# data[].attributes.headline
This is where students will drag and drop resources from their fellow student's Padlet page and evaluate their credibility.

# data[].attributes.subject
This is where students will drag and drop resources from their fellow student's Padlet page and evaluate their credibility.

# data[].attributes.headline
Is it written by an expert in the field?

# data[].attributes.subject
Is it written by an expert in the field?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"Today I turn 13! Getting ice cream with my cousin!" Geotag: Park. Hashtag: #thisis13.

The words in English and Hebrew sit at the bottom of the shaky hand-filmed phone video. Girls giggle audibly as they run towards an ice cream cart - and past a giant swastika flag.

The camera turns for a selfie video and we meet Eva, the protagonist of eva.stories, an Instagram video project that tells the real-life story of Eva Heymann - a Hungarian Jewish girl who danced, dreamed of being a press photographer and was sent to Auschwitz in June 1944, where she was murdered in October.

Starting on February 13, 1944 - her 13th birthday - and going up through her deportation, Eva kept a diary. She is often referred to as the Hungarian Anne Frank.

It's this text that eva.stories has brought to life through actors in 70 short, mobile-phone-style film clips, as if Eva had a cell phone during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. The clips were released as disappearing videos over a 24-hour period on May 1 and 2 to commemorate Yom HaShoah, or Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, when the country remembers the six million Jews killed by Nazi Germany during World War II.

Eva's videos are also available on the account landing page. Underneath them, the promotion image seen on billboards and building sides across Israel: A hand holding up a cell phone against black barbed wire and Instagram's trademark fading sunset colors, and the question: "What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram?"

It's a provocative combination: a social media platform with a reputation for self-focused, superficial entertainment and a defining tragedy of the 20th century whose importance, many fear, is already being trivialized by European far-right parties and could be further reduced as the last generation of survivors dies.

But the creators of the project, the father-daughter team of high-tech millionaire Mati Kochavi, 57, and his 27-year-old daughter, Maya, see it as an ideal way to bring a younger generation in direct contact with memories of the Holocaust.

"In the digital age, when the attention span is low but the thrill span is high, and given the dwindling number of survivors, it is imperative to find new models of testimony and memory," Mati Kochavi said in a statement. Eva.stories wants "to use social media to create a new genre of memory, and we hope in this way to bring viewers close to Eva's life and to the depths of her soul," he added.

Read more: Germany's changing culture of Holocaust remembrance

The eva.stories account saves the disappearing videos under dates so they can be watched again later
International resonance
Production involved an international team of around 400 technicians, actors and extras and reportedly cost several million dollars.

Eva.stories was promoted with a billboard campaign in Israel and a short trailer released days before, which went viral. Its main target audience is Israelis between 13-30, and it reportedly garnered more than 100 million views in 14 hours, with 3 million Israelis entering Eva's profile.

'Eva Stories' promoted itself through billboards and through an online trailer

Its reach has gone far beyond its intended audience, however, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeting before the release that he had watched the videos.

"I want to encourage you, each and every one of you, to also make your own story about people who were murdered in the Holocaust, so that the world will understand and so that we will remember what we have lost - and what we have gained back."

The White House Instagram account also shared the project with its 4.7 million followers.

On Wednesday morning, eva.stories had 318,000 followers, and by Thursday afternoon that number had risen to around 900,000. In comments on the platform, as well as on other social media, many praised the project for effectively using Instagram to share Holocaust history.

Yasmine Levi, the deputy editor in chief at the Israeli women's web magazine Saloona, called it a "brilliant, innovative and precise project" on Facebook and in an online editorial, said she would watch it with her 12-year-old daughter, who can "identify with [Eva] and get a glimpse into a cruel reality."

Other Facebook users similarly wrote that their adolescent children were captivated and moved by the videos.

This was precisely the goal, according to co-founder Maya Kochavi, who said that her team chose to use Eva's diaries as the basis because she was someone who "a modern kid in 2019 could connect to."

Read more: Auschwitz color photo shows 'a 14-year-old girl, not just a statistic'
Not a 'legitimate way'
But not all reacted to the project positively, with the appropriateness of the social media platform central to the critique.

In a column for the Hebrew-language daily Haaretz, civics teacher Yuval Mendelson called the project "a display of bad taste" and said it would have "consequences": "The path from 'Eva's Story' to selfies at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau is short and steep."

"A fictitious Instagram account of a girl murdered in the Holocaust is not and cannot be a legitimate way," he added.

Read more: Auschwitz asks visitors not to balance on train tracks

Still others suggested the controversy had generational roots. Facebook user Sivan Melnick Yaniv - the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor - wrote that while her 12-year-old thought eva.stories was a great way to learn about the project, her elderly father "didn't understand why you would take such a tragic story and direct it with such kitschy tools." She told DW that for her parents, now in their 70s, "the combination of Holocaust and Instagram is inconceivable," whereas for young people like her daughter who are "digital natives, born to a reality where smartphones are the main media for transmitting any messages - this combination is natural."

Eva Heymann in 1944 just months before her murder

Melnick Yaniv, who is the co-founder of Ananas, a community-based social venture dealing with the challenges and opportunities of education in the digital era, says that while this generational divide is considerable, she personally found the project "a brilliant, well-made, and innovative" tool.

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center located in Israel, also has an Instagram account and makes use of the stories feature, but declined to interview on the topic of eva.stories.

"The only information we know about the project Eva's Stories is from information we've seen published by the campaign," the center's communications department said in a statement to DW. "Yad Vashem believes that the use of social media platforms in order to commemorate the Holocaust is both legitimate and effective. Yad Vashem is active and engages the public in a myriad of social media channels including Instagram albeit in a different style and manner. Not only do Yad Vashem's posts contain authentic material and historically based facts, we ensure that its content is both relevant to the public while being respectful to the topic."

Melnick Yaniv underlined that in her view, "it is impossible to capture and deliver the multiple layers and atrocities of the Holocaust in any kind of media. Having said that, it is a human responsibility to remember and pass on its history to future generations" and this project is a step in the right direction she hopes will inspire educators "to promote valuable discussions through innovative platforms."

'Never Again': Memorials of the Holocaust

Brown House in Munich

Right next to the "Führerbau" where Adolf Hitler had his office, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany, in the "Brown House" in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new "Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism" opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation from the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history.

Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Eva Stories': Remembering the Holocaust with Instagram | DW | 02.05.2019

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"Today I turn 13! Getting ice cream with my cousin!" Geotag: Park. Hashtag: #thisis13. The words in English and Hebrew sit at the bottom of the shaky hand-filmed phone video. Girls giggle audibly as they run towards an ice cream cart - and past a giant swastika flag.

