Heuaktion (German: "hay harvest", or "hay operation")[1] was a World War II operation in which 40,000 to 50,000 Polish and Ukrainian children aged 10 to 14 were kidnapped by German occupation forces and transported to Nazi Germany as slave labourers.[2]
"Heuaktion" was an acronym for "Homeless, parentless, unhoused [heimatlos, elternlos, unterkunftslos – HEU, "hay"] Operation".[3] On arrival in Germany, the children were turned over to Organisation Todt and to the Junkers aircraft works.
The intentions of the mass abductions were to pressure the adult populations of the occupied territories to register as workers in the Reich and to weaken the “biological strength” of the areas that Germany had invaded.[4]
The children were transferred to special camps for children called Kindererziehungslager, where the Germans selected children whose racial traits made them suitable for Germanization. Children considered racially unsuitable were sent either to forced labour or to concentration camps, including Auschwitz, after the destruction of their birth certificates.[6]
^Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression. Vol. III. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. 1946. p. 71 (doc. 031-PS). Online edition, Internet Archive.
^Wasser, Bruno (1993). Himmlers Raumplanung im Osten: Der Generalplan Ost in Polen 1940-1944. Stadt, Planung, Geschichte (in German). Basel/Berlin: Birkhäuser. p. 221. ISBN978-376432852-8.
^Men of 20 July and the War in the Soviet UnionChristian Gerlach in War Of Extermination: The German Military In World War II page 139
^"Herrenmensch" und "Bandit" Deutsche Kriegsführung und Besatzungspolitik als Kontext des sowjetischen Partisanenkrieges(1941-44)Timm C. Richter page 106
^Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals. Vol. V. Washington: United States Government Printing Office. 1950. p. 89. Online edition, Internet Archive.