The kidnapping campaign of Nazi Germany | DW Documentary

[Music] September 1939 Nazi Germany invaded Poland and for more than five years brought terror to much of Europe with its ideology of a master race a central figure in that campaign was reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler the leading Nazi was obsessed with racial purity and came up with a plan to bolster the so-called Aryan race between 1941 and 1945 children were kidnapped from all over Eastern Europe and forcibly germanized [Music] historians estimate that 20,000 of those children came from Poland alone in Nazi run children's homes they learned to speak German their identities were falsified before I was named alodia VIII taschek from that moment on I was ELISA vodka it's a big girl [Music] those children are now over 80 years old and many of them still know nothing about their roots this unease I felt this kind of back and forth also affected my relationships feel oddly much of what happened to them is still a mystery Yussef silva travels as often as he can to the place where his parents are buried it lies outside change to hava in southern Poland [Music] he was just nine years old when they died [Music] shuya and Brock I feel I'm missing the warmth of being raised by a father and mother we were brought up by strangers who were something like a family but all my life I've been missing that warmth that embrace his father Yusuf was 41 his mother Francesca 36 when they were murdered by the Nazis on this spot their son Yusuf is now 86 years old but he has never forgotten his childhood home over there was a village house with two rooms it was made of wood and bricks let me show you where the stables were and father's workshop in the bunker during World War Two Yusuf's family hid Jews and partisans in the bunker seven people lived underground here for two years above this bunker was a pipe where the air came in and out and the Jews and the Polish partisans got their air through this pipe of course my parents also gave them food so new technology and the whole tragedy the beating and torture took place here I'm sure your halia samehada the vast the Germans came in two cars soldiers and dr. V knocked on the door if they're so fast lived here they started smashing the windows with their rifles all the panes were broken my mother was crying and took us children out to the yard we children ran behind our mama and papa we were all practically naked undershirts it was five o'clock in the morning it was September so it was chilly and the German said where are the Jews were the partisans they went into the barn they had a pointy metal stick and they stuck it into the straw to see if they would hit a person who would scream yes Nima Chicago said oniony the Germans hit them with anything that could get their hands on with hoes and pitchforks my mother was stabbed in the stomach three times with the pitchfork Georgia brought she was pregnant in her sixth or seventh months my father had his head bashed he'd been here with a rifle the old courtyard was full of blood they dragged my mother here my father there as kids there and they still found nothing sure this needs no serán aids between the workshop the stables and our house an awesome doorman but I had to get on out there maybe four six hand grenades fell in the middle of the courtyard and at that moment the first Jewish women came out of the bunker the hair and beat and then they set the other side of the house on fire little guy thrown it after that the soldiers shot Yusuf's parents dead and threw their bodies into a pit at the spot where their grave is now the children survived after witnessing the events then they were taken to Germany like thousands of other children from 1941 onwards who were deemed to be worthy of being germanized use of sister Yanina still lives in Germany she's germanized she corresponds to the pure in Nordic race with blond hair and light-colored eyes that was with the Germans our sister was lost to us forever uh demands a poll but as a sister the best one of us is in Germany it was is comes God as well indecent Amishman Birkin gets in a visa illegal that's a good game here Tommy championing of carbon the kinder from the inner to SUNY me see also given browse to tune integrity to keep down albums with stealing Herman Luther King has lived in bad dürkheim in southwestern Germany since he retired where he originally came from he doesn't know do you know again even though everyone feels this curiosity to know what their parents look like sisters our nieces are ours I just don't know I've tried everything into twenty archives but I found nothing you've nothing at all we have nice organics [Music] for decades herman has been trying to find out who his parents were and where he was born he always has the support of his partner Hannah Laura even as a child he felt that there was some mystery he was six years old when he was placed with Maria and Harriman Rudy king but he sensed that they were keeping something from him this this pile was hidden in my foster father's closet thirteen or fourteen year old I looked to see what was in and when I saw this I realized more or less what it was about I already knew that they weren't my real parents but I didn't know how it all hung together and then I read this document that said father dead mother dead