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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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What risks, pressures, and motivations confronted rescuers when they tried to help children?

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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How can motivations and pressures to harm or murder children be deflected or countered?

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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How and why do repressive regimes justify the persecution and/or murder of children?

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Questions to Consider and Discuss from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Why were children especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution?

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Quest for Family from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Quest for Family from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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When the war ended in 1945, the surviving remnant of Europe's Jews immediately began the difficult and painful search for family members. Parents sought out the children they had placed in convents, orphanages, or with foster families. Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. Tracing services set up by the International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations aided the searches, but often the quests were protracted because the Nazis, the war, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe had displaced millions of people.

The quest for family was much more than a search for relatives. It often involved some traumatic soul searching for children to rediscover their true identity. Those who had been infants when they were placed into hiding had no recollection of their biological parents or knowledge of their Jewish origins. The only family that most had known was that of their rescuers. Consequently, when relatives or Jewish organizations discovered them, they were typically apprehensive and sometimes resistant to yet another change.

As areas were liberated from German rule, Jewish organizations rushed in to locate survivors and reunite families. In place after place, they faced the devastation wrought by the Holocaust. In Lodz, Poland, for example, the Nazis had reduced a prewar Jewish population of more than 220,000 to less than 1,000.

Following the war, Jewish parents often spent months and years searching for the children they had sent into hiding. In fortunate instances, they found their offspring with the original rescuer. Many, however, resorted to tracing services, newspaper notices, and survivor registries in the hope of finding their children.

Time and again, the search for family ended in tragedy. For parents, it was the discovery that their child had been killed or disappeared. For hidden children, it was the revelation that there were no surviving family members to reclaim them.

Custody Battles and Orphans

In hundreds of cases, rescuers refused to release hidden children to their families or Jewish organizations. Some demanded that the child be "redeemed" through financial remuneration. Others had grown attached to their charges and did not want to give them up. In the more difficult cases, courts had to decide to whom to award custody of the child. Some rescuers defied court decisions and hid the children for a second time.

The future of the thousands of orphaned Jewish children became a pressing matter. In the Netherlands, more than half of the 4,000 to 6,000 surviving Jewish children were declared "war foster children" (Oorlogspleegkinderen), and most were placed under a state committee's guardianship. The vast majority were returned to a surviving family member or a Jewish organization, but more than 300 were given to non-Jewish families.

Torn Identity

Parents, relatives, or representatives of Jewish organizations who came to reclaim the children often encountered ambivalence, antagonism, and sometimes resistance. After years of concealing their true identity, Jewishness for some hidden Jewish children had come to symbolize persecution while Christianity stood for security. Some children even repeated antisemitic phrases learned from classmates and adults. Those who had been too young to remember their parents knew only their adopted family, religion, and often nationality. Many truly loved their foster families and refused to be given into the arms of a "stranger." In a few instances, some youngsters had to be physically taken from their foster families. For a number of hidden children, the war's end did not bring an end to the traumatic experiences.

Preserving Memory

Immediately after the war, Holocaust survivors began to document the Nazis' crimes against the Jewish people, record their experiences, and memorialize those who were killed. The efforts were often painful journeys into the recent past. By 1948, Jewish organizations in Poland, Hungary, and Germany had compiled more than 10,000 written testimonies.

Hundreds of former hidden children recounted the especially difficult pain of their survival. Many sought to recover a past that the Nazis had stolen from them-families they had never known or were only distant memories, even their own given names. Others were shocked to learn of being Jewish. By delving into the shadowy recesses of their former lives, these special survivors preserve the memory of parents who bore them, rescuers who saved them, and a time that threatened to engulf them.

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When the war ended in 1945, the surviving remnant of Europe's Jews immediately began the difficult and painful search for family members. Parents sought out the children they had placed in convents, orphanages, or with foster families. Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead.

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Hardships from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Hardships from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Parents, children, and rescuers faced daunting challenges once the decision was made to go into hiding. Some children could pass as non-Jews and live openly. Those who could not had to live clandestinely, often in attics or cellars. Children posing as Christians had to carefully conceal their Jewish identity from inquisitive neighbors, classmates, informers, blackmailers, and the police. Even a momentary lapse in language or behavior could expose the child, and the rescuer, to danger.

