25. The Start of the Nazi Child-Kidnapping Program
The Nazi child-kidnapping program began in November, 1939, shortly Germany conquered Poland, when Adolph Hitler entrusted Himmler with overseeing the occupied territories. The latter produced a 40-page document titled “The Issue of the Treatment of the Population in Former Polish Territories From a Racial Point of View“. The gist of it was to annex part of Poland and settle it with ethnic Germans, while expelling the native Poles into a rump Poland. However, one segment of Poles was marked out for special treatment: Polish children with “Aryan” traits.
As Himmler’s document put it in targeting the unfortunate – although the Nazis thought they were fortunate for being “rescued” from living among non-Aryans – children: “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 than 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“.
