The “German race improvement” was mentioned by Hitler in a memo of March 4, 1944 addressed to Himmler and reproduced in “Głos Wielkopolski” nr 330 in 1947. In Himmler’s mind anti-Semitism was mingled with a crude blood-and-soil mysticism. The “mixed-race” German people, he noted as early as 1924, must once again become a “pure Germanic race”. Himmler, who had a diploma in agriculture, believed that he would be able to instigate the “breeding” of the new race by using the same methods as on his chicken farm.
Heinrich Himmler created the Lebensborn Project on December 12, 1935 in response to declining birth rates in Germany. Himmler was the Oberfuehrer of the Schutzstaffel (the SS). The purpose of the SS was to enforce Nazi racial doctrine and Anti-Semitic ideals. In a lecture by Himmler to the Wehrmacht on January 1937 he cited the SS creed:
“We have an ideological enemy…Bolshevism lead by international Jewry and Free Masons…all states and peoples who are ruled or are under strong Jewish-Free Mason influence will eventually be hostile to Germany and create a danger for us. Bolshevism is an organization of sub-humans, it is the absolute foundation of Jewish rule, it is the exact opposite of all which the Aryan peoples love, cherish and value. It is a diabolic outlook, because it appeals to the lowest and meanest instincts of humanity and turns those instincts into a religion. Its goal is the destruction of the white man.
We are more valuable than the others who may now and always outnumber us. We are more valuable because our blood enables us to be more inventive than others, to lead our people better than the others, because we have better soldiers, better statesmen, a higher culture, a better character.”
Nazi specialists of political problem of the race, members of the ruling party NSDAP, Dr. Wetzl and Dr. G. Hecht wrote on November 25, 1939 that Polish children, racially of a great value should be deported to Germany and brought up in proper boarding schools or the orphanages as were the children of German soldiers killed in battle or else, those children should be adopted by German families. This program of Germanization of Polish children kidnapped from Polish families led to postwar finding of some 25,000 Polish children out of over 200,000 kidnapped as part of the criminal Nazi-German policies systematically enforced in occupied Poland. Himmler stated on November 14, 1943 that “our (German) duty is to take these children by force or through kidnapping. In this manner we will acquire for our benefit good racial blood.”
Already in 1940 Himmler promised racial selection of Polish children age 6-10 for the purpose of deportation to the lands of pre-war Germany and in a letter addressed to the Nazi governor of Poznań he wrote: “I believe that it is correct to deport racially pure Polish children while officially stating that the deportations take place as a sanitary measure for the good of these children. On June 20, 1942 the head of the Office for Race and Settlements, Fritz Sauckel estimated that some half million Polish girls would be deported to Germany. In reality over a million girls age 14 to 21 were deported from occupied Poland to Germany. The Nazis kidnapped some 250,000 children for Germanization purposes – some 220,000 from Poland, many of whom were sent to Austria. After the war only 25,000 Polish children kidnapped by the Nazis were able to return to their parents.
During the mass deportation of Poles from Zamojszczyzna, Polish children were classified by Nazi experts from the Main Office for Race and Resettlements. A file was set up for of each child with three fotos and with an expert evaluation ether positive or negative, from the racial point of view for the procreation in Germany. The children who were not acceptable were poisoned and on their death certificates pneumonia was listed as the cause of death. The poisoning was administered by the Mediznische Kinderleilanstalt department “B” in Lubiniec.
The selected children were deported to the Reich and were given to adoptive families or were sent to orphanages. Gestapo supervised some of these deportations under the command of Sturmbannfuerer Kerl Ehrlich who had in Lodz a camp for children 2 – 16 years of age. A special school was organized for children selected for Germanization and deportation to Germany. This school was named Lebensborn, SS or NSV. Some Polish children were placed in Hitlerjugend or Bund Deutscher Maedel schools. German adoptive families usually tried to destroy the documents showing the children’s Polish origin in order to keep the children permanently.
Writer Alojzy Twardecki (Alfred Hartmann) was kidnapped at the age of five together with his cousin Leon. In 1944 German family Binderberger of Koblentz adopted Alfred Harmann as a German child. His adoptive grandfather told him that the Poles started World War II. Polish Red Cross helped his mother to find him in 1954 and she could not talk to him about Nazi atrocities and mass murders in Poland because he believed the German war-time press. Twardecki remained in Poland and wrote a book under his Polish name of Alojzy Twardecki entitled “The School of Janissaries. Letters to a German friend.” Pojezierze. Olsztyn 1979.
In Lodz, there is an “Association of Polish Children Subjected to Germanization by Hitler’s Regime” that published a rapport on “The history of Polish janissaries of the XX century.” Professor Richard C.Lukas, an American historian and author published in English and in Polish “Forgotten Holocaust” – Poles under German Occupation.” Polish version was published by Jedność in 1995, English version was published by Hippocrene Books, 2nd revised edition New York 2001, ISBN 0-7818-0901. Thus, the kidnapping of Polish children by the Nazi government is well documented.