Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany

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Kidnapping of Polish children by Nazi Germany (Polish: Rabunek dzieci) was a programme in World War II in which Polish children from occupied Poland were abducted to Nazi Germany for the purpose of Germanisation.[1] The aim of the kidnapping was to gain children with supposed Aryan traits, who were considered by German officials to be descendants of German settlers and immigrants in Poland. Those “racially valuable” were forcefully Germanised into Germans in special centers, then sent to German families, SS Home Schools, or in case of older children used as forced labour in Germany[2] while those that were determined to be racially un-German, were to be exterminated in concentration camps or serve as living test subjects in German medical experiments.

Kidnapping of Polish children was a large part of the genocidal Generalplan Ost plan, which envisioned the end of Polish nation[3]. The children were kidnapped by force, often their parents had been murdered in concentration camps or shot as "partisans". Others were supposedly from German soldiers and foreign mothers, and still others were declared "German orphans" that had been raised by non-German families.[4] Later the children were sent to special centers and institutions or to as Germans called them “children village’s”-which in reality selection camps were their “racial values” were tested (Kindererziehungslager). There, their original metrics of birth were destroyed, and their names were changed from Polish to German ones. It was there that initial germanisation took place. Those children who were classified as ‘of little value” were sent to Auschwitz or to General Gouvernment. The operation was determined during Nuremberg Trials to be part of a systematic programme of genocide.[5]

According to official Polish estimates the whole number of Polish children abducted by the Nazis is about 200,000.[6][7][8] In a published essay by Dr Isabel Heinemann, she wrote that the number was too high and lacked some basis in the available figures, but estimated that at least 20,000 Polish children had been kidnapped. A similar number of children was kidnapped from the Soviet Union and a further 10,000 from Western and South Eastern Europe.[9] In the Heu-Aktion, proposed by the commando of the German 9th Army, on the territory of Belarus 28,000 children between 10 and 18 were deported for work at Luftwaffe and the NS-arms industry between March and October 1944. The goal had been 40,000–50,000 children between 10 and 14 but wide implementation failed because of the course of the war.[10][11]

Contents

[edit] History

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

The person responsible for policy regarding population on occupied territories was Heinrich Himmler by decree of Adolf Hitler made on 7th November 1939. His full title was Reichskomissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums'’. The plan to kidnap Polish children most likely was created in so called Rassenpolitisches Amt der NSDAP. This office already in 25th of November 1939 sent to Heinrich Himmler a full 40-page long document called “The issue of treatment of population in former Polish territories from racial-political view” [12]. The last chapter of this work concerns “racially valuable” Polish children and plans to forcefully acquire them for German plans:

"...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 then 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”. [13]

In 1940 special directives were defined considering the kidnapping of Polish children that was to be performed. They were formulated on 15th May 1940 in document called “A few thoughts about treatment of alien people in the East” [14] (German:. Einige Gedanken ueber die Behandlung der Fremdenvoelker im Osten); it included some core points:

  • On territory of Poland only four grade schools would remain, in which counting would be taught only till 500, writing your name, and teaching that God commanded Poles to serve Germans. Writing was determined to be unnecessary for Polish population.
  • Parents wanting to better educate their children would have to apply for special permit to SS and police. On the basis of the document specialists would check if the child is “racially valuable”. If it would be, then it would be taken away to Germany to be Germanised. Even then its fate would be determined by loyalty and obedience to serve German state by its parents. A child that would be determined ‘of racially little value’ wouldn’t 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 German where they would be further Germanised after changing their names.

The aim of the plan was destruction of Polish people, while leaving on Polish territories a considerable slave population to be used within 10 years (eventually Poles would be removed completely within 15-20 years). Those directives were approved by Adolf Hitler on 20th of June 1940, who ordered to make copies of Himmler’s document to chief organs of SS, Gauleiters in the Eastern occupied territories, and governor of General Government-commanding that kidnapping of Polish children to seek Aryan descendants for germanisation be treated as one of priority operations in occupied territories.