# data[].attributes.body
Link to one of the Concentration camps in Poland.

CRITIQUE - REMOVE LINK
Again, should not be present.  History.com is an entertainment site and not a reputable primary source

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Auschwitz: Genesis of Death Camps

After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the "Final Solution." Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence. Instead, he became convinced that his "Jewish problem" would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Romas, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany.

Did you know? In October 1944, a group of Auschwitz "Sonderkommando," young Jewish males responsible for removing corpses from crematoriums and gas chambers, staged a revolt. They assaulted their guards, using tools and makeshift explosives, and demolished a crematorium. All were apprehended and killed.

To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the construction of death camps. Unlike concentration camps, which had existed in Germany since 1933 and were detention centers for Jews, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state, death camps existed for the sole purpose of killing Jews and other "undesirables," in what became known as the Holocaust.

Auschwitz: The Largest of the Death Camps

Auschwitz, the largest and arguably the most notorious of all the Nazi death camps, opened in the spring of 1940. Its first commandant was Rudolf Höss (1900-47), who previously had helped run the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany. Auschwitz was located on a former military base outside Oswiecim, a town in southern Poland situated near Krakow, one of the country's largest cities. During the camp's construction, nearby factories were appropriated and all those living in the area were forcibly ejected from their homes, which were bulldozed by the Nazis.

Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the country in 1939. These detainees included anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and luminaries from the cultural and scientific communities. Once Hitler's Final Solution became official Nazi policy, however, Auschwitz was deemed an ideal death camp locale. For one thing, it was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent. For another, it was in close proximity to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the network of Nazi camps.

However, not all those arriving at Auschwitz were immediately exterminated. Those deemed fit to work were employed as slave labor in the production of munitions, synthetic rubber and other products considered essential to Germany's efforts in World War II.

Auschwitz and Its Subdivisions

At its peak of operation, Auschwitz consisted of several divisions. The original camp, known as Auschwitz I, housed between 15,000 and 20,000 political prisoners. Those entering its main gate were greeted with an infamous and ironic inscription: "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free."

Auschwitz II, located in the village of Birkenau, or Brzezinka, was constructed in 1941 on the order of Heinrich Himmler (1900-45), commander of the "Schutzstaffel" (or Select Guard/Protection Squad, more commonly known as the SS), which operated all Nazi concentration camps and death camps. Birkenau, the biggest of the Auschwitz facilities, could hold some 90,000 prisoners.

It also housed a group of bathhouses where countless people were gassed to death, and crematory ovens where bodies were burned. The majority of Auschwitz victims died at Birkenau. More than 40 smaller facilities, called subcamps, dotted the landscape and served as slave-labor camps. The largest of these subcamps, Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, began operating in 1942 and housed some 10,000 prisoners.

Life and Death in Auschwitz

By mid-1942, the majority of those being sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz were Jews. Upon arriving at the camp, detainees were examined by Nazi doctors. Those detainees considered unfit for work, including young children, the elderly, pregnant women and the infirm, were immediately ordered to take showers. However, the bathhouses to which they marched were disguised gas chambers. Once inside, the prisoners were exposed to Zyklon-B poison gas. Individuals marked as unfit for work were never officially registered as Auschwitz inmates. For this reason, it is impossible to calculate the number of lives lost in the camp.

For those prisoners who initially escaped the gas chambers, an undetermined number died from overwork, disease, insufficient nutrition or the daily struggle for survival in brutal living conditions. Arbitrary executions, torture and retribution happened daily in front of the other prisoners.

Some Auschwitz prisoners were subjected to inhumane medical experimentation. The chief perpetrator of this barbaric research was Josef Mengele (1911-79), a German physician who began working at Auschwitz in 1943. Mengele, who came to be known as the "Angel of Death," performed a range of experiments on detainees. For example, in an effort to study eye color, he injected serum into the eyeballs of dozens of children, causing them excruciating pain. He also injected chloroform into the hearts of twins to determine if both siblings would die at the same time and in the same manner.

Liberation of Auschwitz: 1945

As 1944 came to a close and the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces seemed certain, the Auschwitz commandants began destroying evidence of the horror that had taken place there. Buildings were torn down, blown up or set on fire, and records were destroyed.

In January 1945, as the Soviet army entered Krakow, the Germans ordered that Auschwitz be abandoned. Before the end of the month, in what came to be known as the Auschwitz death marches, an estimated 60,000 detainees, accompanied by Nazi guards, departed the camp and were forced to march to the Polish towns of Gliwice or Wodzislaw, some 30 miles away. Countless prisoners died during this process; those who made it to the sites were sent on trains to concentration camps in Germany.

When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz on January 27, they found approximately 7,600 sick or emaciated detainees who had been left behind barbed wire. The liberators also discovered mounds of corpses, hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing and pairs of shoes and seven tons of human hair that had been shaved from detainees before their liquidation. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of operation. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Poles perished at the camp, along with 19,000 to 20,000 Romas and smaller numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and other individuals.

Auschwitz Today

Today, Auschwitz is open to the public as the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. It tells the story of the largest mass murder site in history and acts as a reminder of the horrors of genocide.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Auschwitz: Concentration Camp, Facts, Location

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the "Final Solution." Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence.

# data[].attributes.body
9th November, 1938.

Kristallnacht

History.com is a credible source because it is the most widely used history website and regularly reviewed.

CRITIQUED - SHOULD REMOVE
This is not true - history.com is an entertainment website and historical fiction so therefore not a reliable primary source.  It is not a peer reviewed or research paper.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
From November 9 to 10, 1938, in an incident known as "Kristallnacht", Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses, and murdered close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night" or the "Night of Broken Glass"), some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse.

Hitler and Anti-Semitism

Soon after Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor in January 1933, he began instituting policies that isolated German Jews and subjected them to persecution.

Among other things, Hitler's Nazi Party, which espoused extreme German nationalism and anti-Semitism, commanded that all Jewish businesses be boycotted and all Jews be dismissed from civil service posts. In May 1933, the writings of Jewish and other "un-German" authors were burned in a communal ceremony at Berlin's Opera House.

Within two years, some German businesses were publicly announcing that they no longer serviced Jews. The Nuremberg Laws, passed in September 1935, decreed that only Aryans could be full German citizens. Furthermore, it became illegal for Aryans and Jews to marry or have extramarital intercourse.

