Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany
Encyclopedia
Kidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany , part of the Generalplan Ost
(GPO), involved taking children from Eastern Europe and moving them to Nazi Germany
for the purpose of Germanization
, or conversion into Germans.
Occupied Poland had the largest proportion of children taken, but children were abducted throughout Western Europe, several hundreds of thousands in total.
The aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children with purportedly Aryan
traits who were considered by Nazi officials to be descendants of German settlers that had emigrated to Poland. Those labeled "racially valuable" were forcibly Germanized in special centers and then sent to German families and SS Home Schools. In the case of older children used as forced labor in Germany those determined to be racially un-"German" were sent to extermination camps and concentration camps, where they were either to be murdered or forced to serve as living test subjects in German medical experiments and thus often tortured or killed in the process.
On 7 November 1939, Hitler decreed that Heinrich Himmler
, whose German title at that time was Reichskomissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, would be responsible for policy regarding population on 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
, where Poles were to be assigned to compulsory labor, and racially selected children were to be abducted and Germanized."
Among Himmler's core points:
On 20 June 1940, Hitler approved Himmler's directives, ordering copies to be sent to chief organs of the SS, to Gauleiter
s in eastern German-occupied territories, 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.
Between 1960 and 1954, according to official Polish estimates, approximately 200,000 Polish children were abducted by the Nazis.
Himmler mused on initiating similar projects in German-occupied France. Hitler's Table Talk
records him expressing his belief that "the French
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
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 tendencies of the French people" would make it almost impossible to "salvage the Germanic elements from the claws of the ruling class
of that country". Martin Bormann
believed it to be an ingenious policy, noting it in the document record as a [sic] "sinister theory!".
, Germans expelled 30,000 children, out of which 4,445 were chosen for Germanisation and sent to the German Reich. Over 10,000 children died in camps at Zwierzyniec
, Zamość
, Auschwitz, Majdanek
or during transport in cattle wagons
used normally to move livestock
. Thousands of them were sent by railway to Garwolin
, Mrozów
, Sobolew
, Łosice, Chełm and other cities. As one witness reported: "I saw children being taken from their mothers, some were even torn from the breast. It was a terrible sight: the agony of the mothers and fathers, the beating by the Germans, and the crying of the children."
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. 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 by jewelry or gold to allow the supplies to go through, in other cases they sold some of the children to Poles. In Bydgoszcz and Gdynia
, 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
. 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. 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. German foster parents were later told that children had been received false Polish birth certificates to rob them of their German heritage.
Later the children were sent to special centers 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
. Those children who were classified as "of little value" were sent to Auschwitz or to Treblinka
E.V., called in German Kindererziehungslager ("child 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 or doctors from Gesundheitsamt. 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):
The failures that could result in a child, otherwise fitting all racial criteria, into the second group included such traits as "round-headed" referring the skull shape
. Children could be declared the third group for tuberculosis
, "degenerate" skull shape, or "Gypsy characteristics". A girl who was later identified by a small birthmark would have been rejected had the birthmark been much larger.
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
; Hans Frank
summoned up such views when he declared, "When we see a blue-eyed child we are surprised that she is speaking Polish." Among those children thought to be genuinely German were children whose parents had been executed for resisting Germanization.
Very young children, between two and six, were sent to Lebensborn
homes, which had originally been instituted to provide shelter for unwed mothers and illegitimate children deemed racially valuable. There, they would be observed for a period.
In either case, if they were not disqualified at the respective institution, they were placed for adoption. The Nazis would devise German names and new birth certificates to hide their pasts. In the process, they were referred to as "Polonized
German children" or "Children of German descent" or even "German orphans." Orders forbade making the term "Germanizable Polish children" known to the public. This was to prevent their being viewed as Poles by the people they met, and so stigmatized. Some parents were informed that the children's birth certificates had been falsified, to show them as Poles and rob them of their German heritage. 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.
At Auschwitz concentration camp
200 to 300 Jewish Polish children from the Zamość
area were murdered by Germans by phenol
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 Germans: "'Mamo! Mamo!' ('Mother! Mother!'), the dying screams of the youngsters, were heard by several inmates and made an indelible haunting impression on them.'"
Some of the children were also murdered in Auschwitz gas chamber
s; others died as a result of the camp conditions.
in Upper Silesia
– in this centre children were also subject to forced euthanasia
; while the second was located in Cieszyn
. Children were given psychoactive drugs, chemicals and other substances for medical tests, although it was generally known that the true purpose of those procedures was their mass extermination.