Harriman luda Kings birth certificate issued by Nazi officials there are dashes where the names of his father and mother should his place of birth is listed as Brooke au in bata go the site of one of the Nazi run orphanages were the identities of the abducted children were covered up was the first place I went and I spoke to the caretaker though he was still alive I asked him if any births took place here in Brooklyn like it said in the document and he said no nobody ever took place since then herman has discovered that he was probably called Roman Russia Tomsky before he was placed with his foster parents was he really born on january 20th 1936 he has his doubts younger maybe I'm just 36 years old the birthday the documents from woods was January the 21st I don't want to say a noir the central polish city of woods was probably the first station in his life Herman still doesn't know who gave him up to this orphanage but he does know that the Nazis took him from here to Germany in me that yet Gail Wynand us who the Bluth must be forgetful turnin on Oracle respected Spain or Mary Ellen that signal Jimenez causal melon in a tourist closer all of a phoenician is booth have a dream last time it once again nothing if you to become say commander that's currently oppose oppose the third any [Music] alodia Vita six-story also has ties to wood she was five years old when she was brought to the youth detention camp inlets munched at as wood was called during the Nazi occupation today she's meeting up with her friend Barbara Petrovic the two women have a lot in common their paths in life have been very similar they've come to a school located on the site of the camp the school director is showing them a room that commemorates the thousands of children who were interned here like alodia who was brought here in 1943 you have a great map we need to find Amelia platters Street it's over here we should turn them up around like this that means my house must have been here how well you remember everything of course have you ever heard of the children from dr. V - X group I am Avatar check alodia x' father was a resistance fighter executed by the Nazis her mother was deported to Auschwitz for her husband's actions and alodia ended up in the machinery of the German occupiers and how long were you in the camp I was probably here for around eight weeks before that in the race office in Poznan they had determined that I corresponded to the so called Aryan race jets and the Germans wanted to german eyes children of the Aryan race I'll say are they scared of my news all right [Music] three people three life stories with this in common all three are victims of Heinrich Himmler's racist mania the reichsfuhrer SS visited occupied Poland in 1941 and traveled through the Vertigo district in 1939 Poland had been carved up between the Soviets and the Germans sections of the western part of the country including the so-called rice Givat Island were incorporated into the German rice other regions were placed under German Civil Administration Himmler's vision was to make Germany the mightiest nation in the world by bolstering the population with new progeny from abroad mainly from Eastern Europe in the bundle sheath in Berlin are hundreds of documents that show the gradual development of Himmler's strategy for the organized abduction of children [Music] after his trip through Vata gal himmler wrote to the Gauleiter otto Kaiser I believe it is right that small children of especially good race from polish families be collected and brought up by us in special not too large children's nurseries and orphanages I would advise starting with two or three such institutions so as to gather experience [Music] Isabelle Hyneman is a professor of contemporary history at the University of münster she has studied the subject of the stolen children for a number of years she set up a europe-wide research project and with colleagues has analyzed 17,000 files of foreign children found by the Allies in Germany after the war historians want to reconstruct the routes taken by the stolen children but the fact that the Nazis deliberately concealed their identities makes that a formidable task with the calculations I've done based on the reports of how many children were transported and how many were found after the war I would estimate the number to be around 20,000 polish children behind each one of those numbers is an individual story of a life thrown into turmoil and set on a completely different course there are many myths about the forest Germanisation of foreign children one account is that they were ethnic Germans that is children of German ancestry who lived outside the German Reich and that only very few children were brought to Germany at all but Himmler's plan did have a system as the rice Commissioner for the consolidation of German nationhood he helped to issue directive 67 one it stated first all children and formerly publish orphanages are to be taken and placed in accommodations after that operation is concluded children living with Polish foster parents will be examined the directive was signed by Ulrich rifled Himmler's direct subordinate [Music] later at the Nuremberg trials he claimed that there had never been a concrete plan the directive 67 1 went to all high-ranking leaders of the SS and the police and the corresponding