. NMT04-T1075
Volume IV · Page 1075
| Germanization was not only a crime against
the individual, but also a crime directed against the occupied countries.
When one realizes the tender years of these Polish children at the time they were abducted and placed into German foster homes, it is not surprising that some of the Polish children, who appeared before this Tribunal as defense witnesses, expressed no desire to return to their homes or their native lands. Their testimony shows that they were seized at such an early age that few even remember their parents or relatives. The greater portion of the lives of these young witnesses have been spent with the German foster parents with whom they were placed by Lebensborn and, thus, it is only natural that the children have developed a sense of security during these early years of their lives. Yet, the ease of readjustment and the great satisfaction of being returned to their relatives and to their native countries is evidenced by the testimony of the two Czech and three Polish children who appeared before this Tribunal as witnesses for the prosecution. That the decision of some of these immature children to remain in Germany should be decisive is absurd — the child's greatest security lies with its return to its parents and relatives and to its own country which owes him protection and is prepared to give him that protection. |
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| EXTRACT FROM THE CLOSING
STATEMENT FOR DEFENDANT SOLLMANN |
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| I should like at the end of this whole chapter of the indictment — Kidnaping of children of foreign nationality for the purpose of Germanization — to remind you of the severe words of the prosecution in the indictment, according to which actions of the defendants were carried out as a part of a systematic program of genocide aimed at the annihilation of foreign nationals and national minorities, and, on this point, I should like to state the following: The Lebensborn participated in this arbitrarily asserted so-called systematic program of genocide with some 250 children from the Warthegau, 13 children from Czechoslovakia and 20 children from Upper Carniola and Lower Styria. The witness for the prosecution Lavitan declared, on the last day of the proceedings, before this honorable Court, that the participation of Lebensborn in the alleged removal of 10,000 Polish children was to be put at 340 children; whatever the circumstances |
* This part of the closing statement was not read into the record but was presented to the Tribunal in the form of a brief. Closing statement is recorded in mimeographed transcript, 18 February 1948, pp. 5176-5205.
872486 — 50 — 71
