September 19th 39. 00 nazi germany invaded poland and for more than 5 years brought terror to much of europe with its ideology of a master race. A central figure in that campaign was right sphere s. S. Heinrich himmler. The leading nazi was obsessed with racial purity and came up with a plan to bolster the socalled arion race between 19411945 children were kidnapped from all over Eastern Europe and forcibly germanized. Historians estimate that 20000 of those children came from poland alone. In nazi run Childrens Homes they learned to speak german their identities were falsified the go trustful before i was named a load here vitesse check from that moment on i was a leiths if it can be simply. Those children are now over 80 years old and many of them still know nothing about their roots. Nor do by me alas armies i felt this kind of back and forth also affected my relationships few and. Much of what happened to them is still a mystery. Use of some of our travels as often as he can to the place where his parents are buried. It lies outside chance to hover in southern poland. He was just 9 years old when they died. But our i feel im missing the warmth of being raised by a father and mother. We want to be brought up by strangers who are Something Like a family but all my life ive been missing that warmth of that embrace. His father yusef was 41. His mother french scieszka 36. When they were murdered by the nazis on the spot. Their son use if is now 86 years old. But he has never forgotten his childhood home. Our. Barbara. Starr would all be a school over there was a Village House with 2 rounds it was made of wood and bricks bookers i made the job let me show you where the stables or and fathers workshop and. During world war 2 use of his family he did use and partisans in the bunker 7 people lived underground here for 2 years is out then both of them there are all of the above this bunker was a pipe for 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 which are shared by the crowd near me if i got shows or just started going i dont yet. And the whole tragedy got it all badly on torture took place here. And show you how the. Germans came going to cars soldiers into the interests not just a matter. Of allah he knocked on the door and asked if theyre so frustrated you called mommy thats an invalid they started smashing the windows with their rifles so maybe thats how it all the planes were broke up just my mother was crying and took us children out to the very beginning we children ran behind our mom and papa we were all practically naked undershirts it was 5 oclock in the morning it was september so it was chilly and said and the german said where the jews where the participants but ill tell you they went into the barn they had a pointy metal stick and they stuck it in the straw to see if they would hit a person who would scream and yell more but there was no. Yes that. The germans hit them with anything they could get their hands on. With holes im sure pitchforks. My mother was stabbed in the stomach 3 times with a pitchfork children grow up she was pregnant flesh to show their mission under 6 their 7th month well my sense is that mama didnt make any more sense she was leaving just a notice transcona woman my father had his head bashed he been hit with a rifle the whole court yard was full of blood they dragged my mother here my father there are kids there. And you still found nothing but i sure this is not leisure not. Its not. Between the workshops and the stables and. Im not sure. How they got out that maybe 4 or 600 fell in the middle of the courtyard and at that moment the 1st jewish women came out of. There and. Then they said the other side of the house on friday. After that the soldiers shot uses parents dead and threw their bodies into a pit at the spot where their graves is now. The children survived after witnessing the events. Then they were taken to germany like thousands of other children from 1941 on words who were deemed to be worthy of being terminated. Use of sr yanina still lives in germany. Or not is there shes german german ice. All eyes just that she corresponds to the curial nordic race want blond hair and like colored i asked that was what the germans wanted to show our sister was lost to us forever. As a pearl but also sister the best one of us is in germany and that such as. It was comes god. In give me a good good image maybe Good Practice to do. Your job or come to kind of god would be kinda fun bein and for me. Just dont get what i was little baby to you dont. Wish to. Come on luther king has lived in by dear im in southwestern germany since he retired. Where he originally came from he doesnt know. You know uses think you need but everyone feels nice curiosity to know what their parents look like if you have read your breed of i dont know if i should others saw systems on nieces or os i just dont know i seems to have tried everything. I do 20 archives but i found nothing nothing at all to have an issue from god its. This for decades herrmann has been trying to find out who his parents were and where he was born. He always has the support of his partner. And even as a child he felt that there was some mystery he was 6 years old when he was placed with maria and her man luther king but he sensed that they were keeping something from him that. This stuff if there was a spot was hidden in my foster fathers concert. Areas 13 or 14 year old i looked to see what was in it. Yes i was always curious. And when i saw this i realized more or less what it was about. This is why i already knew that i wanted my real parents but i didnt know how it all hung together. And then i read this document that said. Mother dead. Kings birth certificate issued by nazi officials there are dashes where