Polish sentiment in Europe Child abduction in Germany Nazi war crimes International adoption Germanization