Talk:Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany

German Version Gone

There used to be a link on this page to a German version. There is no more. I've yet to meet a German who even knows these things occurred. Germans need to know. Please bring back the German version page of this topic.

Himmler’s core points

This really needs to be cleaned up. Listed among Himmler’s core points: ‘In the territory of Poland, only four grade schools would remain, in which counting would be taught only till 500, writing one's name, and teaching that God commanded Poles to serve Germans.’

How could someone only know how to count to 500? It’s a number system; once you can count you can count to any number. This entire section should have a primary source (in english). — Preceding unsigned comment added by MONDARIZ (talk • contribs) 06:03, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Cattle waggons

Germans expelled from the Sudetenland

Cattle wagons - they weren't real "Stock car (rail)" but rather Boxcars with small windows - see the picture Image:Vertreibung 1.jpg . Xx236 11:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

crime of genocide

Rather crime against humanity and/or war crime.Xx236 11:54, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Dirk Moses.

From the Google Print link we have only a page refering to a statement of some sorts. Its not clearly if this statement is about the whole kidnapping or Hau Aktion. This needs to be clarified.--Molobo (talk) 20:50, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Here is the relevant page and one page above that is where the footnote is pointing to. Please read it or is it suddenly not clear to you, either, whether these are letters or just black stripes? Come on! How about you find other meta-research about the number before undoing or questioning it? Nor is it particularly fair to put the word "claimed" in articles before parts you don't like, insinuating it was baseless, and put an attribution to a source in a biased way behind without any other statement being attributed to anything. Sciurinæ (talk) 21:37, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Well its rather obvious that the reference has to point to something. The trouble is Googleprint offers limited view and the page with the sentence refered to is not seen to me. Is the sentence about the whole German theft of Polish children during the attempt to exterminate Polish people in WW2 or just the theft in Hau Aktion.--Molobo (talk) 00:21, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry I said it was one page above because actually I was looking at page 247, some pages above. You should now be able to find the page. If not, well, I can only show you the door. I have also removed the attribution as biased. I told you - find other meta research on the number. If you can't, get over it. Imagine if I cluttered the article with similar ad hominem sentences like "Roman Zbigniew Hrabar, a Polish man in Communist Poland, claimed in 1960"? By the way, "at least 20,000" does not preclude "200,000". And maybe you should first achieve what he has achieved before becoming condescending. I have also written something about the Heu Aktion, for which you also used an overblown number. Sciurinæ (talk) 12:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

You can easly copy the sentence here-Google offers limit view and the page above is out of the available preview for me. To put one estimate over others is POV.--Molobo (talk) 14:22, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

If you're not open-minded on this issue enough to read my comment before writing something as a reply, probably for the sake of replying, I don't think you'd be interested in the text of the source. Should you be, let me repeat myself: check page 247, not the page above. And yes, we all have the same view limit at Google books, which is only logical. And again, "at least 20,000" does not rule out "200,000". Sciurinæ (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, Sciurinæ. While you are technically correct that "at least 20,000" does not rule out "200,000", neither does it rule out "2 million". Nonetheless, most readers who read "at least 20,000" will conclude that the real number is in the range of 20,000-40,000. If that is the academic consensus, then fine. Otherwise, we need a more accurate presentation of what the academic consensus is. --Richard (talk) 20:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Putting first just one estimate well above all others is pushing one version. What's wrong with thousands and then putting estimates belows. Furthermore the page you point to is a reference to something, but we don't know if it is towards Heu Aktion all the whole Aktion. Second-a book about Australian history is hardly the best scholary source for info about WW2 Poland. It can be given as secondary source showing minority view (if indeed it is, rather then number of Heu Aktion), but hardly as source in the first page of the article.--Molobo (talk) 16:24, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand the problem here. Let's assume that sources give varying estimates from 20,000 to 100,000 children kidnapped. Then the sentence should read "Estimates of the number of children kidnapped range from 20,000 to 100,000 with most estimates centering around 40,000". (I don't know what the sources say so I've just made up some numbers for the purposes of illustration. Then cite the relevant sources. Simple. Right? Or am I missing something? --Richard (talk) 17:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Molobo's suggestion of just mentioning "thousands" in the introduction seems sensible to me; the introduction should be concise. When more definite figures are given later in the article, I think it should be similar to Richard's suggestion, such as "Estimates of the number of children kidnapped range from 20,000¹ to 200,000²³ with most estimates leaning toward the larger numbers." If the sources provided are discussed in the article itself, it is important not to provide a judgement on the source. It should be up to the reader to determine if Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History is credible, not the editor. Olessi (talk) 18:32, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Richard the simple solution is just to mention the lead that it "was a programme in World War II in which thousands of Polish children were abducted from Poland to Nazi Germany for the purpose of Germanisation" The estimates can be given later. I hope you understand my reservations about using an history book about Australia as primary source in the article about WW2 Poland. It's not the best scholary source on that matter. It can be given, but as a sidenote rather then main source. --Molobo (talk) 17:44, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that a history book about Australia is not the best source. Hopefully, better sources can be found and cited. "thousands" is not appropriate as it implies 3000-9000, tending towards higher numbers in this range rather than lower. "tens of thousands" implies 30,000-90,000, once again tending towards higher numbers in the range. If we mean "20,000 - 200,000", then "tens of thousands, possibly as many as 200,000" is the best way to present this, even in the lead. If we say "thousands", it could lead some to conclude that we are only talking about a few thousand children (e.g. 2000-4000). That is still a tragedy, yes, but nothing compared to the scale of 50,000 or 100,000 children. The lead MUST communicate to the reader the scale of what we are talking about. --Richard (talk) 20:42, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

