Ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany

Ethnic cleansing of Polish Zamojszczyzna
Kidnapping of Polish children during the Nazi-German "resettlement" operation in the Zamość county
Mass kidnappings and expulsions
Period	November 1942 – March 1943
Territory	General Government, Kresy macroregion
Victims	116,000 Polish men and women including 30,000 children
Destinations	Forced labour and concentration camps as well as Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Bełżec extermination camps

The ethnic cleansing of Zamojszczyzna by Nazi Germany (German: Aktion Zamosc, also: Operation Himmlerstadt) during World War II was carried out as part of a greater plan of forcible removal of the entire Polish populations from targeted regions of occupied Poland in preparation for the state-sponsored settlement of the ethnic German Volksdeutsche. The operation of mass expulsions from Zamojszczyzna region around the city of Zamość (now in Lublin Voivodeship, Poland) was carried out between November 1942 and March 1943 on direct order from Heinrich Himmler. It was preplanned by both, Globocnik from Action Reinhard and Himmler, as the first stage of the eventual murderous ethnic cleansing ahead of projected Germanization of the entire General Government territory.

In Polish historiography, the events surrounding the Nazi German roundups are often named alternatively as the Children of Zamojszczyzna () to emphasize the simultaneous apprehension of around 30,000 children at that time, snatched away from their parents transported from Zamojszczyzna to concentration camps and slave labour in Nazi Germany. According to historical sources the German police and military expelled 116,000 Polish men and women in just a few months during Action Zamość.

Wartime fate of the Polish children from Zamojszczyzna was closely related to the German plans for the expansion of their own so-called "living space in the East", part of a broader Nazi policy called the Generalplan Ost. The plans for "ethnically cleansing the land" of its inhabitants were created in the fall of 1941 in Berlin and were closely connected with the idea of the new great consolidation of German nationhood. Country-wide actions dubbed Heim ins Reich ("Home to the Reich") were conducted across all of Central and Eastern Europe (see Action Saybusch in Polish Silesia). Their main purpose was to transplant colonists of the German origin from Russia, Romania, and other countries, to occupied Poland. At the beginning of war, the programme was mainly realised in western parts of Poland, including Wielkopolska, Silesia and Pomerania already controlled by Nazi Germany; but after Operation Barbarossa, it was continued throughout the General Government.