SS leaders concerned with race and settlement policy so that the SS apparatus would be aware of how it worked it was a part of a supposedly rational occupation and Germanisation policy that was imposed mainly on occupied Poland but also on other occupied and annexed regions of Europe [Music] today experts believe that around 50,000 children were abducted from across Europe cases are known from today's Ukraine the Czech Republic and Slovenia but the largest group was from Poland because the machinery of the abduction started in the vertical district first orphanages were searched then child welfare officials summoned all children living with foster parents for inspection there were precise guidelines on how a racially suitable child was supposed to look 21 characteristics were examined including growth patterns the back of the head the bridge of the nose and body hair the officials were looking for so-called Aryan types classified as pure Nordic purif alien or Nordic fail e'en what the Nazis couldn't use were unbalanced hybrid types and finally children were also taken away from their biological parents like alodia vataj ik she was taken for racial examination after her mother was deported then in the autumn of 1943 she was brought to the youth detention camp in Lutz punched out to be germanized this Memorial recalls the thousands of children who lived here and were forced to do hard labor memories come flooding back when alodia stands here she was brought to the camp together with her little sister Daria [Music] Nirvana bought some ago Polanco straight away we weren't allowed to speak Polish we'd whisper to each other in Polish but of course we couldn't make it obvious that we were speaking we were punished for every infraction each capo had a club and they shouted at us very loudly we were scared of the yelling and of course the severe beatings by outs of the pillar pagoda zhenya at 6:00 a.m. they woke us full roll call that count us off in German which was hard for us we didn't know the numbers that's why the roll call used to take a very long time but it had to keep going until our supervisor had counted the entire group of children and often when they went through the barracks where we slept they would find dead children in the beds there is made of an orgy qu busca museums would then called lits monster was the first place for Oh luli was sent more followed college Brooke Oh bad poet seen thousands of children were funneled through these Nazi run homes each station represented a further step to conceal the child's real identity dates of birth were changed names were made more German sounding elodea v taschek became Alisa Vika her friend Barbara became bearable they were forced to forget their origins finally both were placed in German families where paradoxically they experienced the happiest years of their childhood [Music] Yusuf's OVA lives in the center of chintz Tahoma even now he can't accept that his sister Yanina loves the nation that caused his family so much suffering these are the letters from Germany from my sister she did not want to appear in person in this film or engage with the family's history that's apparent in her letters usual line vendor by joseline when you come to see us please please don't talk about politics or about the war Anita all her letters are signed with her polish and her German name she's been so germanized that she even writes in her letters that I shouldn't talk about politics or our history because she's embarrassed she doesn't want to know anything about Poland or the memory of her family she lives her life there in Germany I'm sure after the murder of their parents the five Silva children were brought to court Cal now growed : in Silesia Yanina was taken from there by a woman from Hannover who adopted her her name was changed to Anita no official records about this were preserved which is why Yanina was not found after the war but her siblings never stopped looking it was 20 years before Yusuf saw her again since then they've met up regularly good day my dear sister are you at home or up for a walk yes that is - you've had lunch and you're probably tired I'm looking forward so much to seeing you soon I'll be leaving chance to cover tomorrow at 12:00 okay goodbye my dear sisters kiss thanks know so shut up I see so now you've heard her voice Yussef sister was carried off to Germany shortly before the end of the war she didn't undergo a racial examination the longer the war went on the less attention the German officials paid to rules and guidelines yah Nina's abduction was an act of pure despotism [Music] in the southwestern German city of Freiburg Herman Luther King is paying a visit to Christophe Schwartz Schwartz is a teacher but for years he has been helping Herman the two want the German government to recognize the kidnapped children as victims of the Nazi regime so that they can receive compensation shewhart's founded an association representing the children's interests and he and Herman have filed lawsuits together so far with no success as a last resort they've approached Germany's highest court the Constitutional Court is the letter I received now I have to wait for a date yes and I'd suggest that we write another letter to the Constitutional Court saying they should speed things up a little in consideration of your age I think