20. The Unfortunate Toddler Whose Cuteness Got Him Kidnapped by the Nazis
In 1941, Hitler ordered a massive invasion of the Soviet Union. The following year, as German tanks plunged deeper into the USSR, they were followed closely by Nazi officials tasked with administering the newly conquered territories. In the Crimea, they encountered a blond toddler named Aleksander Litau, who possessed striking blue eyes. The kid’s cuteness attracted not only admiring looks from mothers, but also from SS men who thought that he represented the ideal of what an Aryan child should look like.
Little Aleksander’s cuteness was a blessing, but when the Nazis came across him it became a decided curse. As the SS saw it, leaving what they viewed as a perfect Aryan specimen in the middle of a sea of inferior Slavs amounted to a crime against the Germanic race. So they snatched the unfortunate kid from his family, and shipped him to Germany in order to enroll him in the Lebensborn program, Germanize him, and see to it that he was raised as a German.