"A history book about Australia" is a most uncritical copy of Molobo's words. It's funny that none of you still hasn't noticed the title of this 2004-book is "Genocide and Settler Society - Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History", not "Australian History" or whatever. Dr Dirk Moses, lecturer in European History and comparative genocide studies, from whose publications you should be able to see that he is more than familiar with Nazi Germany's genocide ... did only include the relevant 17-page chapter titled "Until the Last Drop of Good Blood" - The Kidnapping of "Racially Valuable" Children and Nazi Racial Policy in Occupied Eastern Europe". Dr Isabel Heinemann, at University of Freiburg, wrote it and her name is in bold letters at the first page of the chapter and on every second page throughout the rest of it. Not ignorant of Nazi crimes she is, either, if you Google (or Google book) her name and see her publications - ewww, but German - I can already guess what the next original personal attribution attack is going to be. Honestly, I'm so pissed off by you guys. Some book about the History of Australia ... I'm especially kind of surprised to see the bias towards pop history as compared to the only that source that evidently had done research, even taking another estimate into account (even the popular 200,000) and publishing findings on what the number is (visible research on the number appears to be unique and is more than just the copying of another source, which doesn't give the copies a right to be called "estimates"). Also, "at least 20,000" doesn't factually imply anything except "20,000 or higher". Subjectively, one also concludes that "tens of thousands, possibly as many as 200,000" is higher than 20,000. And that the 200,000, which isn't borne out by the available figures, was still valid. Thanks for the bitter surprise by the way ... Sciurinæ (talk) 02:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Still this remains only a book about Australia. On the other hand we have a detailed study by Richard Lucas on the German kidnapping

Richard C. Lukas Richard C. Lukas is a noted American historian and author of numerous books and articles on Polish history and Polish-Jewish relations.

After earning a Ph.D. from Florida State University he served as a Research Consultant at the United States Air Force Historical Archives before joining Tennessee Technological University were he taught for 20 years. Until his retirement in 1995, he was adjunct professor of history at the University of South Florida, Ft. Myers Campus.

His book : DID THE CHILDREN CRY? : Hitler's War Against Jewish & Polish Children, 1939-1945 [Richard C Lukas] Based on eye-witness accounts, interviews, and prodigious research by the author, who is an expert in the field, this is a unique contribution to the literature of World War II, and a most compelling account of German inhumanity towards children in occupied Poland.

In this position I think that the book is the best source as it is a detailed analysis of the action by experienced historian.

