During World War II, around 200,000Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future, Robert D. Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska.Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 p. 100 Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2004), 2: 613. . ethnic Polish children as well as an unknown number of children of other Slavic ethnicities from the Soviet Union were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Nazi Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experimentation, or Germanization. This was among the most notable Nazi crimes against children.

An aim of the project was to acquire and "Germanize" children believed to have Aryan/Nordic traits because Nazi officials believed that they were the descendants of German settlers who had emigrated to Poland or the Soviet Union. Those labelled "racially valuable" (gutrassig) were forcibly assimilated in centres and then forcibly adopted 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, 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, 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 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 Gauleiters in German-occupied territories in Eastern Europe, and to the governor of the General Government, and commanding that the operation of kidnapping Polish and other Slavic 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. 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 schools, 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".Hitler, Adolf; Weinberg, Gerhard L. (2007). Hitler's table talk, 1941–1944: his private conversations, p. 303. Enigma Books. Martin Bormann believed it to be an ingenious policy, noting it in the document record as a [sic] "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 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.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web pp. 253–254 These children would not be permitted to remain even with other living relatives.Richard C. Lukas, Forgotten Holocaust p. 27, . 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. 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.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web pp. 244–245

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. 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 Lebensborn 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 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, "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 (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). Accessed September 15, 2008. (Reprinted by permission of the author from Talk [November 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; 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.

German documentation Once selected, the children between six and twelve were sent to special homes. Their names were altered to similar-sounding German ones.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web p. 249 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.Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web pp. 251–252

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 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.

Murder of Zamość children in Auschwitz