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Children taken from eastern Europe during the SS "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), and temporarily imprisoned in Auschwitz awaiting their transfer to Germany, look out from behind the barbed wire fence.

Photograph | Photograph Number: 38065
Children taken from eastern Europe during the SS "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), and temporarily imprisoned in Auschwitz awaiting their transfer to Germany, look out from behind the barbed wire fence. [The blonde boy at the lower right may be Kalman Cylberszac (b. 1934), the son of Rachel and Nachum Cylberszac from Lask, Poland.]

Children taken from eastern Europe during the SS "Heuaktion" (Hay Action), and temporarily imprisoned in Auschwitz awaiting their transfer to Germany, look out from behind the barbed wire fence.

[The blonde boy at the lower right may be Kalman Cylberszac (b. 1934), the son of Rachel and Nachum Cylberszac from Lask, Poland.]

Date
July 1944
Locale
Auschwitz, [Upper Silesia] Poland
Variant Locale
Brzezinka
Birkenau
Auschwitz III
Monowitz
Auschwitz II
Photo Designation
KILLING CENTERS -- Auschwitz -- WARTIME -- Prisoners: -- Prisoners/Daily Life
Photo Credit
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Belarusian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography

About This Photograph

Event History
Approximately 40,000 eastern European children were transferred to Germany during the "Heuaktion," a cover name for the kidnapping of children aged 10 to 14 deemed suitable for "re-Germanization" into the Reich. The "Heuaktion" was one of many such operations carried out by the SS with the cooperation of institutions administered by its youth and "Lebensborn" programs.

"Re-Germanization" was the legal and educational process by which "racially desirable" persons from the population of territories occupied by the Wehrmacht could become members of the German "Volk" and citizens of the Reich. In order to qualify for "re-Germanization," they had to provide proof of German racial origins or that they were sufficiently "deutsch gesinnt" (German-minded). "Re-Germanization," however, could be extended to "racialy valuable" children belonging to foreign peoples, in some cases, even children who were Jews. The children transferred to Germany under the "Heuaktion" fell into this category.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10008219.

Keywords and Subjects

Rights and Restrictions

Photo Source
Belarusian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography
Copyright: Public Domain
Bundesarchiv
Copyright: Exclusively with source
Provenance: Institut fuer Marxismus-Leninismus
Source Record ID: IV-11-E-2.930
Second Record ID: 2780-N
Instytut Pamieci Narodowej
Copyright: Exclusively with provenance
Provenance: Beit Lohamei Haghetaot (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum)
Source Record ID: 61958
Published Source
The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust... - Berenbaum, Michael - Little, Brown and Company - p. 203
 
Record last modified: 2020-05-29 00:00:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa11385