.Emanuel and Avram Rosenthal, killed at Majdanek

Two Hungarian brothers on the "Death Ramp" at Birkenau (Auschwitz II), shortly before they were escorted to the gas chamber.

.Romani ("Gypsy") children at Auschwitz, part of various medical experiments. Most such experiments were terminal. Some 1.5 million children were murdered during the Holocaust. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Romani ("Gypsy") children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children. .Nazi persecution, arrests, and deportations were directed against all members of the targeted families without concern for age. Plucked from their homes and stripped of their childhoods, many children had witnessed the murder of parents, siblings, and relatives. Many faced starvation, illness and brutal labor, until all of them were consigned to the gas chambers. They lived and died during the dark years of the Holocaust and were victims of the Nazi nightmare ... [annefrank.dk/Default.htm]

 

Deportation of Children    Jewish Children marching unknowingly to their death ...

Towards the gas chamber at Birkenau (Auschwitz II)

Polish children sent to Germany never to return ...

Jewish Children In Death Camps ...at Auschwitz/Birkenau ...and at Buchenwald Children Awaiting Execution by the Einsatzgruppen -- Mobile Killing Units

 

My God, what God are you    to have allowed this to happen?

	An Eulogy by Steven Ostrowski Palm Harbor, Florida, USA
	A Generation Hexed   "The first to perish were the children, abandoned orphans The world's best, the bleak earth's brightest These children might have been our comfort From these sad, mute, bleak faces Our new dawn might have risen" - From "Song of the Murdered Jewish People" by Yitzhak Katzenelson, murdered with his son Zvi on May 1, 1944 in the Auschwitz Camp.     Childhood is a time of innocence, a cloak of protection under which the future generation may experience the gifts of life. At this stage, individuals discover their self, and formulate the basic attitude and perception through which they view the world. Because they comprise the future generation of humanity and are gaining the experience they will need to lead our world, children are the most prized possession of our population. However, 1.5 million children experienced a different form of childhood. They were stripped from their families, forced to work in concentration camps, and eventually murdered during a period of utmost evil, the Holocaust. Whereas children are usually excited about attending school, to see friends and join in socially with classmates, the victims of the Holocaust, under state authorization, attended school under deplorable conditions. As the general public assembled their prejudice towards the Jewish believers under the blame placed on them by the Nazi regime, their attitude eventually extended into the school system. The first noticeable act of an attack on Jewish students occurred on April 25, 1933, when the "Law against Overcrowding in German Schools and Universities" was put into effect (Daniel's Story). The new order restricted the Jewish constituent of the student body to a maximum of 1.5 percent of the total student body, a clear attempt to filter the unjustly persecuted Jewish children out of German sight (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). This harsh measure was only a precursor of stricter orders to come, and an escalating prejudice towards Jewish students. As identification and exclusion of Jewish students became mandatory, attitudes towards the Jewish children worsened. Like many of the citizens he fed with his hatred, Hitler's Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels believed that "it is unthinkable that my son sit near a Jew in a German high school" (Tatelbaum). As a result, public schools began teaching racial biology, in which the Jewish race was taught to be inferior to the Germans, creating an illusion that they were less than human, and therefore undeserving of German benefits (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Even classmates, who succumbed to the pounding of brainwashing by government-endorsed teachers, excluded their previous Jewish friends from their company, and turned hostile towards their old classmates. Such treatment in an institution such as education was extremely painful on the Jewish children, who themselves began to feel as inferior as they were treated by their cruel and commanding instructors and peers. It is hard today to imagine the ill will directed towards our innocent youth, especially in a state sponsored program like public schools, but the hatred caused such traumatic feelings in the persecuted students that as one little girl named Charlotte stated, she "won't go to school anymore, no matter what you say or do" (Tatelbaum). Private institutions arose as a means of resistance towards the persecution pervading public schools, and schools for Jewish children began after 1933. Under a false pretense of security, children and teachers gathered for the instruction they were denied by the state. However, on October 15, 1936, Germany's Ministry of Science and Education declared these private institutions illegal, closing the doors of opportunity for an education for many children. Two years later, on November 15, 1938, Jewish children were banned from public schools, and less than a month later, from universities (Daniel's Story). The bitter fact was that "Anti-Semitism... was the crude reality. It was always present in the fabric of life" (Leitner). Yet the private institutions existed long enough for one purpose. Unknowingly, as teachers and students attended these private schools, they were gaining the background experience that they would use to run secret schools in ghettos and concentration camps when education of Jewish children was declared completely illegal. The mental pain experienced by the children would only worsen, for after Kristallnacht in 1938, when Jewish businesses were smashed and vandalism was supported by the state, actions against the Jews became increasingly physical. Nazi troops began arresting Jewish men and taking them to undisclosed locations, leaving the rest of their families behind. In some cases, women were also taken, and children left orphaned, scared, and confused. If any physical resistance