Living as a non-Jew required false identity papers, which were difficult to obtain in German-occupied Europe and were subject to frequent review by the authorities. Over the course of the war, children often had to move from one refuge to another. For the children who had to leave their parents behind, the emotional pangs of separation were constant and the worries many.

False Papers

For Jews to pass as "Aryans," it was essential to have false identity papers, which were often gained through contacts with the anti-Nazi resistance. Using forged or acquired papers, such as a birth or baptismal certificate, Jews sometimes could obtain legitimate documents under an assumed name from the authorities. These ruses posed great risks to the bearer since the Germans and collaborating police forces closely examined identity documents in their frequent searches for Jews, resistance members, and individuals evading conscript labor.

I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, my Zionist idealism.
-Regine Donner

Hiding Places

Not all Jewish children could pass as "Aryans" and enjoy relative freedom of movement on the outside. Those who "looked Jewish," did not speak the local language, or whose presence in a rescuer's family raised too many questions had to be physically hidden. Children were kept in cellars and attics, where they had to keep quiet, even motionless, for hours on end. In rural areas, hidden children lived in barns, chicken coops, and forest huts. Any noise-conversation, footsteps-could arouse neighbors' suspicion and perhaps even prompt a police raid. During bombings, Jewish children had to remain hidden, unable to flee to the safety of shelters. Under these conditions, the children often suffered from a lack of human interaction and endured boredom and fear.

Circumcision

In a tradition dating back to the biblical patriarch Abraham, infant male Jews have been ritually circumcised as a sign of the Jewish people's covenant with God. Even during the bleakest days of Nazi persecution, Jews tried to observe this practice. Because non-Jews in continental Europe generally were not circumcised, German and collaborationist police commonly checked males apprehended in raids. For boys attempting to hide their Jewish identity, using a public restroom or participating in sports could lead to their discovery. More rarely, they underwent painful procedures to disguise the mark of circumcision or even dressed as girls.

Hiding under a Different Religion

Thousands of Jewish children survived the Holocaust because they were protected by people and institutions of other faiths. Dozens of Catholic convents in German-occupied Poland independently took in Jewish youngsters. Belgian Catholics hid hundreds of children in their homes, schools, and orphanages, and French Protestant townspeople in and around Le Chambon-sur-Lignon sheltered several thousand Jews. In Albania and Yugoslavia, some Muslim families concealed youngsters.

Children quickly learned to master the prayers and rituals of their "adopted" religion in order to keep their Jewish identity hidden from even their closest friends. Many Jewish youngsters were baptized into Christianity, with or without the consent of their parents.

Multiple Rescuers

Finding a rescuer was quite difficult, particularly one who would take care of his or her charges for a period of years. Some individuals took advantage of a persecuted family's desperation by collecting money, then reneging on their promise of aid-or worse, turning them over to the authorities for an additional reward. More commonly, stress, anguish, and fear drove benefactors to turn out the Jewish children from their homes.

Organized rescue groups frequently moved youngsters from one family or institution to another to ensure the safety of both the child and the foster parent. In the German-occupied Netherlands, Jewish children stayed in an average of more than four different places; some changed hiding places more than a dozen times.

Separation from Family

Among the most painful memories for hidden children was their separation from parents, grandparents, and siblings. For a variety of reasons-the lack of space, the inability or unwillingness of a rescuer to take in an entire family, or the decision of the parents not to abandon other family members in the ghetto-many Jewish children went into hiding alone. In France, for instance, the OSE ( Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants, "Children's Aid Society") was able to smuggle children, but not their parents, out of internment camps.

Separation tormented both parents and children. Each feared for the other's safety and was powerless to do anything about it. Youngster and parent often had to bear their grief in silence so as not to jeopardize the safety of the other. For many hidden children, the wartime separation became permanent.

Security

A hidden child's safety and security demanded strict secrecy. Foster families created elaborate explanations for the presence of a new face in their home, identifying the child as a distant relative, friend, or surviving member of a bombed-out household. Convents and orphanages withheld youngsters' Jewish identities from documents, classmates, and staff. Organized rescue groups frequently moved children around and kept records in code to prevent their charges' discovery. In some rescue networks, parents were not permitted to contact their children or know their whereabouts.

The children themselves well understood the need for security. They kept away from situations where their true identity might be exposed, held fast to their false names and religion, and avoided mannerisms or language that might be construed as "Jewish" or foreign.