We also have Piotrowski Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918-194 with review such as: The first two chapters, titled 'Soviet Terror' and 'Nazi Terror,' provide a brief overview of Poland's subjugation. Zones of occupation and their ethnic composition are likewise discussed, as are Soviet and Nazi occupation policies and practices. Professor Piotrowski teaches Sociology of the Holocaust at the University of New Hampshire. Overall, this book makes a valuable contribution to several fields of study. Students of the Holocaust, of wartime collaboration, of Polish, Central European and Russian history will be well served by Piotrowski's volume. Now I am sure Moses book is valuable to students of Australia but this is not an article about Australia. Of course below I listed several other scholary sources concentrated on Nazi Germany and Genocide in Poland, none of them concentrated on Australia or New Zealand as far as can be seen. I am sure they also should be put before a book about Australia. After it only mentions German atrocities as a sidenote, while they concentrate on it. In fact one is a complete detailed study of the action by a history professor. Thus they should be treated as primary sources, especially the detailed study. Not to mentionm the fact that is clearly seen that overwhelming number estimated by historians is far above number put by Moses(for only Heu Aktion maybe ?) which isn't repeated anywhere else as far as it can be seen, --Molobo (talk) 02:37, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually I thought you'd read my comments at least after I criticised you for having failed to do so. But seeing the renewed blind obsession on that "book about Australia" made me suspicious and seeing that you still think Moses was the writer has been telling enough. Sciurinæ (talk) 15:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Children kidnapped by Germans in other countries also deserved to be remembered

By making seperate articles. The start should be Nuremberg Archives which list several countries in which children were kidnapped by Germans.--Molobo (talk) 16:36, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Czech children kidapped[1] Yugoslav children kidnapped[2] --Molobo (talk) 16:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The question here is whether there is enough material for an article on each country from which Nazi Germany kidnapped children or whether there should be a single article Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany. --Richard (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

There should probably be an overarching page for the whole program. If enough information accumulated, it could be split off.Goldfritha (talk) 00:23, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm renaming for accuracy.Goldfritha (talk) 17:54, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Estimates

I will gather here what I can find about estimates from scholary sources. From

• Lukas, Richard C. Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945. Hippocrene Books, New York, 2001. It's an extensive description of the campaign

[3] Gives There seems to be general agreement that 200,000 Polish children were deported for Germanization purposes. Not all were Germanized. But only 15-20 percent of the children kidnapped by the Germans were recovered at war's end.

• Jewish Library gives:

[4] In 1946, it was estimated that more than 250,000 were kidnapped and sent by force to Germany. Only 25,000 were retrieved after the war and sent back to their family. It is known that several German families refused to give back the children they had received from the Lebensborn centers.

• Hitler's Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness - Page 165

Konnilyn G. Feig 1981 They were literally kidnapped off the streets. It is estimated that the Germans kidnapped 200000 Polish children.

• "Poland's Holocaust" Tadeusz Piotrowski- Page 22 (an excellent detailed scholary overview and analysis of WW2 Poland and those issues like expulsions, genocide etc in my opinion)

about 200000 Polish children were kidnapped for this sinister program

• "Genocide" - Page 84

W. D. Rubinstein About 200000 'Aryan'-looking Polish children were kidnapped

• Germany and the Second World War: Volume V/II- Page 55

Bernhard R. Kroener, Rolf-Dieter Muller, Hans Umbreit

The Germans are estimated to have kidnapped between 100000 and 200000 children from Poland in the course of the war

• Hitler: The Pathology of Evil - Page 167

George Victor most children were taken from Poland-more then 200.000

--Molobo (talk) 22:50, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

• The Lost Children - pages 126-127

Tara Zahra "Meanwhile, East European officials heavily exaggerated the number of children reportedly kidnapped by the Nazis... It has been more credibly estimated that around 20,000 children were probably kidnapped from Poland and up to 50,000 from all of Europe." Buffalohead (talk) 17:31, 16 May 2019 (UTC) buffalohead

Sciurinea latest edit

Can be seen here:[5] There are several problems with his edit but let me focus on one first: Scinurea has added a sentence "Polish children from occupied Poland were abducted to Nazi Germany and assigned to German foster families for the purpose of Germanisation"

This change seems POV to me. The problems with the sentence are:

• 1-It completely skips the part where children are sent to concentration camps and medical facilities. Instead it gives impression that children were just given to German families.
• 2-It completely skips the fact that the children were subject to racial tests.
• 3-It completely skips the fact that most remained in concentration camps where they were murdered or perished in medical experiments.
• 4-It gives incorrect information as concentration camps and facilites for children were located in Occupied Poland not Nazi Germany.

