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When Elie was sleeping and possibly dying his father made sure to wake him up so he didn't die

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"When I woke up, a frigid hand was tapping my cheeks. I tried to open my eyes: it was my father"(Wiesel 88)

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This shows that Chlomo will protect his son even if it is a life or death situation

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"Father!
Just that one word. I was suffocating. But my father had awakened and grabbed my aggressor."(Wiesel 102)

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Elie starts thinking of not finding his father so he doesn't have to worry about protecting him anymore

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Elie didn't want to get beaten by idek and let his father take the hits

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Meir was so hungry that he didn't care that it was his father or that his father had bread he was only worried about his survival.

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Rabi Elihias's son didn't want to worry about taking care of his father and choose himself over his family.

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Elie at this time didn't want to help is father because if he did then he would of gotten beaten to.

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This shows that elie doesn't want to be sepreated from his father and he didn't want to have to survive alone

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mother schieter's son helped his mother instead of ignoring her while she got beaten on the train.

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it is important to know the survivors stories and what they experienced

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The Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre

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Understand your world through our stories.

Visit Us Visit Us

Yorkshire Holocaust survivors share their experiences

lost youths

"I came from quite a comfortable home, never knew what hunger meant or to be deprived of anything!"

Stories Stories

Learning Learning

"Somehow the only thing that kept us from despairing was hope."

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The Holocaust Exhibition and Learning Centre - Remembering the past, protecting the future

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Visit Us Visit Us Yorkshire Holocaust survivors share their experiences "I came from quite a comfortable home, never knew what hunger meant or to be deprived of anything!" Stories Stories Learning Learning "Somehow the only thing that kept us from despairing was hope."

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I put this article in here because during the holocaust most of the children became orphans.

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Children were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust.

The Nazis advocated killing children of "unwanted" or "dangerous" groups either as part of the "racial struggle" or as a measure of preventative security. The Germans and their collaborators killed children for these ideological reasons and in retaliation for real or alleged partisan attacks.

Nazi Germany and its collaborators killed about 1.5 million Jewish children and tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children, 5,000-7,000 German children with physical and mental disabilities living in institutions, as well as many Polish children and children residing in the German-occupied Soviet Union. Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents (13-18 years old) had a greater chance of survival, as they could be used for forced labor.

The fates of Jewish and non-Jewish children can be categorized in the following ways:

children killed when they arrived in killing centers

children killed immediately after birth or in institutions

children born in ghettos and camps who survived because prisoners hid them

children, usually over age 12, who were used as forced laborers and as subjects of medical experiments

children killed during reprisal operations or so-called anti-partisan operations.

In the Ghettos

In ghetto settings, Jewish children died from starvation, disease, and a lack of adequate clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to the high death rates. They considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and hence "useless eaters." Because children were generally too young to be used for forced labor, German authorities often selected them, the elderly, ill, and disabled, for the first deportations to killing centers, or as the first victims led to mass graves to be shot.

These trucks bode no good, I mean especially for the little girl.
-Brigitte Friedmann Altman

Only later did I find out that my mother had gone out of the ghetto, sold a diamond and pearl ring to get me an orange. That was the last birthday gift from my parents.
-Gerda Weissmann Klein

In the Killing Centers

Camp authorities sent the vast majority of young Jewish children directly to the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers. SS and police forces in German-occupied Poland and the German-occupied Soviet Union shot thousands of children at the edge of mass graves along with their parents.

Sometimes the selection of children to fill the first transports to the killing centers or to provide the first victims of shooting operations resulted from the agonizing and controversial decisions of Jewish council ( Judenrat) chairmen. The decision by the Judenrat in Lodz in September 1942 to deport children to the Chelmno killing center was an example of the tragic choices made by adults when faced with German demands. Janusz Korczak, director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, however, refused to abandon the children under his care when they were selected for deportation. He accompanied them on the transport to the Treblinka killing center and into the gas chambers, sharing their fate.

Non-Jewish Children

Non-Jewish children from certain targeted groups were not spared. Examples include

Romani (Gypsy) children killed in Auschwitz

5,000-7,000 German children, the vast majority of them non-Jews, killed as victims of the Euthanasia Program

Children murdered in reprisals, as in the destruction of the Czech town of Lidice; and

Children shot as civilians in the German-occupied Soviet Union together with their parents.

