ABSTRACT
Reporting from the Nuremberg trials in 1948, Polish Child Search Officer Roman Hrabar sat in disbelief. Scholars like Nicholas Stargardt and Tara Zahra have blazed the trail for histories of children both during and in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. As the extent of Nazi crimes and atrocities came to light during the mid-1940s, evidence emerged that the Germans had kidnapped and Germanised ‘racially valuable’ children from German-occupied territories during the war. These ‘stolen’ and ‘hidden’ children, as they came to be called during the post-military period, were hiding in plain sight. Polish children were Heinrich Himmler’s favourite targets, as he considered many to be of ‘ethnic German’ origin who had “obviously descended from Nordic parents” and would “as bearers of valuable German blood and characteristics be returned to German nationality and Germanized.” The exclusion of ‘ethnic German’ children from United Nations aid reveals much about post-World War II humanitarian practice and culture.