I would fellow editors to comment if this is the best idea to give impression that kidnapped children were just sent to Germany and given to German families, while skippin the whole racial profiling, concentration camps and medical experiments issues.--Molobo (talk) 02:47, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Umm, sorry, but I just added something that was missing in the WHOLE text (conveniently on the basis of the source), namely that some children were actually attempted to be 'Germanised', not killed but sent to families. Obviously you didn't forget to mention that some (few?, many?, most?) were successfully adopted, too - you simply glossed over that part. ... ... Oh ... my ... God! ... ... ... (I've got to sleep.) Sciurinæ (talk) 03:24, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Trying to skip over the part that Polish children were sent to concentration camps and later stayed there dying or were murdered in medical experiments by Germans if they failed racist criteria is not acceptable to me for NPOV reasons. Right now it gives impression that children were just taken from Poland to Germany, while avoiding alltogether racial profiling, concentration camps, medical experiments and murder for those not fit racially. Also kidnapping and racist brainwashing about belonging to "Master Race" requires a differnt description then "adoption".--Molobo (talk) 03:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• Scinurea edit went all the way to the end of the process. I propose to detail the process in full later, and give just essential "Polish children were abducted from Poland by Nazi Germany for the purpose of Germanisation".

Below we can detail the process in full in seperate chapter. --Molobo (talk) 03:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm honestly not in the least interested in your opinions. You wrote a whole article about the terrors of the kidnapping and in no way mentioned that actually the children suitable for Germanisation, which had been the purpose, were adopted by German families (and yes, it is "adopted", just like for example it wouldn't be wrong to use the word "alive" when also referring to people with a bad life). Then you actually had the guts of accusing me of skipping over something when really the article is full of what happened to those found unsuitable, including the sentence below that, the paragraph thereafter and in each of the eight article sections. I've rephrased it hopefully more to your liking, replacing your original wording "forcefully Germanised", which I couldn't find anywhere on the net anyway. I can't see any sign of you having read my comments you reply to in your comment above, either, so please do give me a sign sometime. Sciurinæ (talk) 15:58, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

"replacing your original wording "forcefully Germanised"

You are incorrect. They went to German families only after forceful indoctrination at the hands of Nazi in special facilites, per Lukas: Children selected for Germanization ended up in schools or institutions run by a number of Nazi organizations before they became available for adoption by German families. (...) The core of the Germanization process was to destroy the Polish identity of the boys and girls. Barbara Mikolajczyk was an adolescent when the Germans took her and her sisters to Bruczkow, where the Nazis forced them to learn German. "The Germans always said that we must forget about speaking in Polish and about Poland," Mikolajczyk said. They beat her and the other children when they spoke Polish. Mikolajczyk now became Baber Mickler. Placed in a German home, she had to address a German woman as "Mama." Like other Polish children doled out to German households, Mikolajczyk received a fraudulent birth certificate and genealogy which the Germans inventively composed for her.

Second-abducting children and convincing them they are Germans is forcefull, because force was used to take them away--Molobo (talk) 16:26, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is English Wikipedia

This is the English version of Wikipedia (not Polish Wikipedia); its readers are readers of English; English readers must be able to read and to verify the source citations. This article needs to follow English Wikipedia citation formats: e.g., see WP:CITE and Wikipedia:Reliable sources.

Re: the above section's discussion, I've revised "forceful" and "forcefully", etc. to "forcible" and "forcibly"; e.g., diff. between an action being done by force and one being done with force) [e.g., "The commander removed the children forcibly." v. "The commander spoke to the children forcefully"; forcible v. forceful (Merriam-Webster.com).

