Kidnapping Of Eastern European Children By Nazi Germany
Kidnapping of non-Germanic European children by Nazi Germany (Polish: Rabunek dzieci), part of the Generalplan Ost (GPO), involved taking children from the rest of Europe and moving them to Nazi Germany for the purpose of Germanization, or indoctrination into becoming culturally German.
Occupied Poland had the largest proportion of children taken, but a total of several hundred thousand children were abducted throughout Europe.
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 who 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.
Read more about Kidnapping Of Eastern European Children By Nazi Germany: Historical Contexts, Conditions of Transfer, Selection, Germanization, Murder of Zamość Children in Auschwitz, German Medical Experiments On Kidnapped Children, Heu-Aktion, Post-war
Famous quotes containing the words nazi germany, eastern, european, children, nazi and/or germany:
“Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (18891951)
“From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles. There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but not much like that,immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, the eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“In verity ... we are the poor. This humanity we would claim for ourselves is the legacy, not only of the Enlightenment, but of the thousands and thousands of European peasants and poor townspeople who came here bringing their humanity and their sufferings with them. It is the absence of a stable upper class that is responsible for much of the vulgarity of the American scene. Should we blush before the visitor for this deficiency?”
—Mary McCarthy (19121989)
“We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, that we raise our children to leave us. Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.”
—Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)
“Well build a democracy here, even if its with Nazi bricks.”
—Samuel Fuller, U.S. screenwriter. Samuel Fuller. Captain Harvey, Verboten! American Military Government officer explaining the practicalities of de-Nazification (1959)
“By an application of the theory of relativity to the taste of readers, to-day in Germany I am called a German man of science, and in England I am represented as a Swiss Jew. If I come to be regarded as a bête noire the descriptions will be reversed, and I shall become a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German man of science for the English!”
—Albert Einstein (18791955)