Abuse

Jewish children who lived in hiding generally were treated well by their rescuers. But not all youngsters had such experiences. Because they could not turn to local authorities for help or were afraid of being turned out, some children had to endure physical or sexual abuse by their "protectors." Studies conducted in the Netherlands estimate that more than 80% of the hidden children interviewed were treated well by their rescuers, while 15% were occasionally mistreated, and some 5% were treated badly.

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Parents, children, and rescuers faced daunting challenges once the decision was made to go into hiding. Some children could pass as non-Jews and live openly. Those who could not had to live clandestinely, often in attics or cellars. Children posing as Christians had to carefully conceal their Jewish identity from inquisitive neighbors, classmates, informers, blackmailers, and the police.

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Expressions from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Expressions from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish artists and writers poignantly documented their experiences in camps, ghettos, forests, and hiding places. While the opportunities and materials to express their joys, pain, longings, anger, and sorrows in literary and artistic creations were severely limited, an impressive body of work, done by adults as well as children, has survived, even if the creators did not.

Though it will never be known how many Jewish children recorded their thoughts in writing, art, or music, dozens of diaries, hundreds of drawings, and some poems and songs have been preserved to provide a tiny glimpse into their personal worlds, leaving a lasting legacy of both their oppression and resilience.

Artwork

Jews of all ages across Europe produced thousands of paintings, drawings, and collages during the Holocaust. Works were made at the behest of Nazi overlords or initiated by relief agencies in internment camps or by Jewish functionaries in the ghettos. Many were secretly done in concentration camps.

The resultant artworks reflect the Jews' life experiences and are infused with despair, anger, or more rarely, hope. Some images were created by Jews living as non-Jews. One set of such images was created by Simon Jeruchim, living as a non-Jew in France. He was able to sketch nature and town in situ. Other images were created by hidden children who were unable to go outside. For example, Nelly Toll was hidden in a Lvov apartment. She drew from her memories or from the glimpses of life she witnessed through her window.

Diaries

Diaries, among the most intimate forms of writing, record innermost thoughts, hopes, fears, and aspirations. They generally are not meant for the public or prying eyes. For a hidden child, however, a diary's personal nature presented a serious danger. A detail about one's real family or identity could betray its author as well as his or her rescuer. While not all hidden children were able or allowed to keep diaries, those that exist offer a fascinating glance into the mind and experiences of these youths.

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Throughout the Holocaust, Jewish artists and writers poignantly documented their experiences in camps, ghettos, forests, and hiding places. While the opportunities and materials to express their joys, pain, longings, anger, and sorrows in literary and artistic creations were severely limited, an impressive body of work, done by adults as well as children, has survived, even if the creators did not.

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Daily Life from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Daily Life from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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The ruthlessness of Nazi rule and the barbarities of war forced some children to mature beyond their years. One child survivor described them as "old people with children's faces, without a trace of joy, happiness, or childish innocence."

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Plight of Jewish Children from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Plight of Jewish Children from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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When World War II began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, more than 1 million and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis' calculated program of genocide.

As Warsaw ghetto historian Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in 1942,

"Even in the most barbaric times, a human spark glowed in the rudest heart, and children were spared. But the Hitlerian beast is quite different. It would devour the dearest of us, those who arouse the greatest compassion-our innocent children."

Liberation from Nazi tyranny brought no end to the sufferings of the few Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. Many would face the future without parents, grandparents, or siblings.

Persecution

The Nazi persecution of Jews began in Germany in 1933. By 1939, the country's Jews had been systematically deprived of their civil rights and property and ostracized from the national community. German conquests in Europe after 1939 led to the implementation of antisemitic policies in the occupied territories. Though the pace and severity of persecution differed in each country, Jews were marked, vilified, and segregated from their neighbors.

In eastern Europe, the Nazis generally isolated Jews in ghettos, which often were established in the most desolate sections of a city or town. In western Europe, internment camps, many of which had been set up earlier to house refugees and enemy aliens, served as detention centers for Jews. Such policies of isolation aided the Nazis when they began mass shootings and deportations to the killing centers.

Death

Hitler made the decision in 1941 to carry out the systematic mass murder of Jews. Einsatzgruppen followed the German army into the Soviet Union in June 1941, and by the end of the year, murdered almost 1 million Jewish men, women, and children. That December, the Chelmno killing center began operation. During 1942, the Nazis established four more killing centers to carry out the gassing of Europe's Jews.

