Histria Books is pleased to announce the hardcover release of The Stolen Children of Poland by Michał Drzonek, Tomasz Majta, Ewelina Karpińska-Morek, Monika Sieradzka, Agnieszka Waś-Turecka, and Artur Wróblewski. This book is published by Histria Perspectives, an imprint dedicated to publishing outstanding works of nonfiction that illuminate history, culture, and society.
The Stolen Children of Poland uncovers one of the least understood crimes of the Nazi occupation: the systematic abduction, imprisonment, racial screening and forced Germanization of Polish children. Drawing on survivor testimony, archival investigation and journeys through the places where these lives were broken apart, it follows children taken from homes, camps and orphanages, then renamed and remade for the Third Reich.
This new and expanded edition is revised with material never before published. What sets this book apart is its attention to the afterlife of the crime: what happens when a child survives but loses a language, a family, a name and certainty about who they are. Moving between intimate recollection and the machinery of policy, it shows how ordinary buildings, paperwork and official euphemisms enabled cultural destruction on a vast scale. At a time when displacement, identity and the politics of memory are fiercely contested, this deeply researched account restores voices that history has too often left unheard.
The Stolen Children of Poland was jointly produced by two editorial teams: journalists from Interia.pl, one of Poland’s leading news portals, and correspondents from Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster. The six co-authors — Michał Drzonek, Tomasz Majta, Ewelina Karpińska-Morek, Monika Sieradzka, Agnieszka Waś-Turecka, and Artur Wróblewski — bring together expertise in Polish-German relations, wartime history, and investigative journalism. Ewelina Karpińska-Morek received the Polish-German Tadeusz Mazowiecki Award for her reportage on this subject and has served as coordinator of the #StolenMemory project at the Arolsen Archives-International Center on Nazi Persecution. Monika Sieradzka has served as a Warsaw correspondent for Deutsche Welle since 2016, specializing in Polish-German relations and history.