arose from the Jewish family, they were murdered in cold blood, sometimes in front of the children's eyes. These children were prone to haunting memories of their family being ripped from their grasp, and in extreme cases, murdered. The effect of this trauma on the child's mind was immense, for parents represent safety and stability, and the loss of these attributes, especially to a young child, is devastating. Imagine a six year old girl, hearing the doorbell, and rushing downstairs to see her father answer the door. An officer seizes him, and tells him he must go with them. Her father fights back, as her mother rushes to the scene. The Nazi official, drawing his gun, shoots the father and drags the mother outside. What is this young girl, who has just witnessed the death of a parent and the end of her known protection, to do? Unfortunately, this experience happened to many children during the years of persecution, producing thousands of forlorn orphans with an unjustly destroyed family.    Children in the Warsaw Ghetto RACHEL AND THE BUTTERFLY Rachel is more light than the butterfly, but frozen into the cobble stone she will not fly, though it is a spring. She can not move her swollen feet, her palms are like a cobble stone. She closes her eyes, the blue dress is on the meadow scattered with marigolds, the bare feet are in the grass and a buttterfly is like a song. And you can no longer see Rachel in the pile of dirty rugs, she flew away from the ghetto street. Yvonna Opoczynska-Goldberg, 1999. <zwoje-scrolls.com/shoah/wghetto.html> As the numbers of children left alone increased, their helpless bodies encountered many struggles. Illness and starvation in the streets emaciated the children, and forced them to beg for food, which was rarely given to the poor youth merely because they were Jewish. Yet these children were soon to face even greater hardships, as the Nazis began seizing the youth, and deporting them to concentration camps and the ghettos, where they stood little chance at survival. On their arrival at the ghettos and concentration camps, notably the Terezin ghetto, the childrens' usually weak bodies were looked down upon by the Nazi officials, who demanded unreasonably strenuous work. Here is where the most insidious persecution of the children occurred, the intentional killing of the youth, and the heartless overworking that caused their bodies to fail. In the packed ghettos, disease spread rapidly among the close encounters of the inhabitants, and combined with malnutrition, these horrid conditions killed thousands of children, who would not live to see their adulthood. In the Terezin ghetto, one of the most notorious for unbearable conditions, less than 100 out of the 15,000 children inhabitants survived (Auerbacher). Nearly 1.5 million young bodies were extinguished, but the children kept their spirit alive through art, writing, and inhabiting others memories. Although the horrid Terezin concentration camp killed almost 15,000 children, their memories exist because of a compilation of art and poetry from the children in the camp. This compilation, titled "...I Never Saw Another Butterfly..." was made by Hana Volavkova and expressed the emotion felt by the children, and the inner strength many possessed. Franta Bass, a child in the camp, boldly said "even though I am suppressed, I will always come back to life." Yet another determined child declared "I must not lose faith, I must not lose hope" (Volavkova). These declarations of will and determination are extraordinary when considering the plight these children faced. Even in the face of death, and in the midst of slaughter, these children still spoke out through the power of the pen, and stayed strong until the very end, the inevitable death. The whole world seemed to be against the innocent children during the Holocaust, but a few kind souls aided some fortunate children. One child, named Stefan Georg Zweig, was one of these lucky few. Born in the Cracow ghetto, Stefan was concealed in a backpack, and transported secretly through the Plaszow concentration camp to Buchenwald in 1944, at the age of only three years old. Upon arrival, Stefan was cared for by the communist prisoners of the Nazis, who compassionately raised the child and cared for him, allowing this young soul to survive the war and the Holocaust (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Such acts of faith were rare, but each one deserves recognition, as the daring souls who sought to save Jewish lives were risking their own, and rejected the popular attitude of society that living Jews were wasting German air. The impact of the horrible experiences the persecuted children encountered during the Holocaust is immeasurable. Of the few survivors who lived their childhood through the war years, many were understandably emotionally paralyzed by the trauma, and others cannot stand to relate the pain of their memories in words. The child is a precious object, a clean slate ready to absorb the breath of life and experience, and a bundle of potential waiting to be unleashed upon the world. Yet over a million possessors of youth were erased from our world, killed because of their race, and helpless victims of intense hatred. We must look at their deaths as witness of the cruelty hidden in humans, which may be released if a future Holocaust was to arise. Only by understanding the potential of evil in all of us may we prevent another tragedy. Youth is priceless, and we must remember the children who were sacrificed for an evil ideal, and insure that this ideal stays buried with time. Works Cited:   Auerbacher, Inge. I am a Star: Child of the Holocaust. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1986. "Children in the Holocaust." Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1993. Daniel's Story Videotape: Teacher Guide. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1993. Katzenelson, Yitzhak. "Song of the Murdered Jewish People." Leitner, Isabella and Irving A. Leitner. Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom. New York: Doubleday. 1994. Tatelbaum, Itzhak. Through Our Eyes: Children Witness the Holocaust. Chicago: I.B.T. Publishing, 1985. Volavkova, Hana, ed. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp 1942-1944. New York: Schocken, 1993. Photo Credit: USHMM

