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Volume V · Page 102
| hostilities. This society was
primarily a maternity home. Included in its activities, before and during the
war, was the placing of children born in the maternity homes in foster homes.
Evidence produced by the prosecution discloses that since the cessation of hostilities, IRO, an agency engaged in tracing foreign children brought into Germany, has located approximately 10,000 foreign-born children in the American Zone of Germany. Of this number, according to the prosecution's evidence, Lebensborn had been connected with only 340 in any manner. Sollmann was managing director of Lebensborn; Tesch was Sollmann's deputy and head of the Main Legal Department; Ebner was head of the Main Health Department; and Viermetz was in charge of the department dealing with homes and adoptions as well as the employment department, and later, Main Department A. We have attempted to give an over-all picture of the organizations charged with participating in the Germanization program. We shall now deal with the specific crimes charged in the indictment, and the participation or nonparticipation of each organization in the crimes charged; and, in part, we shall discuss the role played by certain defendants in the Germanization program and in connection with particular crimes. |
| KIDNAPING OF ALIEN CHILDREN |
| The Nazis, soon after the invasion of Poland,
began an extensive campaign of kidnaping foreign children. Although at first
these kidnapings were confined, principally, to so-called ethnic Germans, it
soon became apparent that sufficient children were not being secured to satisfy
the Nazi aims; and the program was therefore extended to include all children
of "good racial characteristics"; that is, physical appearances, such as blond
hair and blue eyes, indicating that the child might have some "Nordic" blood or
might make a good German. Racial examiners of RuSHA performed these
examinations to determine whether the child was of good or inferior blood.
Himmler, in a speech to Party comrades, outlined his aims He said: |
"* * * Closely linked to this problem ‘children and people’ for this coming and now shaping great empire which has recently been much enlarged by the addition of the Eastern territories and which gradually becomes an empire of Germanic greatness which has been created for us by the Fuehrer; linked to this problem is now a second problem, that is my task as Reich Commissioner for Strengthening of Germanism. Here, |
