Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany

Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany
Letter from Lebensborn office to Reichsdeutsche family of Herr Müller in Germany informing that two perfect boys have been found for them to choose one they like. The boys' names have already been Germanized, 18 December 1943.
Foreign children abducted
  • 20,000–200,000 children[1][2]
    • 20,000–200,000 from Poland[3][2]
    • 20,000 from the Soviet Union[3]
    • 10,000 from western and southeastern Europe[3]

During World War II, around 200,000[4][5][6][7] ethnic Polish children as well as an unknown number of children of other ethnicities were abducted from their homes and forcibly transported to Nazi Germany for purposes of forced labour, medical experimentation, or Germanization.

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. Those labelled "racially valuable" (gutrassig) were forcibly assimilated in centres and then forcibly adopted to German families and SS Home Schools.[8]

An association, "Stolen Children: Forgotten Victims" (Geraubte Kinder – Vergessene Opfer e.V.), is active in Germany, representing victims of German kidnapping.[9]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Zahra was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Genocide: A History. William D. Rubinstein. Pearson Longman, 2004, p. 184
  3. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Moses247 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future, Robert D. Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska.Rowman & Littlefield, 2007 p. 100 [ISBN missing]
  5. ^ Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2004), 2: 613. ISBN 8301141816.
  6. ^ Czesław Madajczyk (1961). Generalna Gubernia w planach hitlerowskich. Studia (in Polish). Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. p. 49.
  7. ^ Roman Z. Hrabar (1960). Hitlerowski rabunek dzieci polskich: Uprowadzanie i germanizowanie dzieci polskich w latach 1939–1945 (in Polish). Śląski Instytut Naukowy w Katowicach, Katowice: Wydawnictwo Śląsk. p. 93.
  8. ^ A. Dirk Moses (2004). Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. p. 255. ISBN 978-1571814104. Retrieved 2008-09-16.
  9. ^ "Forgotten victims: Polish children abducted during WWII – DW – 12/30/2017". dw.com. Retrieved 2024-03-05.