the names of his father and mother should. Be. His place of birth is listed as broken invertigo the site of one of the nazi run orphanages where the identities of the abducted children were covered up. When the book. Was the 1st place i went looking and i spoke to the can take it that he was still alive i asked him if anybody else took place like it said in the document and he said no no but ever took place here. Near woodstock good food and found since then harriman has discovered that he was probably called roman russia tough skinned before he was placed with his foster parents was he really born on january 20th 1036 he has his doubts. I might be a year older or younger maybe im just 36 years old. Theyre just saying with documents from which was january the 21st. I had swung to say i know. The central polish city of wood was probably the 1st station in his life. To mine still doesnt know who gave him up to this orphanage. But he does know that the nazis took him from here to germany. To be that you mean in the court of gold but you will be going. On the list by. Boredom i am. But no one. Even the scholars on it and you know what you know. What it would be. I would love. To meet once again out pig if you have it on. Critical mind i am not going to be a bold but i am kind of a little further on what. Story also has ties to which. She was 5 years old when she was brought to the youth Detention Camp in lets munched out as would you was called during the nazi occupation. Today shes meeting up with her friend bob barr a pocho kid which. The 2 women have a lot in common. And their parents in life have been very similar. But. Theyve 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 who was brought here in 1943. I know you have a great map. Well shall we need to find it really apply to st its over here we should turn the map around like this what i thought that means my house must have been here. Off of how well you remember everything of course have you ever heard of the children from dr vitesse checks grew up i am of. Father was a resistance fighter executed by the nazis her mother was deported to auschwitz for her husbands actions and ended up in the machinery of the german occupiers oppression people and how long were you in the camp possible to. Tell the people that. I was probably here for around 8 weeks. Before that in the race office and poznan they had determined that i corresponded to the socalled area scheme. And the germans wanted to german eyes children of the arion race. Get a one result write. 3 people. 3 life stories. With this in common. All 3 are victims of heinrich humors racist mania. The race fear s. S. Visited occupied poland in 1941 and traveled through the watergate district. In 1939 poland had been carved up between the soviets and the germans. Sections of the western part of the country including the socalled racecar to lie and were incorporated into the german reich. Other regions were placed under german civil administration. Himmlers vision was to make sure many of the mightiest nation in the world. Bolstering the population with new progeny from abroad mainly from Eastern Europe. In the winter so she even berlin are hundreds of documents that show the gradual development of humor strategy for the organized abduction of children. After his trip through a bar to go himmler wrote to the go lighter after price or. I believe it is right that small children have especially good ratings from polish families because elected and brought up by us and special not to large childrens nurseries and orphanages. I would advise starting with 2 or 3 such institutions so as to gather experience. Isabel hina mine is a professor of contemporary history at the university of manchester. 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 analyzed 17000 files of foreign children found by the allies in germany after the war he pointed out you know historians want to reconstruct the roots taken by the stolen children and with them as it was left but the fact that the nazis deliberately conceal their identities makes that a formidable task when it. Is good enough to but i did the calculations ive done based on the records of how many children were transported and how many were found after the war and i would estimate the number to be around 20000 polish children behind each one of those numbers is an individual story as a life thrown into turmoil and set on a completely different course. There are many myths about the forced german ization 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 him or his plan did have a system as the rights commissioner for the consolidation of german nationhood he helps to issue directives 671. Its stated. First all children and formerly polish 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 all rich private himmlers direct subordinate. Later at the nuremburg trials he claimed that there had never been a concrete plan. The directive 6071. 00 went to high ranking leaders of the s. S. And the police and the corresponding s. S. Leaders concerned with race and settlement policy so that the s. S. Operators would be aware of how it worked it was a part of a supposedly rational occupation and gemini ization policy that was imposed mainly on occupied poland but also one other occupied and next to each and. Possibly. Today experts believe that our own 50000 children were abducted from across europe. Cases are known from todays ukraine the Czech Republic and slovenia. But the Largest Group was from poland because the machinery of the abduction started in the bar to go 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 socalled arion types classified as pure nordic purif alien or nordic faily and what the nazis couldnt use were unbalanced hybrid types. And finally children were also taken away from their biological parents like. 