 

Children's Memorial from Yad Vashem .

Selected Links:

Seizing Polish Children

The Killings of Some 300,000 Children in Treblinka

Australian Memories of the Children of the Holocaust

A Poem To the Little Polish Boy Standing With His Arms Up

Poetry from Children Before Their Death

.<emilieschindler.com/Children> The Children Of Izieu, France Eleven-year-old Liliane Gerenstein, born January 13, 1933 in Nice, France, wrote a heart-rending letter to God just days before the children of Izieu were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz: "God? How good You are, how kind and if one had to count the number of goodnesses and kindnesses You have done, one would never finish. God? It is You who command. It is You who are justice, it is You who reward the good and punish the evil. God? It is thanks to You that I had a beautiful life before, that I was spoiled, that I had lovely things that others do not have. God? After that, I ask You one thing only: Make my parents come back, my poor parents protect them (even more than You protect me) so that I can see them again as soon as possible. Make them come back again. Ah! I had such a good mother and such a good father! I have such faith in You and I thank You in advance." The poem below was written by a young person in the Terezin Ghetto, where the arts flourished as a defiance of the soul, even in Children. Nothing free, like the butterflies or the Jews, lasted long in the Captivity of brutal men. Pavel could watch butterflies soar over barbed wire, fences and guns, until there were no longer butterflies. It is a poignant reminder not only of the depth of expression in young Jewish souls, but of the captivity of art in having to hide defiance and honor in metaphor. "I Never saw Another Butterfly" I never saw another butterfly . . . The last, the very last, so richly, brightly, dazzling yellow. Perhaps if the sun's tears sing against a white stone . . . Such, such a yellow Is carried lightly `way up high. It went away I'm sure because it wished to kiss the world goodbye. For seven weeks I've lived in here, Penned up inside this ghetto, but I have found my people here. The dandelions call to me, And the white chestnut candles in the court. Only I never saw another butterfly. That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don't live here in the ghetto. -- Pavel Friedman, June 1942 <shoaheducation.com/butterfly.html> Some of the Children of Auschwitz as posted in the Auschwitz Memorial Museum in Poland.

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