The Stolen Children of Poland

by Agnieszka Was-Turecka, Ewelina Karpińska-Morek, Monika Sieradzka

The Nazi Child Abductions in Poland

The relationship between Germany and Poland is still shaped by the crimes committed by Nazi Germany during World War II. One of the lesser-known atrocities is the abduction of tens of thousands of Polish children, who were selected based on racial criteria, taken from their families, and forcibly "Germanized." Many people in both countries remain unaware of this dark chapter of history.

Few topics in German-Polish historical research have as many gaps as this one. Even today, many of those affected live without knowing their true identities.

For the first time, this book brings together a collection of harrowing testimonies from abducted children—an unprecedented record of their experiences. The Polish editorial team of Deutsche Welle and the Polish news portal Interia launched a multimedia project titled Stolen Children to shed light on this forgotten tragedy.

300 pages, Hardcover

Expected publication July 28, 2026

Reviews

[Kristina Pauls (ARC Reviewer) · Rating 5 out of 5]

PUBLISH DATE: May 5, 2026
This is a deeply moving and important book. The personal accounts shared here are heartbreaking, powerful, and impossible to forget. What stood out to me most was the inclusion of real photographs. Seeing the faces behind the stories made the experiences feel even more real and helped me connect on a much deeper emotional level.

That said, this book doesn’t read like a traditional narrative. It feels more like a collection of letters, diary entries, or historical documentation rather than a flowing story. That approach absolutely makes sense given the subject matter, but I wasn’t quite prepared for it going in. Because of the format, I did find it harder at times to stay fully engaged, and it required more focus than a typical nonfiction narrative. I found myself more "skimming" several times throughout.

Even so, this is an incredibly valuable and necessary work that sheds light on a lesser known and devastating chapter of history. I’m giving it five stars regardless, for its impact and importance, with the caveat that readers should know it’s more documentary in style than storydriven. It is actually very well written, but just not a style that I personally find easy to read.

BOOK TITLE: The Stolen Children of Poland
AUTHOR: Agnieszka Was-Turecka; Ewelina Karpinska-Morek; Monika Sieradzka; Artur Wróblewski; Tomasz Majta; Michal Drzonek
PUBLISHER: Histria
FORMAT: e-book
PAGES: 300
I received a complimentary digital ARC [Advanced Reader copy] of this book via NetGalley. Thank you to Histria Publishing and the author, for the opportunity to read and review this title prior to publication. As always, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

[Melanie Dulaney · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a middle grade librarian, I learned about the Nazi Lebensborn program of kidnapping children and then using them to provide manpower and to repopulate Germany from an historical fiction book called Someone Named Eva (Joan Wolf) and later from Marsha Skrypuch’s Stolen Girl (a part of the Making Bombs for Hitler trilogy). Like so many of us, I continue to be horrified by aspects of our world’s history but know how important it is to be aware of the wrongs of the past to not only try to avoid repeating them, but recognize them for what they are when they are being repeated. In the Stolen Children of Poland, the authors delve deeply into Lebensborn and its widespread abuse of the youngest victims of Hitler’s regime. Highly researched and driven by the remembrances of those who were forcibly removed from their families and their home country, this book is not for the faint of heart nor for children as the torture, starvation, and physical as well as psychological abuses is stated outright and, with a scope of nearly a quarter of a million children snatched away, repeated often. Locations of many orphanages, private facilities, retraining camps are described and documentation supporting their existence and those in charge as well as attempts by individuals and organizations to repatriate children and reunite them with family are detailed, but with so many countries and people trying to bury, forget or pretend this atrocity ever happened, few endings are happy ones.

First person accounts, photographs of documents, locations and people, and thorough citations are included making this an excellent resource for those researching World War II and the Lebensborn program, specifically.