Weaker children subject to experiments usually died in a relatively short time from doses of drugs, and those that survived brought great curiosity; all side effects were recorded as well as their behavior. As most died, the documentation was forged to conceal traces of experiments, for example, giving the cause of death as from a lung infection or a weak heart. Based on statistics of deaths in the special camp in Lublin
, it was estimated that from the 235 children between ages 10 to 14 who received shots of the barbiturate
Luminal
, 221 died. From August 1942 until November 1944, 94 percent of children who had been subjected to German medical experiments died.
", described in a "top secret" memorandum submitted to German Interior Minister
Heinrich Himmler
on 10 June 1944, SS
–Obergruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger
— Chief of the Political Directing Staff (head of the SS main leadership office in Berlin), a co-author of Himmler's pamphlet Der Untermensch
, 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 'Center' " to work for the Third Reich.
Heu-Aktion was not widely implemented, due in part perhaps to the following arguments against it: "The Minister [Himmler] feared that the action would have most unfavorable 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 at the Luftwaffe
and in the arms industry supplying the Wehrmacht
, which also unofficially included the Waffen-SS
.
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. While many foster parents voluntarily brought forth well-cared-for children, other children proved to be abused or used for labor, 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
, 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
ruled that the abductions, exterminations, and Germanization constituted genocide
.
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.
Also after the war, a memorial plate was made in Lublin
dedicated to railway workers who tried to save Polish children from German captivity.
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
(GPO), involved taking children from Eastern Europe and moving them to Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
for the purpose of Germanization
Germanisation
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
, or conversion into Germans.
Occupied Poland had the largest proportion of children taken, but children were abducted throughout Western Europe, several hundreds of thousands in total.
The aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children with purportedly Aryan
Aryan race
The Aryan race is a concept historically influential in Western culture in the period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. It derives from the idea that the original speakers of the Indo-European languages and their descendants up to the present day constitute a distinctive race or...
traits who were considered by Nazi officials to be descendants of German settlers that had emigrated to Poland. Those labeled "racially valuable" were forcibly Germanized in special centers and then sent to German families and SS Home Schools. In the case of older children used as forced labor in Germany those determined to be racially un-"German" were sent to extermination camps and concentration camps, where they were either to be murdered or forced to serve as living test subjects in German medical experiments and thus often tortured or killed in the process.
Historical contexts
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 Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, whose German title at that time was Reichskomissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, would be responsible for policy regarding population on 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
General Government
The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...
, 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 would remain, in which counting would be taught only till 500, writing one's name, and teaching that God commanded Poles to serve Germans. Writing was determined to be unnecessary for the Polish population.
- Parents who desired to educate their children better would have to apply for a special permit to the SSSchutzstaffelThe Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
and police. On the basis of the document specialists would check if the children were deemed "racially valuable". If the children were so deemed, then they would be taken away to Germany to be Germanised. Even then, the fate of each child would be determined by loyalty and obedience to serve the German state by his or her parents. A child determined to be "of racially little value" would not receive any further education. - Annual selection would be made every year among children from six to ten years old according to German racial standards; those children that would pass it, would be taken away to Germany where they would be further Germanised after changing their names. The aim of the plan was to destroy "Polish" as a race, and leave within Poland a considerable slave population to be used within 10 years (eventually Poles would be removed completely within 15–20 years).
On 20 June 1940, Hitler approved Himmler's directives, ordering copies to be sent to chief organs of the SS, to Gauleiter
Gauleiter
A Gauleiter was the party leader of a regional branch of the NSDAP or the head of a Gau or of a Reichsgau.-Creation and Early Usage:...
s in eastern German-occupied territories, 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.
Between 1960 and 1954, according to official Polish estimates, approximately 200,000 Polish children were abducted by the Nazis.
Other locations
Large numbers of children were also abducted from places other than Poland: about 20,000 children were taken from the Soviet Union and about 10,000 children were taken from Western and South Eastern Europe.Himmler mused on initiating similar projects in German-occupied France. Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk
Hitler's Table Talk is the title given to a series of wartime conversations and monologues delivered by Adolf Hitler, which were transcribed from 1941 to 1944...
records him expressing his belief that "the French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
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
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
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 tendencies of the French people" would make it almost impossible to "salvage the Germanic elements from the claws of the ruling class
Ruling class
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy - assuming there is one such particular class in the given society....
of that country". Martin Bormann
Martin Bormann
Martin Ludwig Bormann was a prominent Nazi official. He became head of the Party Chancellery and private secretary to Adolf Hitler...
believed it to be an ingenious policy, noting it in the document record as a [sic] "sinister theory!".