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 litzmannstadt to be germanized. This memorial recalls the thousands of children who lived here and were forced to do hard labor. I knew it. Was a book the memories come flooding back when i load your stance here. She was brought to the camp together with her little sister daria. Straight away we werent allowed to speak polish. Wed whisper to each other in polish but of course we couldnt make it obvious that we were speaking. I was one of the i when i proposed school. We were punished for every infraction. Each couple had a club and they shouted at us very loudly. We were scared of the yelling and of course the severe beating. By layouts of the purple. I think say and they were class for roll call that counters off in germany which was hard for us. We didnt know the numbers. And thats why the roll call used to take a very long time wash with some of our time and. Other illness that they are 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 they slept. They would find dead children in the beds. Not. Then called was the 1st place where all of you were sent. More followed. Bercow. Bud protein. What is. Chosen is of children were funneled through these nazi run homes. Each station represented a further step to conceal the childs real identity. Dates of birth were changed names were made more german sounding. Became elite civic. 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. Use of salva lives in the center of chance to hold. Even know he cant accept that his sister yanina loves the nation that caused his family so much suffering my macros for days over letters from germany from my sister. Which she did not want to appear in person in this film or engage with the familys history thats apparent in her letters. It was a line vendor by your society so when you come to see us please please dont talk about politics or about the war. Wars you love and kisses. Yes. All her letters are signed with her polish and her german name or now youre stuck. And so german iced that she even writes in her letters that i shouldnt talk about politics or our history show you because shes embarrassed. You can still get on a sugar rush she doesnt want to know anything about poland or the memory of her family. Or when you know she lives her life there in germany she is for you richard. After the murder of their parents the 5 soviet children were brought to court now grown cool insulates. You know nino was taken from there by a woman from hanover who adopted her her name was changed to anita hill no official records about this were preserved which is why you know it was not found after the war but her siblings never stopped looking it was 20 years before use of saw her again since then theyve met up regularly. How theyre all out o. Good and dark my good day my dear sister. So are you would home or out for a walk. 2 here thought i had lunch and youre probably tired just not sure im looking forward so much to seeing you soon as the war for the jets. Tell you it all but ill be living a chance to hold her tomorrow at 12 noon. By my dear sister. You know for sure so now youve heard her voice. Use of sr was carried off to germany shortly before the end of the war she didnt undergo a racial examination the longer the war went on the less attention the german officials paid to rules and guidelines. And in his abduction was an act of pure despotism. In the southwestern german city of fribourg hermeneutic king is paying a visit to crystal this isnt. Schwartz is a teacher but for years he has been helping him on the to want the German Government to recognise the kidnapped children as victims of the nazi regime so that they can receive compensation. Though she was founded an association representing the childrens interests and he and harman have filed lawsuits together so far with no success. As a last resort theyve approached germanys highest court the Constitutional Court. Does this is this nice is the letter i received in this to be able. To see their processing it. Now i have to wait for a day. You know how money is right for your son and id suggest that we write another letter to the Constitutional Court saying they should speed things up a little in consideration of your ancient invisibile as one of those who are not. Those initial toilette i think its great that at his age he still is prepared to fight for justice even though its only about the symbolic sums of 2500 euros for not really its a joke. According to germanys act regulating compensation for National Socialist injustice that is the sum to which non jewish victims are entitled. Kemah nudie king considers himself a part of that group. Is good for me its not about the money but about the recognition that this was a crime its me thats what gets me mad he used the strategy is to wait until nature takes care of it why then its over. 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 its often argued that the kidnapped children were well treated in contrast to other victims. That was true in herremans 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. Came and graduated from school studied at university and became a mechanical engineer. But the parents never spoke to him about his background. Back in chains to hoffa. Use of self is on duty. For the past 30 years hes been working for an organization for the victims of nazi persecution he campaigns for them to receive compensation but. Poland has a number of funds from which the germanized children or the children of mothers who are forced laborers receive small payments. Like this woman from now on shell get 50 euros a month. For her by the naacp dearly on this is actually until several hours this letter