''Heuaktion'' (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: "hay harvest", or "hay operation") was a

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

operation in which 40,000 to 50,000 Polish and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by German occupation forces and transported to

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

as slave labourers. "''Heuaktion''" was an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for "Homeless, parentless, unhoused 'heimatlos, elternlos, unterkunftslos'' – ''HEU'', "hay"Operation". On arrival in Germany, the children were turned over to

Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a Civil engineering, civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible ...

and to the

Junkers Junkers Flugzeug- und Motorenwerke AG (JFM, earlier JCO or JKO in World War I, English language, English: Junkers Aircraft and Motor Works) more commonly Junkers , was a major German aircraft manufacturer, aircraft and aircraft engine manufactu ...

aircraft works. The intentions of the mass abductions were to pressure the adult populations of the occupied territories to register as workers in the

Reich ( ; ) is a German word whose meaning is analogous to the English word " realm". The terms and are respectively used in German in reference to empires and kingdoms. In English usage, the term " Reich" often refers to Nazi Germany, also ca ...

and to weaken the “biological strength” of the areas that Germany had invaded. Lynn H. Nicholas, ''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web'' p 351

Background

Alfred Rosenberg Alfred Ernst Rosenberg ( – 16 October 1946) was a Baltic German Nazi theorist and ideologue. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart and he held several important posts in the Nazi government. He was the head o ...

, head of the

Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO; ), commonly known as the ''Ostministerium'', (; "Eastern Ministry") was a ministry of Nazi Germany responsible for occupied territories in the Baltic states and Soviet Union fro ...

, originally feared that targeting children aged 10 to 14 would be seen as simple abduction, and proposed instead kidnapping older children aged 15 to 17. However, actions of the German 9th Army induced him to consent to the kidnapping of younger children. The children were transferred to special camps for children called ''Kindererziehungslager,'' where the Germans selected children whose racial traits made them suitable for

Germanization Germanisation, or Germanization, is the spread of the German language, German people, people, and German culture, culture. It was a central idea of German conservative thought in the 19th and the 20th centuries, when conservatism and ethnic nati ...

. Children considered racially unsuitable were sent either to

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, or violence, including death or other forms of ...

or to

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

s, including

Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, 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. It consisted of Auschw ...

, after the destruction of their birth certificates. The children were kidnapped by

Army Group Centre Army Group Centre () was the name of two distinct strategic German Army Groups that fought on the Eastern Front in World War II. The first Army Group Centre was created during the planning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's invasion of the So ...

and by the 2nd Army, whose Chief of Staff,

Henning von Tresckow Henning Hermann Karl Robert von Tresckow (; 10 January 1901 – 21 July 1944) was a German military officer with the rank of major general in the German Army who helped organize German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassin ...

, on 28 June 1944 signed the order to abduct the children. The operation peaked in 1944, but the kidnappings were not fully implemented due to the subsequent course of the war."''Herrenmensch" und "Bandit" Deutsche Kriegsführung und Besatzungspolitik als Kontext des sowjetischen Partisanenkrieges(1941-44)''Timm C. Richter page 106

Post war

The

Nuremberg trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...

classified the kidnapping of children as part of the Nazi program of systemic

genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...

.Online edition

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

References

{{reflist, 2 Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany Nazi war crimes in Poland Nazi forced labour

Background

Post war

See also

References