Conditions of transfer
Many children were kidnapped during expulsions of Poles made by Germans. For example in Zamość CountyZamosc County
Zamość County is a unit of territorial administration and local government in Lublin Voivodeship, eastern Poland. It came into being on January 1, 1999, as a result of the Polish local government reforms passed in 1998. Its administrative seat is the city of Zamość, although the city is not part...
, Germans expelled 30,000 children, out of which 4,445 were chosen for Germanisation and sent to the German Reich. Over 10,000 children died in camps at Zwierzyniec
Zwierzyniec
Zwierzyniec is a town on the Wieprz river in the Zamość County, Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. It has 3,324 inhabitants .Zwierzyniec is the northernmost town of the Roztocze National Park. The park comprises some of the last remaining sections of the primordial forest of Central Europe, especially...
, Zamość
Zamosc
Zamość ukr. Замостя is a town in southeastern Poland with 66,633 inhabitants , situated in the south-western part of Lublin Voivodeship , about from Lublin, from Warsaw and from the border with Ukraine...
, Auschwitz, Majdanek
Majdanek
Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
or during transport in cattle wagons
Stock car (rail)
In railroad terminology, a stock car or cattle wagon is a type of rolling stock used for carrying livestock to market...
used normally to move livestock
Livestock
Livestock refers to one or more domesticated animals raised in an agricultural setting to produce commodities such as food, fiber and labor. The term "livestock" as used in this article does not include poultry or farmed fish; however the inclusion of these, especially poultry, within the meaning...
. Thousands of them were sent by railway to Garwolin
Garwolin
Garwolin is a town on the Wilga river in eastern Poland, capital of Garwolin County, situated in the southeast part of the Garwolin plateau in Masovian Voivodeship , 62 km southeast of Warsaw, 100 km northwest of Lublin...
, Mrozów
Mrozów
Mrozów is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Miękinia, within Środa Śląska County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Prior to 1945 it was in Germany....
, Sobolew
Sobolew
Sobolew may refer to the following places in Poland:*Sobolew, Lower Silesian Voivodeship *Sobolew, Lublin Voivodeship *Sobolew, Masovian Voivodeship...
, Łosice, Chełm and other cities. As one witness reported: "I saw children being taken from their mothers, some were even torn from the breast. It was a terrible sight: the agony of the mothers and fathers, the beating by the Germans, and the crying of the children."
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. 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 by jewelry or gold to allow the supplies to go through, in other cases they sold some of the children to Poles. In Bydgoszcz and Gdynia
Gdynia
Gdynia is a city in the Pomeranian Voivodeship of Poland and an important seaport of Gdańsk Bay on the south coast of the Baltic Sea.Located in Kashubia in Eastern Pomerania, Gdynia is part of a conurbation with the spa town of Sopot, the city of Gdańsk and suburban communities, which together...
, 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
Lidice is a village in the Czech Republic just northwest of Prague. It is built on the site of a previous village of the same name which, as part of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, was on orders from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, completely destroyed by German forces in reprisal...
. 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. 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. German foster parents were later told that children had been received false Polish birth certificates to rob them of their German heritage.
Later the children were sent to special centers 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
Germanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
. Those children who were classified as "of little value" were sent to Auschwitz or to Treblinka
Selection
The children were placed in special temporary camps of the health department, or LebensbornLebensborn
Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
E.V., called in German Kindererziehungslager ("child 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 or doctors from Gesundheitsamt. 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 the skull shape
Cephalic index
Cephalic index is the ratio of the maximum width of the head multiplied by 100 divided by its maximum length ....
. Children could be declared the third group for tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, "degenerate" skull shape, or "Gypsy characteristics". A girl who was later identified by a small birthmark would have been rejected had the birthmark been much larger.
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
Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...
; Hans Frank
Hans Frank
Hans Michael Frank was a German lawyer who worked for the Nazi party during the 1920s and 1930s and later became a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany...
summoned up such views when he declared, "When we see a blue-eyed child we are surprised that she is speaking Polish." Among those children thought to be genuinely German were children whose parents had been executed for resisting Germanization.