[edit] Conditions of transfer

See also: Expulsion of Poles by Germany
See also: Untermensch

Many children were kidnapped during expulsions of Poles made by Germans. For example in Zamość County Germans expelled 30,000 children, out of which 4445 were chosen for Germanisation and sent to German Reich. Over 10,000 children died in camps of 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, Łosic, 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. [15]

The conditions of transfer were very harsh, as the children didn’t receive food or water for many days. Many children died as a result of suffocation in the summer and cold in the winter[15]. 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. After the war a memorial plate was made in Lublin to railway workers who tried to save Polish children from German captivity[16]

[edit] Selection

The children were placed in special temporary camps of health depertment, or Lebensborn E.V, child camps (German: Kindererziehungslager). Aferwards they went through special “quality selection” or “racial selection”-a detailed racial examination, combined with psychological tests and medicine exams made by experts from RuSHA or doctors from Gesundheitsamt. The child’s racial value determine to which of 11 racial types it would belong, documentation with results contained 62 points that informed about body proporations, eye colour, hair colour, the shape of the skull. During those tests children were divided into following groups: [17]:

  • Group that was “desired population growth” (German erwünschter Bevölkerungszuwachs)
  • Group that was "acceptable population growth” (German. tragbarer Bevölkerungszuwachs)
  • Group that was "undesired population growth” (German unerwünschter Bevölkerungszuwachs)

Because the racial exams determined the fate of children, and their unfavourable result could mean death or being put into concentration camp and other consequences:[18] for example forceful taking of the child away from parents, an instruction was made to perform them in secret and disguise, for example as “medical exams [19]:

[edit] Murder of Zamość children in Auschwitz

At Auschwitz concentration camp 200 to 300 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 injected into the chest with a toxic dose of phenol. 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[15]

To trick the children that were to be murdered into obedience Germans promised them that they will 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.[15]

Some of the children were also murdered in Auschwitz gas chambers.[15]

[edit] German medical experiments on kidnapped children

Those children who did not pass harsh Nazi exams and criteria [20]) 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 Lubliniec in Upper Silesia – in this centre children were also subject to forced euthanasia [21] , 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[22].

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 behaviour. 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 luminal, 221 died[23]. From August 1942 until November 1944, 94% of children subject to German medical experiments died.

[edit] Post-war

After the war the kidnapping of children by the Nazis was dealt with in the so-called RuSHA Trial. Out of the abducted only 10–15% returned home.[24]

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p.247. 
  2. ^ Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p.255. 
  3. ^ Volker R. Berghahn "Germans and Poles 1871–1945" in "Germany and Eastern Europe: Cultural Identities and Cultural Differences", Rodopi 1999
  4. ^ Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p.248. 
  5. ^ TRIAL OF ULRICH GREIFELT AND OTHERS UNITED STATES MILITARY TRIBUNAL, NURBMBERG, 10TH OCTOBER, 1947-10TH MARCH, 1948 Part IV.
  6. ^ Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN, Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, Warszawa, 2004, tom 2, ISBN 83-0114-181-6, s. 613
  7. ^ Czesław Madajczyk "Generalna Gubernia w planach hitlerowskich. Studia",Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, Warszawa, 1961, s. 49
  8. ^ Roman Z. Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945", Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, Katowice, 1960, p. 93
  9. ^ Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History, p.260. 
  10. ^ Günter Bischof, Stefan Karner and Barbara Stelzl-Marx, Kriegsgefangene des II. Weltkrieges: Gefangennahme- Lagerleben- Rückkehr, Google Print, p.177
  11. ^ Timm C Richter, "herrenmensch" und "bandit", Google Print, p.106
  12. ^ Nazwa opracowania: Roman Zbigniew Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945", Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1960 p. 28
  13. ^ : Roman Zbigniew Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945", Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1960 p. 28
  14. ^ : Roman Zbigniew Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945", Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, 1960 s. 29
  15. ^ a b c d e Lukas, Richard C. Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945. Hippocrene Books, New York, 2001
  16. ^ "Dzieciństwo zabrała wojna" Marek J. Szubiak[1].
  17. ^ Roman Z. Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945" , Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, Katowice, 1960, p. 43
  18. ^ " Roman Z. Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945" , Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, Katowice, 1960, s. 43
  19. ^ " Roman Z. Hrabar "Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich. Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939-1945" , Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Wydawnictwo Śląsk, Katowice, 1960, p. 44
  20. ^ Kamila Uzarczyk Podstawy ideologiczne higieny ras, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń, 2002, ISBN 83-7322-287-1, p. 286
  21. ^ Kamila Uzarczyk "Podstawy ideologiczne higieny ras", Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń, 2002, ISBN 83-7322-287-1, p. 285 do 289
  22. ^ Kamila Uzarczyk Podstawy ideologiczne higieny ras, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń, 2002, ISBN 83-7322-287-1, p. 285 do 289
  23. ^ Kamila Uzarczyk Podstawy ideologiczne higieny ras, Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek, Toruń, 2002, ISBN 83-7322-287-1, p. 289
  24. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-1947, Google Print, p.22
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