Did you know? Shortly before Kristallnacht, U.S. aviator Charles Lindbergh toured Germany and was given a medal by Hermann Göring, commander of the German air force. After Kristallnacht, Lindbergh declined to return the medal. This, plus his ensuing anti-Semitic comments, permanently stained his status as an American hero.

Despite the repressive nature of these policies, through most of 1938, the harassment of Jews was primarily nonviolent. However, on the night of November 9, all that changed dramatically.

From Harassment to Violence

In the fall of 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew who had been living in France for several years, learned that the Nazis had exiled his parents to Poland from Hanover, Germany, where Herschel had been born and his family had lived for years. As retaliation, on November 7, 1938, the agitated teenager shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris.

Rath died two days later from his wounds, and Hitler attended his funeral. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister for public enlightenment and propaganda, immediately seized on the assassination to rile Hitler's supporters into an anti-Semitic frenzy.

Night of Broken Glass

Kristallnacht was the result of that rage. Starting in the late hours of November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs, SS troops and ordinary citizens torched or otherwise vandalized hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries.

Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence. Nazi officials ordered German police officers and firemen to do nothing as the riots raged and buildings burned, although firefighters were allowed to extinguish blazes that threatened Aryan-owned property.

After Kristallnacht, the streets and sidewalks of Jewish communities were littered with broken glass from vandalized buildings, giving rise to the names "Crystal Night" or "Night of Broken Glass." The Nazis held the German-Jewish community responsible for the damage and imposed a collective fine of $400 million (in 1938 rates), according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Additionally, more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany-camps that were specifically constructed to hold Jews, homosexuals, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state.

U.S. Reaction to Kristallnacht

On November 15, 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, responded to Kristallnacht by reading a statement to the media in which he harshly denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism and violence in Germany. He also recalled Hugh Wilson, his ambassador to Germany.

Despite Roosevelt's condemnation of the Nazi violence, the United States refused to ease the immigration restrictions it then had in place, constraints that prevented masses of German Jews from seeking safety in America. One reason was anxiety over the possibility that Nazi infiltrators would be encouraged to legally settle in America.

A more obscured reason was the anti-Semitic views held by various officials in the U.S. State Department. One such administrator was Breckinridge Long, who was responsible for carrying out policies relating to immigration.

Long took an obstructionist role in granting visas to European Jews, and maintained this policy even when America entered World War II after the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

A Wake-up Call to Jews

The violence of Kristallnacht served notice to Jews worldwide that Nazi anti-Semitism was not a temporary predicament and would only intensify. As a result, many Jews began to plan an escape from their native land.

Kristallnacht marked a turning point toward more violent and repressive treatment of Jews by the Nazis. By the end of 1938, Jews were prohibited from schools and most public places in Germany-and conditions only worsened from there.

During World War II, Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called "Final Solution" to what they referred to as the "Jewish problem," and carried out the systematic murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with, by some estimates, 4 million to 6 million non-Jews) in what came to be known as the Holocaust.

Sources

Kristallnacht. PBS: American Experience.
Kristallnacht: 1938. British Library.
9 November 1938: "Kristallnacht." Jewish Museum Berlin.
Breckinridge Long. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Kristallnacht: Definition & Meaning - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s), was a prolonged series of violent attacks on Jewish people, homes, businesses and synagogues in 1938 Germany.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The memories have the patina of childhood: fragmented, vivid, without resolution. They place us, as readers, immediately there. And next to them, portraits of the elderly people whose childhoods we're glimpsing. These are the Kriegskinder, or 'war children': so-called because they grew up in Nazi Germany during World War Two.

"One day I am at the Wilhelmsaue, a small pond in Berlin," remembers Brigitte, who was born in Dortmund in 1937. "A dead woman is floating on the water, face down. Her skirt has ballooned, wind blowing into it and she is sailing across the pond."

Forty-four photos and accompanying anecdotes are gathered in the new book Kriegskinder. Photographer Frederike Helwig captured the images and Anna Waak collected the memories, some of them spoken for the first time; viewed through the filter of a child's eyes, they are by parts humdrum and shocking. The glowing tip of a cigarette; the clatter of pebbles being thrown into a dead man's mouth; two tomato plants on the balcony of a home that has been destroyed. Small details that bypass the intellect, offering a different way into a subject widely covered by historians.

"My access to this subject was on the emotional side, not through history or statistics - the numbers, and what they did and how they did it, which we all grew up with and know," Helwig tells BBC Culture. "The problem with that is the perpetrators are always 'the others' - we're trying to establish that this happened in most German families, and how can that happen?"

One of her subjects has had to confront that more than most. Born in 1939, Niklas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, the Nazi Governor of Poland, and he travelled through Europe with the human rights lawyer Philippe Sands in the acclaimed documentary My Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did. His memory in Kriegskinder is from a childhood shopping trip with his mother and nanny. "We are driving through the Krakow Ghetto where my mother buys her furs and scarfs for a price of her own choosing. I am standing in the back of the Mercedes, my nanny Hilde sitting next to me, in front next to the driver my mother," he recalls. "I am wearing a black and white Pepita suit.

"The people look on sadly. I stick out my tongue to an older boy. He turns around, walks off, I feel like I won. I laugh triumphantly, but Hilde pulls me silently back into my seat." Although it describes a juvenile encounter, it's a disturbing memory. "Most of the first-hand accounts in the book are quite anecdotal," says Helwig. "What they say is interesting - but also what they don't say."

Many describe death in the only way they could comprehend it, as children. "One day a hanged man is lying in front of our house in Berlin. A German. He had tried to hide from the war in a ruined building and they hung him from the crossbar of the lamp post," says Werner. "When he was dead they cut him loose. He lies there for days with his mouth open and we children throw pebble stones into it.

"Eventually they take him away and bury him on the side of the road. Because no dead bodies can lie in the city streets trucks arrive, dig him and others up and throw them onto the trucks. We children watch. Then we have to go and have lunch. It's maize porridge for lunch, but I can only think of the corpses with their tattered clothes and bones sticking out and I feel sick."

Replayed through their senses, remembered via taste or sound or smell, the memories of the Kriegskinder bring past events into the present. "To this day, many remember the air raid shelters, the bombing raids, the fear of the adults around them, the dead and wounded, the hanged and the suicides, the bombed houses and playing in the rubble," writes Alexandra Senfft - the grand-daughter of a Nazi war criminal, and author of The Long Shadow of the Past: Descendants Face their Nazi Family History - in the foreword for Kriegskinder. "Clear or hazy, many have images of flight, and of the 'Russians'; they still feel the hunger and taste the chocolate given to them by American soldiers."

