Summary: The Children of Zamość are a symbol of the martyrdom of Polish children during the World War II. Their tragic fate was made even worse by the incredibly brutal methods used by the Germans beginning in the earliest phases of the deportations. They were torn away from their parents by force during racial selection at the transit camp in Zamość (UWZ-Lager Zamosc), were Poles awaiting deportation were interned. Polish children from Zamość were also interned at other transit camps, such as the one in Zwierzyniec or at KL Lublin (Majdanek) and KL Auschwitz, where they were killed with lethal injections of phenol into the heart (the so-called practice of “needling”), and also at the extermination camp at Kulmhof (Chełmno nad Nerem). To this day the fate of thousands of Polish children carried away from Zamość into the Third Reich for Germanization remains unknown. Those who were not earmarked for Germanization were deported by the Germans in cattle cars (“death transports”) to the Warsaw district.

Keywords: German occupation, the Children of Zamość, deportation, Germanization, camps for Poles, the Zamość region