Kidnapping of Eastern European Children By Nazi Germany - Historical Contexts

Historical Contexts

See also: Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) See also: Nazi crimes against ethnic Poles

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, 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:

we should exclude from deportations racially valuable children and raise them in old Reich in proper educational facilities or in German family care. The children must not be older than eight or ten years, because only till this age we can truly change their national identification, that is "final germanization". A condition for this is complete separation from any Polish relatives. Children will be given German names, their ancestry will be led by special office.

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:

• 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 SS 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 Gauleiters 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.

Between 1940 and 1945, according to official Polish estimates, approximately 200,000 Polish children were abducted by the Nazis.