Unthinkable Atrocities

 

 "I once asked a little girl: 'What would you like to be?' 'A dog', she answered 'because the sentries like dogs.'"

 

~ Professor Ludvik Hirszfeld, Warsaw

 

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Although children of the Holocaust themselves had not been specifically targeted by the Nazi regime, they were the product of and future producers of impure, non-Aryan genetics. Children or not, they were members of the "undesirable" races and ethnic groups. By association, they suffered the same torture as their elders, punishment for religious, political, or racial inferiority. They were segregated against and stigmatized, just as their parents were.

 

Actually, it could be said that they were dealt with even more brutally than were adults. For example, during Nazi-fomented round-ups of "undesirables", instead of being directed into the waiting Nazi vehicles, children were simply tossed out of windows and dragged by their hair into them (Children & the Holocaust).

 

In the ghettos, children were subject to the shame of segregation and discrimination, mass shootings, witnessing the murder of their parents, siblings, and relatives, slave labor, and the constant fear of liquidation by the feared Mobile Killing Squads (Einsatzgruppen).

 

             

Children being deported from a ghetto.                                 Children put to work in the ghetto by the Nazis

 

 

This little boy's parents were about

to be killed right in front of him.

 

Once the children arrived at the concentration camps, those who were very young and too small to work, about 6 years old and younger, were sent immediately to perish in the gas chambers. For example: 

 

These two gorgeous little Jewish girls are Eva and Leana Munzer. Their parents

placed them in the care of a Jewish family who was hiding them. At one point,

the husband and wife had a fight and the husband betrayed them to SS soldiers.

They were right away taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau and, being too little to work,

gassed immediately. Their little brother Alfred survived.

Courtesy of USHMM

 

The older the children were, the higher their chances for survival were. This is because they could work harder, and therefore, were valuable as forced laborers in the camps. In the camps, children were subjected to filth, incessant lice, disease, malnutrition, exposure, and death. Their labor included carrying stones, bricks, and other materials for construction, digging pits for the dead, burying the dead, and removal of garbage and other debris, and electrical within the camp. If the children reached a point where they were too ill or too weak to work, they were promptly exterminated by poison gas, firing squads, or Euthanasia.

 

Although the exact number of children who died in the atrocities of the Holocaust is not known, estimates for the deaths of these little ones are as high as 1.5 million.

 

   

 

 

Suffering separation from their parents, the children in the concentration camps turned to each other for love and support, and often formed lasting friendships. Although these relationships helped them survive, the brutality they endured and witnessed left lifelong emotional scars.

 

"In those times, children weren't children. We stopped being children in the face of death."

-(from Armstrong, D. (1998) Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations, Sydney, Random House Australia)

 

 

To watch many videos of survivors' testimonies, see the USHMM Homepage. At the very top of the page, there is a search engine. Scroll down the search menu and select "Testimonies (Video)." Type in the search "Children" and "Children in the camps."

 

 

 

For Further Reading:

My First Kaddish - Read 14-year-old Alexander Kimel's life-changing experience in his Ukrainian ghetto home.

 

Daniel's Story - by Carol Matas (ages 9 and up)

 

The Cage - by Ruth Minsky-Sender (ages 10 and up)

 

 

 

Return to Children of the Holocaust home page or continue on and read about Josef Mengele: The Notorious Doctor of Auschwitz.