To read these memories is to be brought closer to a place of understanding: by seeing them as children, even as we look at them as old people, we acknowledge the ambiguities of who they are. "To recognize perpetrators in one's father or mother and to reconcile this recognition with one's love towards them is an act full of ambivalence and unbearable tensions," writes Senfft. "Often, the concealed crime weighs so heavily on the descendants' psyche that they can hardly process it: how can a beloved and loving father have been a murderer at the same time?

"A minority manage to differentiate between the perpetrator and the loved parent and to integrate both, to let each stand alongside the other. Yet the majority either deny the misdeed or break with their parent." Although a generation has passed since the war, what took place lives on in family dynamics.

"What the Kriegskinder did not come to terms with they passed onto us grandchildren," writes Senfft. "Psychologists have found that many grandchildren internalized their grandparents' experience even if the Nazi era was never spoken of. Grandchildren thus often possess the family memory without having experienced the events themselves."

Helwig found this when she had children herself. "It took me becoming a parent to actually be able to really empathise with my parents having witnessed World War Two at the ages of five and six," she says. "The idea for this book came when I was talking to my friends, asking them how are we going to teach our children about this history, and how do we keep them interested in it - or how do we teach them the responsibility which comes with it?

"Through those conversations with my peers, came also the realisation that our parents were probably a little bit odd at times, and they have these behavioural patterns which show us that they grew up during the war. It opened up a whole dialogue between us."

This was her real aim - initiating a conversation. "Every German knows about the Holocaust, we're educated with it, it's been documented at large, but what hasn't really been talked about in German families is what did the great-grandfather do, or what exactly happened - there still seems to be a taboo there."

That isn't necessarily because the Kriegskinder want to remain silent. "That generation is now at a time where they've carried all this for a long time and a lot of the people we interviewed were actually quite open about it, but said that many people were not really interested in what they had to say."

Helwig hopes that by bringing together recollections from childhoods in Nazi Germany with portraits of a generation whose memories will soon vanish, her book can help change that. "There's an emotional process happening, and through that emotional process hopefully it creates a curiosity to ask more questions and to have frank conversations, to be able to access that time," she says. "It's not about victimising this generation, it's important to try and encourage the generations to start talking to each other."

The book ends with a quote from Israeli psychologist Dan Bar-On: "Violent conflicts create zones of silence in a society. The deeds and responsibility of the perpetrators are concealed. Thus also the suffering of the victims, the role of the spectators... The silence is often passed on to the next generation."

Kriegskinder is published in a climate that gives a renewed urgency to these conversations. "The book wants to raise a certain awareness that, yes, it was a long time ago but that doesn't mean it couldn't happen again," says Helwig. "When we started this project in 2014, we lived in a very different world from today. I told friends in Germany that I was doing this book about the Kriegskinder, and the response was 'oh interesting, but do we need to talk about that still? Look at Germany today' - it was at the height of Merkel and Obama - and suddenly, two years later, Germany and Europe and America are faced with very different scenarios."

In her foreword, Senfft acknowledges how collective silence can infect wider groups. "Research ... has shown that trauma and severe stress can be hereditary; that which is not dealt with can be passed on to the next generation." And it leaches out beyond the family. "What is not brought to light and engaged with individually and within the family finds its way into society and politics."
The exhibition Below is a selection of six portraits from the book, which is out now, published by Hatje Cantz. Kriegskinder is on view at F3, Berlin from 2 February to 8 April 2018.

"Because I'm malnourished I am sent to my great aunt in Switzerland. She is married to an upholsterer; it has a nice smell of leather, but ants run through the apartment. My aunt puts down herring heads to divert the ant trails. In the apartment, there is a gorgeous sofa and on it are some small booklets. Because my aunt is often in Zurich during the day I've got time to look at them. I suffer the worst shock when I realize that they are about concentration camps and that those camps were in Germany. Those pictures...One time in the middle of the street in the village someone slaps me in the face and yells: 'You nasty German!' and I cry."

"The winter is so cold that ice floes drift on the Rhine. The city lies in ruins, an adventure playground. On the way to school I pass the Gereonskirche. One of the two steeples is destroyed, in the other the bells still hang. Near the central station I walk beneath the railway bridge. Everything is in ruins. My mother tells me that here used to be the hospital in which I was born. Only the exterior walls are still standing; the same is true for our house in Blumenthalstrasse in which we lived prior to the war. I discover the remnants of my pram in the iron skeleton of the balcony.

"The Cologne Cathedral does not seem to be damaged much. Only in one spot a bomb or grenade must have hit it. They've inserted a brick filling there to keep the tower from collapsing. Hohenzollern Bridge is completely destroyed and lies in the Rhine. At the bastion, American soldiers have built an auxiliary bridge, the so-called Patton Bridge. Patton was an American general. When cars go over it, especially lorries, the wooden planks rattle and create a lot of noise. I take the tram to school. The doors are open, inside it's crammed and outside people stand on the footboard, me too. There is a new O-bus line. It seems a miracle that an omnibus can drive quietly without engine noise. It only rattles a bit when it drives over potholes."

If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.
And if you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How the children of Nazi Germany remember World War Two

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A new book has gathered the memories of 'Kriegskinder', next to portraits of them as they are now. Photographer Frederike Helwig reveals how they remember childhoods in Nazi Germany.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Education – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Culture was integral to the Nazis’ aim to infiltrate and control all areas of life. In 1933, the Reich Chamber of Culture was established under the leadership of Joseph Goebbels . The department was split into seven different sections aiming to cover all areas of cultural life:…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article was most recently revised and updated by

Hitler Youth, organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youth in Nazi principles. Under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach, head of all German youth programs, the Hitler Youth included by 1935 almost 60 percent of German boys. On July 1, 1936, it became a state agency that all young "Aryan" Germans were expected to join.

Upon reaching his 10th birthday, a German boy was registered and investigated (especially for "racial purity") and, if qualified, inducted into the Deutsches Jungvolk ("German Young People"). At age 13 the youth became eligible for the Hitler Youth, from which he was graduated at age 18. Throughout these years he lived a spartan life of dedication, fellowship, and Nazi conformity, generally with minimum parental guidance. From age 18 he was a member of the Nazi Party and served in the state labour service and the armed forces until at least the age of 21.

