How were children selected for Germanisation during Nazi occupation and what records document their fates?
Executive summary
The Nazis selected children for Germanisation through racialized screening—physical, medical and genealogical tests administered by SS and state authorities—and removed many children from families in occupied territories to be re-educated, adopted or otherwise disposed of according to those tests [1] [2] [3]. Surviving documentation about individual fates is uneven: some SS and civil registries survived and are now held in institutional archives like the Arolsen Archives and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, but large swaths of records were destroyed, falsified, or never created, leaving significant gaps [4] [2] [5].
1. How selection criteria were defined and applied
Selection relied on Nazi racial ideology and eugenic practices: children were assessed for “Aryan” physical traits (hair and eye color, skull shape, birthmarks) and family medical and genealogical records; the SS screened applicants’ medical histories and family lineage to establish “Aryan” ancestry [2] [1]. Himmler and SS authorities issued directives prioritizing the abduction and evaluation of children deemed racially valuable in occupied Eastern Europe and elsewhere, with age limits often set because younger children were deemed easier to “Germanise” [1] [6]. Where parents attempted to apply for permits or resisted, bureaucratic loyalty tests and police/SS involvement shaped outcomes: permits were granted only when locals could be certified as loyal or parents’ allegiance was judged acceptable [1].
2. How selection worked in practice on the ground
In occupied Poland and other territories, officials and SS detachments rounded up children who matched physical ideals and sent them to special centres — selection camps, “children education camps,” or Lebensborn and other maternity homes — for racial testing, renaming, and placement; rejected children could be sent to concentration camps, killed, or otherwise deported [1] [3]. Accounts show children as young as toddlers were taken under the pretense of “health holidays” or welfare placements and transported into German custody, where false birth certificates and new identities were often issued [3] [5].
3. Lebensborn, kidnappings and the overlap between programs
Lebensborn was an SS-run program to promote births judged “racially pure” and to place or raise children meeting those standards; it also intersected with abductions—some children born to German men and foreign women were claimed by the program, and kidnapped children judged suitable were absorbed into Lebensborn homes or adoptive placements [7] [2] [3]. Historians and contemporary researchers caution against oversimplified myths—Lebensborn was not a single type of institution everywhere and varied by country and circumstance—but core aims were consistent: increase “Aryan” stock and erase foreign identities [4] [8].
4. How identities were erased and fates administratively fixed
Once selected, children’s Polish or other non-German records were destroyed or falsified: names were Germanized, birthplaces altered on false certificates, and records of biological parents erased so custody and future identity rested with German institutions or families [3] [9]. Decisions about life or death in related programs (e.g., child euthanasia linked to racialized health judgments) were sometimes taken on the basis of filled reporting forms alone without direct medical re-examination, illustrating the bureaucratic, documentation-driven nature of such lethal decisions [10].
5. What records survive and where researchers look
Surviving evidence is patchwork: Arolsen Archives hold a major collection of Lebensborn documents and has been expanding its holdings and personal testimonies, the USHMM provides contextual dossiers on Lebensborn and SS screening practices, and investigative journalists and historians continue to use burned or scattered adoption files, UNRRA case files and local registries to reconstruct individual stories [4] [2] [11]. Journalistic work and archives like the Arolsen and UNRRA casefiles have helped former Lebensborn children locate data about their origins, but many files were deliberately destroyed or altered at war’s end, limiting full reconstruction [5] [11].
6. Gaps, contested figures and the historian’s view
Estimates of kidnapped children vary and some popular figures (e.g., large round numbers cited in non-specialist accounts) remain contested; scholarly caution stems from destroyed files, falsified paperwork and differing national records, so while the mechanism—racial selection, abduction, Germanisation—is well documented, precise tallies and the fates of many individuals remain unresolved [1] [5] [12]. Researchers rely on surviving SS registries, testimonies and institutional archives to piece together cases, and ongoing projects by archives and journalists continue to clarify individual fates while correcting myths and political agendas that can inflate or erase aspects of the record [4] [11].