Heuaktion (German: "hay harvest", or "hay operation")[1] was aWorld War II operation in which 40,000 to 50,000Polish andUkrainian children aged 10 to 14 werekidnapped by German occupation forces and transported toNazi Germany as slave labourers.[2]
"Heuaktion" was anacronym for "Homeless, parentless, unhoused [heimatlos, elternlos, unterkunftslos –HEU, "hay"] Operation".[3] On arrival in Germany, the children were turned over toOrganisation Todt and to theJunkers aircraft works.
The intentions of the mass abductions were to pressure the adult populations of the occupied territories toregister as workers in theReich and to weaken the “biological strength” of the areas that Germany had invaded.[4]
Alfred Rosenberg, head of theReich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, originally feared that targeting children aged 10 to 14 would be seen as simple abduction, and proposed instead kidnapping older children aged 15 to 17.[5] However, actions of theGerman 9th Army induced him to consent to the kidnapping of younger children.[4]
The children were transferred to special camps for children calledKindererziehungslager, where the Germans selected children whose racial traits made them suitable forGermanization. Children considered racially unsuitable were sent either toforced labour or toconcentration camps, includingAuschwitz, after the destruction of their birth certificates.[6]
The children were kidnapped byArmy Group Centre and by the2nd Army, whose Chief of Staff,Henning von Tresckow, on 28 June 1944 signed the order to abduct the children.[7]
The operation peaked in 1944, but the kidnappings were not fully implemented due to the subsequent course of the war.[8]
TheNuremberg trials classified the kidnapping of children as part of the Nazi program of systemicgenocide.[9]