Two leagues also existed for girls. The League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel) trained girls ages 14 to 18 for comradeship, domestic duties, and motherhood. Jungmädel ("Young Girls") was an organization for girls ages 10 to 14.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Adam Augustyn.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Hitler Youth | Definition, History, & Facts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Hitler Youth, organization set up by Adolf Hitler in 1933 for educating and training male youth in Nazi principles. Under the leadership of Baldur von Schirach, it included by 1935 almost 60 percent of German boys. On July 1, 1936, it became a state agency that all young 'Aryan' Germans were expected to join.

# data[].attributes.body
Summary and Facts about WWII with references to the Holocaust

The Britannica Encyclopedia has articles on all major topics written by credible authors.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Home World History Wars, Battles & Armed Conflicts
Table of Contents

Also called:

Second World War

(Show more)

Date:

September 3, 1939 - September 2, 1945

(Show more)

What was the cause of World War II?

What countries fought in World War II?

Who were the leaders during World War II?

What were the turning points of World War II?

How did World War II end?

How many people died during World War II?

World War II, conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during the years 1939-45. The principal belligerents were the Axis powers- Germany, Italy, and Japan-and the Allies- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and, to a lesser extent, China. The war was in many respects a continuation, after an uneasy 20-year hiatus, of the disputes left unsettled by World War I. The 40,000,000-50,000,000 deaths incurred in World War II make it the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in history.

Along with World War I, World War II was one of the great watersheds of 20th-century geopolitical history. It resulted in the extension of the Soviet Union's power to nations of eastern Europe, enabled a communist movement to eventually achieve power in China, and marked the decisive shift of power in the world away from the states of western Europe and toward the United States and the Soviet Union.
(Read Sir John Keegan's Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

Axis initiative and Allied reaction

The outbreak of war

By the early part of 1939 the German dictator Adolf Hitler had become determined to invade and occupy Poland. Poland, for its part, had guarantees of French and British military support should it be attacked by Germany. Hitler intended to invade Poland anyway, but first he had to neutralize the possibility that the Soviet Union would resist the invasion of its western neighbour. Secret negotiations led on August 23-24 to the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in Moscow. In a secret protocol of this pact, the Germans and the Soviets agreed that Poland should be divided between them, with the western third of the country going to Germany and the eastern two-thirds being taken over by the U.S.S.R.

Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About World War II

Having achieved this cynical agreement, the other provisions of which stupefied Europe even without divulgence of the secret protocol, Hitler thought that Germany could attack Poland with no danger of Soviet or British intervention and gave orders for the invasion to start on August 26. News of the signing, on August 25, of a formal treaty of mutual assistance between Great Britain and Poland (to supersede a previous though temporary agreement) caused him to postpone the start of hostilities for a few days. He was still determined, however, to ignore the diplomatic efforts of the western powers to restrain him. Finally, at 12:40 pm on August 31, 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. The invasion began as ordered. In response, Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on September 3, at 11:00 am and at 5:00 pm, respectively. World War II had begun.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
World War II | Facts, Summary, History, Dates, Combatants, & Causes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
World War II was a conflict that involved virtually every part of the world during 1939-45. The main combatants were the Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) and the Allies (France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China). It was the bloodiest conflict, as well as the largest war, in human history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Anne didn't just keep a diary. She also wrote tales and planned to publish a book about her time in the Secret Annex. After the war, Otto Frank fulfilled her wish.

Since then, Anne Frank's diary has been translated into more than 70 languages. Discover the story behind the diary of Anne Frank.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Anne didn't just keep a diary. She also wrote tales and planned to publish a book about her time in the Secret Annex. After the war, Otto Frank fulfilled her wish. Since then, Anne Frank's diary has been translated into more than 70 languages. Discover the story behind the diary of Anne Frank.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Concentration Camp Survivors Share Their Stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The Nazis also enslaved and killed other groups who they perceived as racially, biologically or ideologically inferior or dangerous. Hear seven survivors talk about and reflect…

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
1. 1

2. 2

3. 3

4. 4

5. Page 1of 4

Adolf Hitler and Nazi Youth leader Baldur von Schirach on their arrival in the stadium for the Hitler Youth rally
Young people were very important to the Nazis. To this end, Hitler set about influencing children both inside and outside school.

His main ways of indoctrinating and controlling young people were:

education;

youth movements;

propaganda and censorship.

He used perks and promises as well as threats and fear.

1. 1

2. 2

3. 3

4. 4

5. Page 1of 4

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Life for young people in Nazi Germany - Life for young people in Nazi Germany - CCEA - GCSE History Revision - CCEA - BBC Bitesize

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
1 2 3 4 Page 1of 4 Adolf Hitler and Nazi Youth leader Baldur von Schirach on their arrival in the stadium for the Hitler Youth rally Young people were very important to the Nazis. To this end, Hitler set about influencing children both inside and outside school.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Nazi revolution

When Hitler finally became chancellor, on January 30, 1933, it was not on the crest of a wave of popular support but as the result of backroom political intrigue by Schleicher, Papen, and the president's son, Oskar von Hindenburg. Only Hitler, they believed, could bring together a coalition with Hugenberg's DNVP and possibly the Centre Party that could command a majority in the Reichstag. They assured the reluctant president that Hitler's radical tendencies would be checked by the fact that Papen would hold the vice-chancellorship and that other conservatives would control the crucial ministries, such as those of war, foreign affairs, and economics. The Nazis themselves were restricted to holding the chancellorship and the insignificant federal ministry of the interior. As a sop to the Nazis, Hermann Göring was granted ministerial status but given no portfolio; yet, significantly, he became interior minister in the state of Prussia, which gave him control over the largest police force in Germany.

The Nazis professed an ideology, national socialism, that purported to champion the common man, whom they portrayed as a victim in a world controlled by Jews. Anti-Semitism and notions of German racial superiority were at the core of this ideology, which, in its particulars, was also a catalog of resentments that had accumulated in German society since November 1918. Heading the list were the humiliations associated with Versailles, but not far behind were resentments of big business, big banks, big department stores, and big labour, as well as resentments of the divisiveness and inefficiencies that political parties seemed to foster.

Neither the 25-point party program of 1920 nor Hitler's autobiographical political manifesto, ("My Struggle," 1925), contained clear conceptions of the shape that German politics and society would take under the Nazis, but Hitler and his propagandists had communicated clearly that the changes would be fundamental and come at the expense of Germany's racial enemies. Racially superior Germans were to be gathered into a tightly knit Volksgemeinschaft, or racial community, in which divisions of party and class would be transcended in a spirit of racial harmony, a harmony that would necessarily exclude people of inferior blood. This goal logically required a solution to what the Nazis called "the Jewish problem." At the very least it called for a reversal of the trend, more than a century old, of Jewish assimilation into the allegedly superior German nation and into German cultural and economic life. As for Germany's position in international affairs, Hitler had long spoken of Germany's need for additional living space (Lebensraum) in the east. First, however, there was the continued need to break the chains of the hated Treaty of Versailles.