Germanization
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. In some cases, the efforts were so successful that the children lived and died believing themselves to be Germans.Very young children, between two and six, were sent to Lebensborn
Lebensborn
Lebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
homes, which had originally been instituted to provide shelter for unwed mothers and illegitimate children deemed racially valuable. There, they would be observed for a period.
In either case, if they were not disqualified at the respective institution, they were placed for adoption. The Nazis would devise German names and new birth certificates to hide their pasts. In the process, they were referred to as "Polonized
Polonization
Polonization was the acquisition or imposition of elements of Polish culture, in particular, Polish language, as experienced in some historic periods by non-Polish populations of territories controlled or substantially influenced by Poland...
German children" or "Children of German descent" or even "German orphans." Orders forbade making the term "Germanizable Polish children" known to the public. This was to prevent their being viewed as Poles by the people they met, and so stigmatized. Some parents were informed that the children's birth certificates had been falsified, to show them as Poles and rob them of their German heritage. 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.
Murder of Zamość children in Auschwitz
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
200 to 300 Jewish Polish children from the Zamość
Zamosc
Zamość ukr. Замостя is a town in southeastern Poland with 66,633 inhabitants , situated in the south-western part of Lublin Voivodeship , about from Lublin, from Warsaw and from the border with Ukraine...
area were murdered by Germans by phenol
Phenol
Phenol, also known as carbolic acid, phenic acid, is an organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5OH. It is a white crystalline solid. The molecule consists of a phenyl , bonded to a hydroxyl group. It is produced on a large scale as a precursor to many materials and useful compounds...
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 Germans: "'Mamo! Mamo!' ('Mother! Mother!'), the dying screams of the youngsters, were heard by several inmates and made an indelible haunting impression on them.'"
Some of the children were also murdered in Auschwitz gas chamber
Gas chamber
A gas chamber is an apparatus for killing humans or animals with gas, consisting of a sealed chamber into which a poisonous or asphyxiant gas is introduced. The most commonly used poisonous agent is hydrogen cyanide; carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide have also been used...
s; others died as a result of the camp conditions.
German medical experiments on kidnapped children
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 centers. 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 LubliniecLubliniec
Lubliniec is a town in southern Poland with 29,359 inhabitants . It is the capital of Lubliniec County, part of Silesian Voivodeship ; previously it was in Częstochowa Voivodeship .-Geography:...
in Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia
Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...
– in this centre children were also subject to forced euthanasia
Euthanasia
Euthanasia refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering....
; while the second was located in Cieszyn
Cieszyn
Cieszyn is a border-town and the seat of Cieszyn County, Silesian Voivodeship, southern Poland. It has 36,109 inhabitants . Cieszyn lies on the Olza River, a tributary of the Oder river, opposite Český Těšín....
. Children were given psychoactive drugs, chemicals and other substances for medical tests, although it was generally known that the true purpose of those procedures was their mass extermination.
Weaker children subject to experiments usually died in a relatively short time from doses of drugs, and those that survived brought great curiosity; all side effects were recorded as well as their behavior. As most died, the documentation was forged to conceal traces of experiments, for example, giving the cause of death as from a lung infection or a weak heart. Based on statistics of deaths in the special camp in Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
, it was estimated that from the 235 children between ages 10 to 14 who received shots of the barbiturate
Barbiturate
Barbiturates are drugs that act as central nervous system depressants, and can therefore produce a wide spectrum of effects, from mild sedation to total anesthesia. They are also effective as anxiolytics, as hypnotics, and as anticonvulsants...
Luminal
Phenobarbital
Phenobarbital or phenobarbitone is a barbiturate, first marketed as Luminal by Friedr. Bayer et comp. It is the most widely used anticonvulsant worldwide, and the oldest still commonly used. It also has sedative and hypnotic properties but, as with other barbiturates, has been superseded by the...
, 221 died. From August 1942 until November 1944, 94 percent of children who had been subjected to German medical experiments died.
Heu-Aktion
In a plan called "Heu-AktionHeu-Aktion
Heu-Aktion was the name of an Nazi German operation where 40,000 to 50,000 Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by the German military and transported to Germany as slave labourers. The term "heu-aktion" means "collective harvesting of hay". After arriving in...
", described in a "top secret" memorandum submitted to German Interior Minister
Interior minister
An interior ministry is a government ministry typically responsible for policing, national security, and immigration matters. The ministry is often headed by a minister of the interior or minister of home affairs...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
on 10 June 1944, SS
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...
–Obergruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger
Gottlob Berger
Gottlob Berger was a German Nazi who held the rank of Obergruppenführer during World War II and was later convicted of war crimes.In 1939, he was Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's main recruiting officer...
— 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
Untermensch is a term that became infamous when the Nazi racial ideology used it to describe "inferior people", especially "the masses from the East," that is Jews, Gypsies, Poles along with other Slavic people like the Russians, Serbs, Belarussians and Ukrainians...
, 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 'Center' " to work for the Third Reich.
Heu-Aktion was not widely implemented, due in part perhaps to the following arguments against it: "The Minister [Himmler] feared that the action would have most unfavorable 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
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
for work at the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
and in the arms industry supplying the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
, which also unofficially included the Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS
The Waffen-SS was a multi-ethnic and multi-national military force of the Third Reich. It constituted the armed wing of the Schutzstaffel or SS, an organ of the Nazi Party. The Waffen-SS saw action throughout World War II and grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions, and served alongside...
.
Post-war
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 and suffered the most.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. While many foster parents voluntarily brought forth well-cared-for children, other children proved to be abused or used for labor, 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
RuSHA Trial
The RuSHA Trial was the eighth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
, the eighth of the twelve Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, 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
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
ruled that the abductions, exterminations, and Germanization constituted genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
.
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.
Also after the war, a memorial plate was made in Lublin
Lublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
dedicated to railway workers who tried to save Polish children from German captivity.
See also
- Kinder KZKinder KZKinder KZ was a German concentration camp for Polish children in occupied Łodź .-History:...
- Action T4Action T4Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
- Ausländerkinder-PflegestätteAusländerkinder-PflegestätteAusländerkinder-Pflegestätte , also Säuglingsheim, Entbindungsheim, were Third Reich institutions where babies and children, abducted from Eastern European forced laborers from 1943 to 1945, were kept.-Nazi policy:...
- Cultural genocideCultural genocideCultural genocide is a term that lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed in 1933 as a component to genocide. The term was considered in the 1948 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples juxtaposed next to the term ethnocide, but it was removed in the final document, replaced with...
- Czesława Kwoka
- Drang nach OstenDrang nach OstenDrang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...
- Ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
- EugenicsEugenicsEugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
- Generalplan OstGeneralplan OstGeneralplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
- GermanizationGermanisationGermanisation is both the spread of the German language, people and culture either by force or assimilation, and the adaptation of a foreign word to the German language in linguistics, much like the Romanisation of many languages which do not use the Latin alphabet...
- KulturkampfKulturkampfThe German term refers to German policies in relation to secularity and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck. The Kulturkampf did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria...
- LebensbornLebensbornLebensborn was a Nazi programme set up by SS leader Heinrich Himmler that provided maternity homes and financial assistance to the wives of SS members and to unmarried mothers, and also ran orphanages and relocation programmes for children.Initially set up in Germany in 1935, Lebensborn expanded...
- LebensraumLebensraumwas one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
- Linguicide
- Nazi crimes against ethnic PolesNazi crimes against ethnic PolesIn addition to about 2.9 million Polish Jews , about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish citizens perished during the course of the war...
- Pan-GermanismPan-GermanismPan-Germanism is a pan-nationalist political idea. Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland , where "German-speaking" was taken to include the Low German, Frisian and Dutch-speaking populations of the Low...
- RuSHA TrialRuSHA TrialThe RuSHA Trial was the eighth of the twelve trials for war crimes the U.S. authorities held in their occupation zone in Germany in Nuremberg after the end of World War II. These twelve trials were all held before U.S...
External links
- "The 'Lebensborn' Program (1935–1945)". Jewish Virtual LibraryJewish Virtual LibraryJewish Virtual Library is an online encyclopedia published by the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise . Established in 1993, it is a comprehensive website covering Israel, the Jewish people, and Jewish culture.-History:...
(American-Israeli Cooperative EnterpriseAmerican-Israeli Cooperative EnterpriseThe American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise is a non-profit 501, "non-partisan" organization in the United States established in 1993 "to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing the fundamentals of the alliance." It is a member of the Israel on Campus Coalition. Its Executive...
). ("Sources: The Forgotten Camps; ABC News 20/20 Special Report — Hitler's 'Master Race': Nazi Program Attempted to Create Racially Pure Children (April 27, 2000).") [Includes an illustration of a kidnapping.]