Target audience: high school-adult

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This powerful book delves into the suppressed fate of thousands of Polish children during WWII. The Nazis' racial policies extended far beyond the killing of Jews. Slavs too, were targeted for annihilation and the land they lived on was to be cleared of "subhuman" Slavs and repopulated by settlers deemed Aryan. Intermixed with all of this was the kidnapping of Polish and Ukrainian children from pre-WWII Poland. The children were sorted according to the Nazis' crazed racial hierarchy, with some children brainwashed into thinking they were German (the Lebensborn program), some children killed outright, and others worked to death as slave labourers. Those deemed Aryan but too old to be brainwashed ended up in Hitler Youth with the ultimate goal of making them into soldiers to fight and kill other Slavs.
This book is a collection of first person accounts, plus interviews with experts and it would likely be tough reading for anyone picking it up thinking it was a narrative nonfiction. However, this book documents the vast untold horrors of the Nazi regime, and also exposes the fact that the perpetrators of this mass system of child abuse went unpunished. Germany had little stomach for prosecuting their own, so many of the child hunters, brainwashers and killers got not much more than a slap on the wrist.
The authors stress the importance of exposing buried history, particularly something as heinous as this. That the perpetrators were never brought to justice only emboldens other genocidal regimes, like the current Russian Federation and their system of kidnapping children and processing them much the same as the Nazis did.
On a personal note, this book shook me to the core. I wish it had been available when I wrote Stolen Child (published by Scholastic Canada in 2010, later published as Stolen Girl, Scholastic Inc 2019). That novel was inspired by mother-in-law's account of losing her classmates to the Lebensborn program and her own ordeals as a slave to Nazi officers who occupied her house. There was not much new for me in The Stolen Children of Poland, but it provides more documentation for what I had already heard from my mother-in-law and was able to find out from sparse sources.

[Brenda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Stolen Children of Poland was an intense and difficult book to read as real life atrocities of World War II are chilling and disturbing. But the book is extremely important and powerful and ought to be required reading. I have read hundreds of World War II books but this one is told from a different perspective, the collective voice of the up to 200,000 Polish children (and up to 300,000 across Europe) who were cruelly ripped out of the arms of their families by the Germans for Germanization. It grew apparent this plan was inefficient and ineffective, though it completely destroyed thousands and thousands of lives, all to "purify" the Aryan race and rid the world of those who were deemed impure. Meticulous records were kept by the Germans of the children's features and measurements and some were reserved for horrendous experiments. Punishment for being Polish and speaking the language was severe. The immobilizing fear, humiliation, and anguish they faced is unfathomable. And the parents...oh, what sorrow.

Photographs are haunting, heartbreaking, and sobering but some are also joyous as a few were taken during happy times and circumstances. Some children were reunited with family after the war, others were successfully Germanized and stayed in Germany, some were adopted into happy homes, many sent to working camps designed for children and brutal orphanages where they were left to die, sometimes in dying rooms. Along with other information, the method of changing Polish names into Germany is riveting. But so confusing for some who do not know (or wish to know) their true identities. Many family members were murdered so children often did not have a home to return to. Other topics include PTSD and identity. I appreciate the incredible effort to put this book together from testimonies, copious records, and interviews, very thorough and an excellent way to honour those who were affected.

My sincere thank you to Histria Books and NetGalley for providing me with a digital copy of this impactful book, one which will stick close to my heart.

[Kari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley and Histria books for the ARC of The Stolen Children of Poland.
Wow. As an avid reader of history and especially World War II, I was floored to learn so much from this book. An area that is rarely talked about and so much is unknown. I appreciated the pictures, quotes, and collected stories of those who lived through that time and/or trying to find their lost family member(s). From all angles this book will take you through the history and also the devastation of lost/mishandled/destroyed data. There is no shying away from the realty of this time and the astronomical number of victims. I also appreciated the capturing of some individuals desire to forget about the past as a means to move forward; the level of trauma and survival screams through the pages. Going into depth about the lengths that were gone to for eugenics was both well researched and also conveyed in a layman's manner. I highly recommend this book.

[Zoe Ngan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book uses interviews, personal testimonies, and archival research to examine the lives of children stolen during wartime & raised under false identities. I can’t imagine the disorientation of believing you were a German child, only to learn that you were born Polish; “because they never knew, they weren’t trying to find out.”

Along those lines, the book’s most affecting element is its urgency: few of the stolen children are still alive, and even fewer remember enough to reconstruct what happened to them. I appreciated the author’s attempts to show how identity can be erased & reclaimed, especially in the lives of those never given the choice to know who they were.

I struggled immensely with the book’s structure, however. It feels fragmented; the narrative jumps between voices & timelines of varying lengths and I was never sure where the book was going.

[Alexia Schenck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and the author for allowing me a copy of this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I learned a lot from this one. I just have no words, this is incredibly heartbreaking.

[Chandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has taken me sometime to get through this book. I've had to pause, process what I was reading and then resume my reading.
THIS BOOK NEEDS to be read. A part of the horrific history that is Nazi Germany is not as well known. In all of the WWII books I have read, I am ashamed to say that I never stopped to think about what happened with the children that lost their families and I NEVER stopped to think about this aspect either.
This book is written in diaries, journal entries and historical documents, which makes it all the more real. I really enjoyed the format it was written, but new readers coming in expecting a "story" might be a little surprised to find that, nonetheless, it is a book that is well overdue.