Whether the Nazis would ever get a chance to implement their ideological objectives depended, when Hitler became chancellor, upon whether they would be able to tighten their initially tenuous hold on the reins of power. Liberals, socialists, and communists remained bitterly opposed to Hitler; important segments of business, the army, and the churches were to varying degrees suspicious of the measures he might take. It was a combination, finally, of Hitler's daring and brutality, of the weaknesses of his opponents, and of numerous instances of extraordinary good luck that allowed him to establish his totalitarian dictatorship. When the Centre Party refused to join the Nazi-DNVP coalition in January 1933, Hitler demanded elections for a new Reichstag. The elections of March 5, 1933, were preceded by a brutal and violent campaign in which Nazi storm troopers under the command of Ernst Röhm figured prominently. Hitler was also able to take advantage of the Reichstag fire (probably the work of a lone and deranged Dutch communist) of February 27 to suspend civil liberties and arrest communist as well as other opposition leaders. Despite this campaign of terror, the Nazis did not win a majority, gaining only 43.9 percent of the total. The 8 percent acquired by the DNVP, however, was sufficient for the two parties to wield a majority in the Reichstag. At its first meeting on March 23 the new Reichstag-under great pressure from the SA and the SS (Schutzstaffel; "Protective Echelon"), the elite corps of Nazis headed by Heinrich Himmler-voted in favour of the Enabling Act that allowed Hitler to ignore the constitution and to give his decrees the power of law. In this fashion, the Nazis established the regime they called the Third Reich, the presumed successor of the Holy Roman Empire (the First Reich) and of the German Empire ruled by the Hohenzollerns from 1871 to 1918 (the Second Reich).

The decree powers were the pseudolegal base from which Hitler carried out the first steps of the Nazi revolution. Within two weeks of the passing of the Enabling Act, Nazi governors were sent out to bring the federal states into line, and a few months later the states themselves were abolished. On April 7, 1933, Nazis began to purge the civil service, along with the universities, of communists, socialists, democrats, and Jews. On May 2 the trade unions were disbanded and replaced by what the Nazis called a Labour Front. In the meantime Göring had begun refashioning the political arm of the Prussian police into a secret political police, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei), to serve the Nazi cause, a process that was being duplicated by Himmler with the Bavarian police.

The brutality with which Hitler met any presumed challenge to his authority became dramatically evident when on June 30, 1934, he ordered the murders of the SA leadership. Röhm's storm-trooper street thugs had provided useful muscle during the party's long years of struggle, but their continuing penchant for unruliness, Hitler feared, could invite the army's intervention and therewith his own overthrow. To head off this possibility, Hitler engaged the loyal Himmler, who used his SS during the so-called " Night of the Long Knives" to purge the SA of dozens of its top leaders, including Hitler's longtime friend Röhm. The penultimate step in Hitler's seizure of power came on August 2, 1934, when, upon the death of President Hindenburg, he appropriated the powers of the presidency and combined them with his own as chancellor. The final step came in February 1938 when Hitler took personal command of the three branches of the German armed forces.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When Hitler finally became chancellor, on January 30, 1933, it was not on the crest of a wave of popular support but as the result of backroom political intrigue by Schleicher, Papen, and the president's son, Oskar von Hindenburg.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
The National Holocaust Centre and Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The League of German Girls ( Bund Deutscher Mädel [BDM]) was the female section of the Hitler Youth, its role was to indoctrinate girls into the beliefs and ideals of the Nazi regime. The BDM focused on developing girls into women who were dedicated to Nazism, dutiful housewives, and whose role within in society was to become a mother. Girls were to grow-up with an unquestioning understanding of the intended role of women in the Third Reich. BDM members were required to have German parents, be in good health, and conform to Nazi racial ideals.

Origins

The BDM began in 1930, prior to Adolf Hitler's rise to power as Chancellor, in 1933. Its roots follow the unsuccessful establishment of other girl's groups in the early years of the National Socialist movement. The first of these localised groups were created by Gustav Adolf Lenk in the early 1920s, but maintained poor membership levels. The early groups focused on celebration of folklore, language, and history, teaching an anti-Semitic interpretation of these areas. With the establishment of the Hitler Youth by Kurt Gruber in 1926, a department was set up for women, led by Helene Kunold and Anna Bauer. Recruitment drives ran in an attempt to get more women into the regional groups. However, the groups were not especially successful and again had limited membership

"Hille had to join the Hitler Youth and wear the brown uniform with the Swastika on the armband. We both felt uncomfortable and embarrassed about it. It was never talked about"

Anne Kind OBE

Holocaust Survivor; Quote from Survival.

On July 7, 1932, Baldur Von Schirach and Gregor Strasser dissolved other Nazi girl's groups, transferring all memberships to the BDM. By the end of 1932, membership was estimated between 10,000 to 15,000 girls. The movement increased momentum after the Nazi rise to power, with dissolution of non-Nazi girl's groups. The BDM's inclusion in the Nazi propaganda campaign and association with the Hitler Youth increased its popularity.

In 1939, on the implementation of the Law on the Hitler Youth, it became mandatory for all young girls aged 10 to 14 to be in the Young Girls League ( Jungmädelbund), and girls 14 to 18 to be in the League of German Girls. The indoctrination of young people into Nazi ideals was the purpose of the groups, with a focus on the role of young girls as future mothers of the Third Reich.

The Belief and Beauty Society

The Belief and Beauty Society was intended to link young women directly into the women's wing of the Nazi Party. It was aimed at girls aged between 17 and 21. The group was voluntary and focused on cooking, sewing, education, and politics, in line with Nazi ideals. Members also carried out work in the areas of home help, store and office help, assistance within the health service, and troop support. It was headed by the BDM leader Jutta Rudiger from 1942, when she took over from Martha Mindendorf. Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the women's wing of the Nazi Party, desired that all BDM members would eventually transfer over.

Conformity

By 1941, thousands of girls were part of the BDM, meaning the organisation had a large reach, and greater ability to indoctrinate girls into Nazi ideals. Girls who were not part of the movement began to be treated differently at school, often being shunned by the BDM members.

The BDM strove to ensure members were in conformation with Nazi ideals. It was designed to produce girls who were dedicated to Nazism, Adolf Hitler, and the State. This included ensuring that all individuals they came into contact with, such as teachers and parents, were also conforming. Like the male members of the Hitler Youth, it was encouraged that members of the BDM would inform the authorities if their parents or neighbours were not acting in line with the regime.