(cont.) Some of the syntactical constructions throughout need clean up due to non-idiomatic English being used in them; I've done some clean up of idiomatic expression and syntax and grammar, but more such clean up probably remains to be done. Dates need to follow Wikipedia:MOS#Dates re: formatting of dates; it is not Wikipedia format to use "th" etc. after numbers of dates. In "show preview mode" one can see the editorial interpolations throughout. --NYScholar (talk) 03:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

(cont.) Just stopped back in briefly to reverse the order of the examples that I gave above and to say also that one needs to follow Wikipedia:MOS#Quotations for punctuation of quotations; please do not use italics to punctuate quotations from sources (see related link there); use quotation marks; block quotations are used only for quotations of 4 or more lines. I corrected a few of such problems a couple of days ago. It is also not necessary to use both quotation marks and italics for foreign words; if one is not pointing to the use of the word as a word, it is sufficient just to use the foreign language and if that is a title of a book, one uses italics (not also quotation marks); if it is an article or a chapter in a book, one uses quotation marks. Please see the details of the section. I've left words which are being noted as words in italics in places; but the whole article needs clean up for consistency throughout as I may have missed some. I have not done a complete clean up. It would be best to convert all the source citations to template format (WP:CITE); right now, there is an inconsistent citation format used throughout. As some people introduced the templates, I've followed that in places, but I don't have time to convert all the citations. This is a controversial subject; one needs to give "full citations"--author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication, pages and so on--see the templates for the parameters; if a URL is being used as a source link, the citation needs to identify the actual source of the link. E.g., if it is Google Books "Limited preview", that needs to be identified as the source, since the source used is not the printed book or article. --NYScholar (talk) 21:46, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

Kidnapped

Did the Polish authors even bother to consult a dictionary before naming this article, and using the term "kidnap" fourteen times in the article, not including the article title?

to steal, carry off, or abduct by force or fraud, esp. for use as a hostage or to extract ransom. take away to an undisclosed location against their will and usually in order to extract a ransom

abduction seems more appropriate, no?

second of all, "kidnapping of children" is a dubious phrase. Of course they are children.

I would propose "abducting of Polish children by Nazi Germany" as an article title.

--88.73.243.133 (talk) 16:07, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that's a valid point; abducting sounds better. Feel free to register, then you'll be able to move the article yourself. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Agree--Jacurek (talk) 01:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Update

Moved back to original title-Kidnapping is a bit more widespread then abduction when describing those events. Also updated some missing references-most were already existing ones but not extended to all sentences where they were used.Still the article needs repair--Molobo (talk) 00:18, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Name

A short search on google books shows 25 to 16 in favour of Kidnapping of Polish children to abduction.--Molobo (talk) 15:34, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

IPN figures

My Polish is only fair – Polish editors can confirm this by checking source

The Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimate 200,000 Polish children were kidnapped and only 15% (30,000) returned to Poland.

Source

Wojciech Materski and Tomasz Szarota. Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami.Institute of National Remembrance(IPN) Warszawa 2009 ISBN 978-83-7629-067-6 Page 99

Also the book is a goldmine of information on Poland's losses in the war (thats a hint - get it) --Woogie10w (talk) 13:34, 23 October 2011 (UTC)

gas chambers

Any proof of those children were killed in a gas chamber--41.151.66.170 (talk) 11:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)?

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Bad Source

The use of the Ghitta Sereny interview, as the only source of the number 400,000, comes from an interview in Talk magazine, reprinted by Jewish Virtual Library.

1) It includes this introduction from Jewish Virtual Library: "As part of Hitler's plan to create "the master race," 250,000 Jewish children were kidnapped during the war and subjected to Nazi propaganda in an attempt to "cleanse" them of their Jewish heritage." The idea that the Nazis were trying to Germanize Jews is certainly a mistake; apparently whoever wrote the introduction didn't read the interview, or know much history.

2) Nowhere in the interview is the number 400,000 even mentioned! Sereny mentions 200,000 Poles "reported missing"- not necessarily kidnapped.

Buffalohead (talk) 17:55, 16 May 2019 (UTC)Buffalohead

Inconsistent number quoted in two related Wiki article

This article states that ~200,000 Polish children were kidnapped.

HOWEVER, a linked, related article reports a far lower number, 40,000 - 50,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuaktion

I am not capable of determining the correct number, but know that maintaining the integrity of Wikipedia requires that the numbers must agree.

If someone reading this can do the research, great.LarryWiki115 04:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)Larry — Preceding unsigned comment added by Larry11565 (talk • contribs)