it's great that at his age he's still prepared to fight for justice even though it's only about the symbolic sums of 2500 euros really it's a joke it's according to Germany's Act regulating compensation for national socialist injustice that is the son - which non-jewish victims are entitled Cameron Luther King considers himself a part of that group for me it's not about the money but about the recognition that this was a crime that's what gets me mad their strategy is to wait until nature takes care of it the German government argues that the kidnappings can be seen as general collateral damage of war and that therefore there can be no claim to compensation and it's often argued that the kidnapped children were well treated in contrast to other victims that was true in Herman's case his German foster parents were wealthy his mother was a teacher and head of the regional Association of German girls the father was a high-ranking teacher both were Nazi Party members Hermann graduated from school studied at University and became a mechanical engineer but the parents never spoke to him about his background back in chintz Tahoma yusuf silva is on duty for the past 30 years he's been working for an organization for the victims of Nazi persecution he campaigns for them to receive compensation poland has a number of funds from which the germanized children or the children of mothers who were forced labourers receive small payments like this woman from now on she'll get 50 euros a month dear lady this is excellent this letter says you will get at least 212 swatches so we've been able to help you on you probably buddy-buddy Bardock [Music] in the early 1990s Germany paid 500 million Deutschmarks to Poland as a humanitarian gesture as it was called back then Yousef wanted to apply for money for his siblings but they needed yumminess consent my sister answered no no no I will not steal money from the German people because I am [Music] Barbara has invited allo dia to her home they want to talk about the stories of their lives that wound up taking such a similar course we are kind of like sisters for a long time we didn't know if we were German or polish but I feel as though we were both very lucky we ended up in families that treated us like their own children I said wasn't it it's called Barbara was three when the Nazis examined her and approved her for Germanisation in 1942 she was placed with a German foster family and grew up as bearable in lingo like alodia she had to return to Poland after the war she was 10 at the time I always say that my war started after I went back yes I say the same my parents were no longer alive there was nothing left I was an unwanted child who was shunted around here and there you couldn't speak Polish anymore right I couldn't speak the language anymore I was this Hitler girl right German swine for us children our return was disastrous but it was understandable that Poland wanted its children back after the war you mean yes houses exclaimed she like it's extremely complicated the Western Allied powers made the child's well-being the benchmark on the one hand on the other hand there was the justifiable demand of the Polish state that said give our children back the authorities found themselves in a complicated legal muddle in terms of international law and violation but Finn [Music] alodia is back home again she lives in bid gosh that's 170 kilometers northwest of wood for years she's been giving public lectures as a witness of history in a few days she'll be traveling again to Germany to tell the story of her life not the album 'i'm amethyst here in the album is the photograph taken with my new german what he picked me out lava martini medica mrs. Luiza done she didn't have any children of her own give me a wife admitted coochie Luise doll took the six-year-old to her home in Stendhal in saxony-anhalt the little girl started going to school there and led a comfortable life as a much-loved only child for years later came the shock louisa and her husband Vilhelm doll received a letter from the Polish Red Cross which tore the family apart Louisa doll wrote this in response if the mother of the child is alive we are prepared in view of the mother is terrible suffering and uncertainty during the years of separation to return the child safe and sound to her of course the biological mother has the first right and with a heavy heart I will give up the child whom we have come to love and cherish [Music] allô Diaz polish mother helene Evita shock had survived Auschwitz and with this photograph searched the world for her two daughters and found them can they rot Ramallah via the most often yes when the news came that I was a stolen polish child and had to go back to my home country my muti began to tell me about my siblings who I had forgotten in the course of the four years October my options those who are new Zappa so for that reason I was not so reluctant to return to Poland I wasn't afraid or ischemia buoyancy a new toga but going back was hard alodia had forgotten her native polish but she could communicate with her mother Halina who spoke excellent German alodia was lucky that she maintained contact to her German moti and the two women also became friends alodia was now daughter to both of them [Music] now under mummy I heard two Mama's and these two Mama's loved each