Members of the BDM were encouraged to choose an 'appropriate' partner with which to start a family. The girls were taught that good health and an acceptable racial background, in line with Nazi racial theory, were essential qualities. The intention was they should leave the movement with the ability to do practical work, have many children, and be devoted to their community. The intention was that former members of the BDM would raise their children in line with Nazi ideals, in order for their beliefs to become embedded in the minds of future generations.

"...the teacher spoke very seriously to the girls... "At home I want you to keep your eyes and ears open and listen carefully to what your parents, their friends and your brothers and sisters are saying. If you hear them saying anything nasty or critical about our new system, you are to report it to me."

Dorothy Fleming

Holocaust Survivor; quote from Survival.

Activities

Activities were designed to further the aim of preparation of children for their futures in as the next generation of mothers. They supported and enhanced the curriculum taught in schools, where all lessons were moulded around the Nazi understanding of history, biology, and geography. Children were taught about the world in a manner which justified the actions of the Nazi regime, and promoted conformity and obedience in all aspects of life.

Whilst part of the BDM, young women were encouraged to take part in household and agricultural activities. Initiatives such as the Girls Land Service scheme encouraged girls to spend a period of time working in agriculture. The Women's Labour Service, which became mandatory in 1939, entailed a six month period working in agriculture or domestic services. Members also carried out charitable activities, such as collecting money. Alongside the male members of the Hitler Youth, BDM girls attended many Nazi Party political meetings and rallies, ranging from local meets to national events such as the Nuremberg rally.

Music

Music within the BDM focused on singing in choral groups as this was said to provide a sense of unity, and again promote conformity. Group singing was thought to encourage obedience and teamwork, qualities heavily favoured by the Nazi regime. Members were taught folk songs that presented the history of Germany in line with Nazi teachings, further indoctrinating the children. The girls sang at many festivals and occasions within the Third Reich, providing entertainment for the public at special events. During the Second World War, BDM choirs were taken to sing to injured troops to raise the morale of the men. Song books were created for this purpose, with patriotic songs designed to inspire the men.

Sport

Sport in the BDM was intended to create healthy, strong girls who were fit for child-bearing and produce multiple children to increase the population. The Nazi regime stressed the importance of physical activity in maintaining a healthy body, particularly as sports such as swimming, gymnastics and running.

Girls in the BDM would play multiple sports, particularly focusing on athletics and gymnastics. Group activities such as these also worked towards the girls learning discipline and being competitive. Many sports undertaken by girls in the BDM were not considered appropriate for women at that time. Within the organisation of the BDM, and among the parents of girls, it became clear that not every individual valued sport as a key part in the training of young women. The balance between raising healthy young women fit for childbirth, and 'masculinising' them through too much sport was a problem for Nazi officials. Tension was created among the leaders of the BDM and the Third Reich as a whole, over the role that sport played in the lives of young women.

Uniform

Like other aspects of the BDM, the uniform was used to foster conformity and belonging through creating an atmosphere of oneness, and preventing any individual from appearing different. It was created to ensure conformity across the movement. The girls wore dark blue skirts, brown jackets, black neckerchiefs and a white blouse. Modifications to the uniform were not permitted, as the intention was to create unity across the movement. Make-up and other cosmetic modifications were deemed unacceptable as Nazi girls were intended to be natural beauties that did not rely on cosmetics.

Some girls struggled to afford the uniform, and could find themselves singled out by other members if they were not able to conform. Particularly once membership to the movement became mandatory, it became clear that each girl must match in order to fit in with the specific ideals taught in the BDM.

"Gradually the Aryan girls were joining their equivalent of the Hitler Youth - the Bund Deutscher Mädchen (League of German Girls) - and appeared in school in their new uniforms of navy blue skirts, white blouses, dark ties and white knee-length socks."

Dorothy Fleming

Holocaust Survivor; quote from Survival.

During the Second World War

During the Second World War the BDM carried out various roles within society. They ran camps for school girls evacuated from major cities for their protection from allied bombing raids, those in rural areas aided with the harvest, and those in urban areas helped those who had been bombed by the allies. The girls of the BDM also later aided members of the Hitler Youth with anti-aircraft barriers, with some even serving in the signal corps of the women's section of the SS. Members of the BDM were also trained as volunteer nurses on the frontline, helped move injured soldiers back to their home towns, and volunteered as administrative staff in the local branches of Nazi offices.

With Adolf Hitler having been in power from 1933 until 1945, and roots of the Nazi party and the Hitler Youth preceding this, many children had not known life before the Nazi regime. Some were young when the Nazis rose to power, and had experienced years of Nazi teachings and propaganda. Towards the end of the war, as the allies advanced on Berlin, members of the BDM, like boys in the Hitler Youth who did not know life beyond the Third Reich, were some of the most ardent supporters of the Nazi regime.

Leadership

In 1933, Baldur Von Schirach was appointed leader of the youth in the German Reich. This brought the Hitler Youth movement as a whole, including the BDM, under his control. In 1934, Trude Mohr was appointed national chairwoman of the BDM, and concentrated on the position of females in Nazi society. They would become responsible for raising the next generation of Nazis. After Mohr married in 1937, the BDM was taken over by Dr Jutta Rudiger, who had a close relationship with both Baldur Von Schirach and later, Artur Axmann. Jutta Rudiger was a deeply committed Nazi who continued to lead the BDM until its dissolution in 1945.
The intention for the BDM was to have leaders who were young, and who could relate to the members of the movement that they were in charge of. Although this was true in the case of local units, national leaders were mostly older women. Leaders were expected to exemplify the Nazi ideals that they were teaching to the next generation.
After the Second World War prominent Nazi officials and supporters were put on trial for their crimes. Baldur Von Schirach who had held multiple roles within the Nazi Party, including leader of the youth, was convicted of crimes against humanity. The direct leader of the BDM, Jutta Rudiger, was released without trial and lived the rest of her life working in Germany, she never renounced her commitment to National Socialism.

Sources

Epstein, Catherine (2015) Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths John Wiley and Sons: Chichester.

Kater, M. (2006) Hitler Youth, Harvard University Press: Massachusetts.

Music and the Holocaust (2016) Music amongst the Hitler Youth [online] available at: http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and-propaganda/third-reich/music-hitler-youth/ [accessed 08/02/16].

Pine, L. (2010) Education in Nazi Germany, Bloomsbury: London.