In Concentration and Transit Camps

The German authorities also incarcerated a number of children in concentration camps and transit camps. SS physicians and medical researchers used a number of children, including twins, in concentration camps and killing centers like Auschwitz for medical experiments which often resulted in the deaths of the children. Concentration camp authorities deployed adolescents, particularly Jewish adolescents, at forced labor in the concentration camps, where many died because of conditions.

The German authorities held other children under appalling conditions in transit camps and concentration camps. They also interned non-Jewish orphaned children whose parents the German military and police units had killed in so-called anti-partisan operations. Some of these orphans were held temporarily in the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp and other detention camps.

In Occupied Poland and the Occupied Soviet Union

In their "search to retrieve 'Aryan blood'" in German-occupied areas, SS race experts ordered hundreds of children in occupied Poland to be kidnapped and transferred to the Reich. The children were to be adopted by racially suitable German families. Although the basis for these decisions was allegedly "race-scientific," often blond hair, blue eyes, or fair skin was sufficient to merit the "opportunity" to be "Germanized."

Resistance and Rescue

I was very lucky, and now and then I would bring a slice of bread, I would bring a carrot, or a potato, or an egg, and these were very, very great achievements. My mother made me promise that I wouldn't do it anymore, but I disobeyed.
-Charlene Schiff

In spite of their acute vulnerability, some children discovered ways to survive. Because of their small size, children could smuggle needed food, medicines, and supplies from the outside into ghettos in German-occupied eastern Europe. Children in youth movements later participated in underground resistance activities. Many children escaped with parents or other relatives-and sometimes on their own-to family camps run by Jewish partisans.

Kindertransport (Children's Transport) was the informal name of a rescue effort between 1938 and 1940 which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children (without their parents) to safety in Great Britain from Nazi Germany and German-occupied territories.

Some non-Jews hid Jewish children and, as in the case of Anne Frank, entire families as well. In France, almost the entire Protestant population of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, as well as many Catholic priests, nuns, and lay Catholics, hid Jewish children in the town from 1942 to 1944. In Italy and Belgium, many children survived in hiding.

After the War

After the surrender of Nazi Germany, ending World War II, refugees and displaced persons searched throughout Europe for missing children. Thousands of orphaned children and juveniles found themselves in displaced persons (DP) camps. Many surviving Jewish children fled eastern Europe with or without their families as part of the mass exodus ( Brihah) to the western zones of occupied Germany, en route to the Yishuv (the Jewish settlement in Palestine). Through Youth Aliyah (Youth Immigration), thousands migrated to the Yishuv, and then to the state of Israel after its establishment in 1948.

Last Edited: Oct 1, 2019

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Children were especially vulnerable in the era of the Holocaust. The Nazis advocated killing children of "unwanted" or "dangerous" groups either as part of the "racial struggle" or as a measure of preventative security. The Germans and their collaborators killed children for these ideological reasons and in retaliation for real or alleged partisan attacks.

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"Meir, my little Meir! Don't you recognize me....You're killing your father..... I have bread..... for you too....."(Wiesel 101)

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"But then I remembered something else: his son had seen him losing ground, sliding back to the rear of the column. He had seen him. And he had continued to in in front, letting the distance between them become greater. A terrible thought crossed my mind What if he had wanted to be rid of his father?"(Wiesel 91)

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"I stood petrified. what happened to me? My father had just been struck, in front of me, and I had not even blinked. I had watched and kept silent. only yesterday, I would have dug my nails into this criminal's flesh. Had I changed that much? So fast? Remorse began to gnaw at me. all I could think was: I shall never forgive them for this. My father must have guessed my thought"(Wiesel 39)

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"Belt and shoes in hand, I let myself be dragged along to the barbers. Their clippers tore out my hair, shaved every hair on our bodies. My head was buzzing; the same thought surfacing over and over:not to be separated from my father."(Wiesel 35)

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"It's nothing, Mother! There's nothing there...Please sit down..."He pained me even more than did his mothers cries".(Wiesel 25)

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"Yet at the same time a thought crept into my mind: if only I didn't find him! If only I were relieved of this responsibility I could use all my strength to fight for my own survival, to take care only of myself....instantly I felt ashamed,ashamed of myself forever" (Wiesel 106)

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"I had watched it all happening without moving. I kept silent in fact, I thought of stealing away in order not to suffer the blows what's more, if I felt anger at that moment, it was not directed at the kapo but at my father"(Wiesel 54)

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Self-preservation vs. family commitment 

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Self-preservation vs. family commitment 