other very much they understood each other Ali novita Scheck believed the dolls when they said they had not known who ELISA really was Louisa doll wrote to the Polish Red Cross elitsa was born in Poznan and after she became ill in a children's home in college was then brought to bod pod scene that is where I picked up little Aleta on April 25th 1944 mediated by the former Lebensborn Association the child was placed with me as a pure German child with a German name as an Eastern German orphan of her adoption [Music] [Music] Herman Luther King's foster mother must have known that he was not a German child she got him in December 1942 from zonin visa a Lebensborn home in Carranza Lee's a village near Leipzig his name then was Roman Russia tough ski [Music] Lebensborn was a pet project of Heinrich Himmler it provided a place for unmarried women to have their babies and leave them to be raised the goal was to boost the Aryan population zone and visa also served as an institution for children like Hermann who were abducted from Poland Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union to be taken to Germany [Music] Herman was one of the first children here to be given away to families loyal to the Nazi regime he remembers how it came about I used to always play with my friend of Allah and we'd eat together then a nurse came and said you two have to come along to the head nurse so we went up there and the head nurse was sitting with and an elegant lady was standing later I knew it was my foster mother she wore a hat with a veil and the head nurse said all right are you looking you can pick one of the two children and she said right away I'll take little Haman he's so pale I'll fatten him up and the head nurse said so just sign here and then you can take the child with she took my hand and we went out and took the train to lemco and most westfalen liver that's how it went like at a chicken farm I want that chicken that one doesn't look so good that's how they did it with the children at the time and Pearman was just happy that he had someone to take care of him and he got along well with Maria Luther King but once he started to try and find out about his background she broke away from him when she died in the late 1980s he did not attend her funeral [Music] at the Nuremberg trials American prosecutors tried to press charges for the kidnapping of alien children for purposes of Germanization but the tribunal contested the charges acquitting the defendants of that crime and describing the Lebensborn organization as a welfare institution [Music] Dannenberg a process in this respect the Nuremberg trials can be seen to have made a tragic legal mistake to classify Lebensborn which ran these children's homes as a purely charitable organisation and equipped those involved of the charges from today's point of view that was a blatant judicial error Casa feel entitled [Music] alodia vataj check is on her way to the city of Freiburg she knows Germany well she often visited her foster parents here today she's giving a talk to students at the Catholic University of Applied Sciences as a living witness as always she tells her life story in German and that is why they gave us new first and last names until then I had been allowed yova taschek and now I was a little bit Khalid sir with alodia says her lectures have also been a form of therapy for her a way of coming to terms with her own past you said that your time in Germany shaped you and yet you still consider yourself polish would you say that Germany is also your homeland in a way I think that's true it is that for me I love to come back here and I always say every country has very good people and very bad peoples installation learning [Music] alodia vataj six-story is also a positive one with lots of understanding on both sides and she hopes to keep telling it for as long as she can [Applause] today Yusuf Silva is setting off to the family get-together with his sister Yanina I'm glamorous about the journey I didn't sleep well last night yes but yeah yes Barwon the family history is likely to be a topic at the gathering Yussef can't forgive Yanina for denying that she's polish but he says she is and will always be his sister so Gina put out a young everyone in the family loves her she's warm and empathetic we call her the princess because she's so sensitive so nice and warm heart attack I said that's not [Music] Herman Luther King has received a letter from the German Constitutional Court another defeat he has lost his fight for compensation but he will continue to search for his roots for the parts of his life that the Nazis hid from him I didn't think I'll find out anything but I'll keep looking who knows maybe I'll find a nugget even in his mid-80s not knowing who his parents were is a source of unease that Herman says will never leave him [Music] you

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 2,453,789

Rating: 4.7866573 out of 5

Keywords: Documentary, Documentaries, documentaries, DW documentary, full documentary, DW, documentary 2020, Nazi Germany, Heinrich Himmler, World War II, Poland, stolen children, Hitler, Germany, German history, nazi, germany, hitler, auschwitz, holocaust, poland, history documentary, german history, history, documentary

Id: 2GLsM169izM

Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 11 2020