Resse, D., (2006) Growing up female in Nazi Germany, University of Michigan Press: Michigan.

Sandor, C. (2012) Through Innocent Eyes: the chosen girls of the Hitler Youth Balboa Press: Bloomington.

Stephenson, J. (2001) Women in Nazi Germany, Routledge: London.

Turino, T. (2008) Music as social life, University of Chicago Press: Illinois.

United State Holocaust Memorial Museum (2016) Photograph [online] available at: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_ph.php?MediaId=1778 [accessed 12/02/16].

Latest

Related

Most read

Tag cloud

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The League of German Girls (Bund Deutscher Mädel [BDM]) was the female section of the Hitler Youth, its role was to indoctrinate girls into the beliefs and ideals of the Nazi regime. The BDM focused on developing girls into women who were dedicated to Nazism, dutiful housewives, and whose role within in society was to become a mother.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‘I was 90% dead’: Henri’s story of surviving Auschwitz

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Henri Kichka lost his family in the Nazi death camp, but lived on to tell his own story of survival.

# data[].attributes.body
Credible publisher

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
The National Holocaust Centre and Museum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Narratives about the persecution of children during the Holocaust have generally received little attention compared to other more adult narratives of the Holocaust, but over the past two decades more and more work has focused on the stories of childhood during this period. There was no uniform way for children to survive the Holocaust. Child survivors survived due to many different reasons. Some were hidden during the war, some survived due to the Kindertransports, and some children survived the camps. There are commonalities though between what child survivors experienced in terms of being rejected by their peers, having to adapt to new situations, and how after the war they waited to hear news about what had happened to their parents and other family members.
Children in the camps
1.5 million children were murdered in the Holocaust but remarkably some children survived the camps, some were hidden and some were even born in the camps. When the Americans liberated Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, they found that about 900 children had survived thanks to the protection afforded to them by adult prisoners.

Conditions for the children in the camps were very harsh and many went hungry (the SS described them as "useless eaters"). These children also had to sleep in bunks and had no schooling. When the children were liberated many were not well enough to travel so had to stay until they were treated. Some children who had survived Auschwitz concentration camp were brought to the Lake District to regain their strength and health but also to be treated for tuberculosis. Some of the children kept the Star of David that they had to wear on their clothes while others kept items that they had found in the camps. Few had photographs of their families to bring with them when they were liberated from the camps.
Hidden children
Many brave individuals risked their lives to hide children. These children were hidden in many countries throughout Europe in annexes, on farms, in basements, in attics, in orphanages, and in convents to name but a few places of hiding. Likewise, some children were not hidden in one place only, but had to change hiding places so not to be discovered. They were either hidden on their own, with their parents, with other family members, or with people they hardly knew.

Quote: 'It wasn't much fun in our hiding places because we weren't allowed out in the daytime. We had to stay quiet and not make a noise. .. Life seemed even worse than in the ghetto.' Simon Winston; Holocaust survivor, Quote from Journeys

People involved in anti-Nazi resistance were instrumental in finding hiding places for Jewish children during the war and moving them to safe houses. Hiding Jewish children during the war meant risking one's life, but some were willing to help. Many children experienced feelings of loneliness and made up stories to entertain themselves. They had to be very quiet sometimes, and listen to the instructions of the adults around them so that they wouldn't be discovered. Many were not allowed to venture out on their own either as this was a great risk to their safety. Children were also very frightened and bewildered while in hiding. Some children when they arrived in Britain after the war brought with them objects that they had managed to keep with them while in hiding such as photographs of their family members.

These objects belong to Simon Winston who was hidden as a child.

Kindertransportees
The Kindertransports to Britain saved around 10,000 children's lives between 1938 and 1939. These children experienced being uprooted from their homes in Continental Europe and journeying to Britain where they found new homes. They came from Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Prague, and Danzig. They travelled to Britain by train and by boat but a small number came via plane. The most well-known route involved boarding trains from Germany, Austria, or Czechoslovakia to Holland where the children were given a warm welcome and hot chocolate. Then they boarded a ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich in Britain. After this, the Kinder travelled by train from Harwich to Liverpool Street Train Station in London. On arrival, the Kinder were met by their foster families or they were taken to places such as Dovercourt. These reception camps looked after the children until a foster home could be found for them. While in Britain some Kinder experienced evacuation and the Blitz, they had to adapt yet again to new surroundings, new people, and new schools. The objects that the Kinder brought with them were both practical and sentimental. These objects symbolise survival but also shed light on their lives prior to being transplanted to new and strange lands. The Kinder found new homes throughout Britain and many remained here after the war. Some, however, emigrated to other countries such as America and Israel.
Refugee children
Refugee children faced many difficulties when they arrived in Britain. Some refugees emigrated prior to the outbreak of war between 1933 and 1939, others emigrated during the war itself, while others came to Britain after the fall of the Nazi regime. These pre-war and post-war child refugees may have experienced the war differently as some may have come physically closer to the camps but they all had to learn English, adapt to British customs, and adapt to new surroundings such as different schools when they arrived in this country. Their journeys to Britain also differed as some came by boat, some by plane, and some by train. They also came from all different countries and spoke different languages. Refugees did not all find shelter in Britain. Some went to America, for instance, while others went to Palestine. However, Britain's White Paper policy in May 1939 imposed a limit on Jewish entry into Palestine because of growing tensions between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Moreover, host nations did not always greet the refugees with open arms as many restrictions were placed in their way; generally, however, most were more sympathetic towards the plight of children. Some refugees brought many objects with them while others had to leave many of their precious belongings behind in Continental Europe. Some of these items would be returned to them after the war, but for many only their memories remained, because the physical objects were either lost or stolen from them.

Reiter, Andrea, Children of the Holocaust (Vallentine Mitchell: London, 2005).

Kokkola, Lydia, Representing the Holocaust in Children's Literature and Culture (Routledge: London, 2009).

Fast, Vera K., Children's Exodus: A history of the Kindertransport (I. B. Tauris: London, 2011).

Turner, Barry, ... And the Policeman Smiled: 10,000 Children Escaped from Nazi Europe (Bloomsbury: London, 1990).

Howard, Greenfeld, The Hidden Children (Houghton Mifflin: New York, 1993).

Hodge, Deborah, Rescuing Children (Tundra: New York, 2012).

Dwrok, Deborah, Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (Yale University Press: London, 1993).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Narratives about the persecution of children during the Holocaust have generally received little attention compared to other more adult narratives of the Holocaust, but over the past two decades more and more work has focused on the stories of childhood during this period. There was no uniform way for children to survive the Holocaust.