All Jews were targeted for death, but the mortality rate for children was especially high. Only 6 to 11% of Europe's prewar Jewish population of children survived as compared with 33% of the adults. The young generally were not selected for forced labor, and the Nazis often carried out "children's actions" to reduce the number of "useless eaters" in the ghettos. In the camps, children, the elderly, and pregnant women routinely were sent to the gas chambers immediately after arrival.

Liberation

Following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the world learned of the staggering human toll of the Holocaust. Few Jewish children survived. In killing centers and concentration camps across Europe, systematic murder, abuse, disease, and medical experiments took many lives. Of the estimated 216,000 Jewish youngsters deported to Auschwitz, only 6,700 teenagers were selected for forced labor; nearly all the others were sent directly to the gas chambers. When the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945, Soviet troops found just 451 Jewish children among the 9,000 surviving prisoners.

I was 17. I, I was free, but what it meant I wasn't sure.
George Salton

Soon after liberation, Jewish agencies throughout Europe began tracing survivors and measuring communal losses. In the Low Countries, perhaps some 9,000 Jewish children survived. Of the almost 1 million Jewish children in 1939 Poland, only about 5,000 survived. Most of these youngsters survived in hiding.

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When World War II began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, more than 1 million and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis' calculated program of genocide.

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Hidden Children and the Holocaust from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Hidden Children and the Holocaust from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust

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When World War II ended in 1945, six million European Jews were dead, killed in the Holocaust. More than one million of the victims were children. Driven by a racist ideology that viewed Jews as "parasitic vermin" worthy only of eradication, the Nazis implemented genocide on an unprecedented scale.

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Children During the Holocaust from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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Articles, Stories, and Videos: Children During the Holocaust from the Holocaust Encyclopedia

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The Holocaust Encyclopedia has an entire series of articles on children during the Holocaust. The articles are very informative, and include video testimonoes of Holocaust survivors who were children during discussing their experiences, including prominent jewish and human rights activists such as Gerda Weissman Klein. This resource also includes testimony from non-Jewish survivors, such as the Roma people and twins who were experimented on.

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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

children killed in mass shootings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen and other forces in the German-occupied Soviet Union

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: Aug 10, 2021

Author(s): United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC

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Children were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Learn more about the fates of Jewish and non-Jewish children.

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"During World War II in the Warsaw ghetto, a young boy hides from the Nazis after his family has been taken away. With only a pet mouse for company, he waits for his father to return, as he promised."

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Movies: The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

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Movies: The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler

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"The story of Irena Sendler, a social worker who was part of the Polish underground during World War II and was arrested by the Nazi's for saving the lives of nearly 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw ghetto."

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"A gentle Jewish-Italian waiter, Guido Orefice, meets Dora, a pretty schoolteacher, and wins her over with his charm and humor. Eventually they marry and have a son, Giosue. Their happiness is abruptly halted, however, when Guido and Giosue are separated from Dora and taken to a concentration camp."

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"From the best-selling and award-winning author of The Devil's Arithmetic, Jane Yolen, comes her first Holocaust novel in nearly thirty years. Influenced by Dr. Mengele's sadistic experimentations, this story follows twins as they travel from the Lodz ghetto, to the partisans in the forest, to a horrific concentration camp where they lose everything but each other."

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"Odette is a young Jewish girl living in Paris during a dangerous time. The Nazis have invaded the city, and every day brings new threats. After Odette's father enlists in the French army and her mother joins the Resistance, Odette is sent to the countryside until it is safe to return."

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Books: Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust

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Books: Hidden: A Child's Story of the Holocaust

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"In this gentle, poetic young graphic novel, Dounia, a grandmother, tells her granddaughter the story even her son has never heard: how, as a young Jewish girl in Paris, she was hidden away from the Nazis by a series of neighbors and friends who risked their lives to keep her alive when her parents had been taken to concentration camps."

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"The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is a fictional tale of the unlikeliest of friends: the son of a Nazi commandant and a Jewish concentration camp inmate. Written by John Boyne and published in 2006 by David Fickling Books, the story was made into a major motion picture in 2008."

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"The Book Thief tells the story of Liesel, a little girl who is taken to a new home because her mother can't afford to take care of her. The story is told by Death, who becomes a character you come to respect and even feel sorry for by the end."

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"The Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, journal by Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager who chronicled her family's two years (1942–44) in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II."