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Lindsey Burton Mr. Neuburger Eng. Comp. 101 - 137 15 November 2011 Research Essay Children of the Holocaust The Holocaust was a catastrophe that many people know of, but certainly not in depth. During the time period of 1933 until the end of World War II, millions of Jews were humiliated, starved, and many times killed. The Jews were picked out as if they were property, being used or thrown away. If one were a Jew that was reserved for work, they were given a little more time to live. The ones that most people forget about are all of the harmless children of the Holocaust. Those poor souls had no chance. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Holocaust is a word that came from Greek origin, that means sacrifice by fire. After the Nazis came to power in Germany approximately six million Jews were killed by the Nazi regime. The Nazis killed because they believed that Germans were racially superior and that Jews were inferior (Introduction to the Holocaust). Another article from the USHMM states that the Nazis targeted many groups of people, including Jew and nonJew children. Of those six million killed, 1.5 million were children, including over a million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani children. In the euthanasia program alone,
Polish children who were taken to Germany to live Source: http://bit.ly/uIIodJ

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5,000 to 7,000 children were killed as victims (Children During the Holocaust). Children werent just killed because they were children, in many cases there were reasons behind the killings. Middle Tennessee State University states that children were persecuted along with their families for racial, religious, or political reasons. Children can be broken down into three different groups because of the enormous and complex variety in their situations and ages. One group consists of infants and toddlers up to age six, from age seven to age twelve was another group, and the third group includes adolescents from age thirteen to eighteen. Their chance of survival as well as their ability to perform physical labor depended on their age. Older children had a better chance of survival because they were more likely to have the ability to be assigned to forced labor in concentration camps and also ghettos (Children and the Holocaust). According to the article, Never Too Young to Remember children under the age of fifteen or sixteen had little hope of surviving because they were too young and too weak to perform hard physical labor, which meant that they were sent to death camps (Jewish Children and the Holocaust). The article, Children during the Holocaust states that the fate of Jewish and non-Jewish children can be categorized in the following five ways; the children that were killed when they arrived in killings centers, the children that were killed immediately after birth or in institutions, the children that were born in ghettos and camps who survived because prisoners hid them, the children, usually over twelve, who were used s laborers and as subjects of medical experiments, and the children that were killed during reprisal operations or anti-partisan operations. The children who died in the ghettos, died from starvation and exposure as well as lack of
Babies disposed in trash during the holocaust Source: http://bit.ly/v0PnaX

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adequate clothing and shelter. German authorities selected children, along with elderly, ill, and disabled for the first ones to head off to the killing centers or mass graves to be shot (USHMM). These children had some idea about what was going on in their lives around them. Some children were killed before they were brought into this world. According to the article Women during the Holocaust, women were vulnerable to beatings and rape. Many of the women were forced to have sexual relations with German men. In return they received food, other necessities, or basic comforts. If the women got pregnant they would try to hide their pregnancies. When the truth came out that these Jewish women were pregnant, race-experts would decide whether or not the baby was going to be Germanizable. If the results were no, the women were forced to have abortions in makeshift nurseries where conditions would guarantee the death of their babies (USHMM). Although there were so many tragedies and deaths of children, there were still many children that survived. Some of these children have also shared their stories, which educate us today. One of the children who has told her horrific story, is Krystyna Chiger. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Krystyna told her story to Magistrate Maria Holender when she was eleven and a half years old. At the age of seven, she knew about everything that was going on. At such a young age she was scared. She stayed in a sewer for five weeks with her mom, dad, brother and twenty other people. They sat on stones that had worms crawling on them, and watched as red rats ran through the water. They traveled from place to place, hiding out. They made it to another sewer in which they had it much better. Krystynas father made cots for them to sleep in. They lived there for 14 months. In that period of time, they ate soup and drank
Krystyna at age 5 Source: http://bit.ly/tOCyEi

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coffee. Her and her brother both got measles and one of the ladies gave birth. Like most babies that were born at this time, it was covered with a washbasin and suffocated. So after all of the hardships that Krystyna and her family went through, they were free and able to pull away the sewer cover and rise again to the surface of the earth (Children of the Holocaust - Krystynas Story). Some children did not make it out alive like Krystyna did. The Museum of Tolerance tells the story of Abraham Beem. Abraham was born June 13, 1934 and was a five year-old schoolboy when the Germans invaded his home town of Holland. Abrahams parents decided that they would take the family into hiding, as they felt that their children would be safer. Abraham and his sister were sent to Ermelo to stay with a Christian family. He was known as Jan de Witt and attended school with the other village children. Soon, the Nazis realized that many Jewish children were sent into hiding. They talked to some collaborators who were willing to turn the Jewish children in for payment. At nine years old, Abraham was denounced as a Jew. He and his older sister Eva were deported to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Both children were murdered upon arrival (Beem, Abraham). Abraham was just one of the many children who did not make it in hiding. Unlike most, Abraham was able to go out into the world and live a normal life. The Jewish Virtual library states that not all Jewish children could pass as Aryans and enjoy their freedom as young children on the outside. The young ones who looked Jewish, did not speak the local language, or the children whose presence in a rescuers family brought on too many questions had to be physically hidden. They were kept in cellars and attics, where they had to keep quiet and

Jewish Children who were hidden in convents of Poland Source: http://bit.ly/d1Qxzv

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motionless, for hours upon hours. Children that lived in rural areas lived in barns, chicken coops, and forest huts. Any noise could raise suspicion and police could possibly come. Even during bombings, the Jewish children who were in hiding had to stay in hiding and were not allowed to go to safety of shelters. Because these children were stuck in these conditions, they suffered from a lack of human interaction and endued boredom and fear (Hidden Children and the Holocaust). Sometimes the children that were in hiding survived and sometimes they were murdered. The Jewish children who were alive during the holocaust underwent some very rough conditions. Just like the Jewish adults that went through this catastrophe, they were not respected in any way. Today, most people treasure their kids, as well as others kids. On the other hand, we have people who act like Hitler. Children are definitely not killed today as they were during the tragic time period of the Holocaust. Any human being should never be treated with disrespect, nor should any human be murdered. Never having to relive something so horrific is in very hopes.

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Works Cited "Children and the Holocaust." Middle Tennessee State University. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. "Children during the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. "Children of the Holocaust - Beem, Abraham." The Museum of Tolerance. Simon Wiesenthal. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. Fernandez, Vickie. "Jewish Children and the Holocaust." Never Too Young to Remember. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. "Hidden Children and the Holocaust." Jewish Virtual Library - Homepage. The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. "Introduction to the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. "Krystyna's Story - Children of the Holocaust Discussion Guide." ADL: Fighting Anti-Semitism, Bigotry and Extremism. Anti-Defamation League. Web. 21 Nov. 2011. "Women during the Holocaust." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 6 Jan. 2011. Web. 21 Nov. 2011.