Hermand, Jost. A Hitler Youth in Poland. Evanstons, IL: Northwest University Press, 1997. 1-148. Print.

Introduction (pgs I-XXXII)

Between 1933 and 1945, millions of German children between the ages of seven and sixteen were taken from their homes and sent to Hitler Youth paramilitary camps to be toughened up and taught how to be “German”.

They were separated from their families in faraway places like Denmark, Latvia, Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and occupied Poland, and were often mistreated by the adults in charge.

In this book, Jost Hermand, a critic and historian who spent much of his youth in five different camps, writes about his experiences during this period. After reviewing studies about the camps, some of which, he feels, discuss’s them in a “romanticized way.”

Hermand talks about the background on the development of the camps. He then devotes one chapter to each of the five camps to which he was sent: Kirchenpopowo, San Remo, Gross-Ottingen, Hohe Eule, and Sulmierschutz.

The children sometimes found adults who treated them well, but occasionally they encounter conscious brutalization.

(pgs. 1-10)
Began after the air raids at the KLV Camp Kirchenpopowo in the Warthegau (Warthe District) October 1940 – August 1941

Jost Hermand (Jew) was being shipped out of Berlin at the time to this camp.

The main focus of the story was the Nazi children’s evacuation program during World War II

Between 1933 and 1945, millions of German children between the ages of seven and sixteen were taken from their homes and sent to Hitler Youth paramilitary camps to be toughened up and taught how to be “German”.

Holocaust Notes From http://www.shoaheducation.com/endlosung.html

Jews are known as, “the one people who have remained a nation within nations, and never lost their national identity.”
As historians look back, there have been primarily two positions which center on when and how the decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe was made. One group of scholars feel it was made very early, and that Hitler from his earliest writings had in mind the mass killing of European Jews. Evidence of this may be seen in statements such as the following:

‘Once I really am in power, my first and foremost task will be the annihilation of the Jews. As soon as I have the power to do so, I will have gallows built in rows – at the Marienplatz in Munich, for example – as many as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged indiscriminately, and they will remain hanging until they stink; they will hang there as long as the principles of hygiene permit. As soon as they have been untied, the next batch will be strung up, and so on down the line, until the last Jew in Munich has been exterminated. Other cities will follow suit, precisely in this fashion, until all Germany has been completely cleansed of Jews.’

A second position called the “Functionalist” position declares that Hitler’s initial plan was to relocate all Jews from German and German-occupied territory, and perform an ‘ethnic and national cleansing’ in those areas. In this position, Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann and Goering are seen as making the decision for total annihilation of the Jews only after deportations did not accomplish the goal they had hoped.

The question is somewhat muddied by whether a ‘formal directive’ for the Final Solution was really the beginning of it, or whether it was just a matter of putting definition and clarity to a program that was already well under way. In any event, there were two divisions in the “Final Solution” which cause some confusion in the discussion:

# The ridding of the Jews from Europe via deportation and
# The Extermination of the Jews.

As Hitler formulated plans for lebensraum he initially investigated Madagascar for German resettlement, and Goebbels makes reference to plausible emigration to the area.

What is not often mentioned is that plans for German resettlement were abandoned for far fewer people due to the potential lack of resources, and the discussions of relocating the Jews there never took note of this fact for far greater projected numbers.

The “Madagascar Project” never came to began, as the war stepped up and Operation Reinhard was formed, and instead killing centers worked night and day in genocide, diminishing the German’s need for a Jewish homeland.