Difference between revisions of "Category:Holocaust Children Studies"

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* See [http://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/children-of-the-holocaust/ Museum of Tolerance]
* See [http://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/children-of-the-holocaust/ Museum of Tolerance]


* See [https://www.fold3.com/page/285875537-child-victims-of-the-nazis/stories Holocaust Children]
* See [[Holocaust Children]]


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 1.2 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.”
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 1.2 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.”
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Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...
Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...


== Bibliography ==
== The Uniqueness of the Holocaust Experience ==


== 2010s ==
Why are we devoting so much time to children during the Holocaust?


<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
Children have rarely a life of their own. Their lives depend on the adults who take care of them. There are very little opportunities for children to be known apart from their families. The Jewish child is no exception (we know the names of only a few children who have distinguished themselves as children in Jewish history).  
File:2019 Serri.jpg|Serri (2019)
File:2019 Kraus.jpg|Kraus (2019) en
File:2019 Dekel.jpg|Dekel (2019)
File:2019 Bell.jpg|Bell (2019)


File:2018 Ross.jpg|Ross (2018) <memoirs>
In antiquity, most of the stories about children in the Bible present "ordinary" stories of child rivalry, family conflict, ecc. Only a few children are remembered for something really special that happened to them: Joseph (was sold as a slave, became the viceroy of Egypt), [[David]] (killed Goliath in battle), [[Daniel]] (served the Persian administration), etc.
File:2018 Ouzan.jpg|Ouzan (2018)
File:2018 Cohen.jpg|Cohen (2018)
File:2018 Berg.jpg|Berg (2018) repr <memoirs>


File:2017 Virtzberg.jpg|Virtzberg (2017) en <@1967> <memoirs>
With the creation of schools more opportunities were offered to children to distinguished themselves outside of their own families, first of all for their learning as "exceptional students" (child prodigies). [[Josephus]], [[Jesus]], etc. The Rabbis had a term to  עילוי‎ or עלוי (i'lui) to denote child prodigies who distinguished themselves in the study of the Torah for their intelligence and memory.  
File:2017 Nelson.jpg|Nelson (2017)
File:2017 Duguay.jpg|Duguay (2017) <film>


File:2016 German Zargani.jpg|Zargani (2016) de <@1975> <memoirs>
The Emancipation gave Jewish children (both boys and girls) the opportunity to distinguish themselves in other fields than religion, namely, as child singers, child actors, child musicians, as well as students of science.
File:2016 Mazzeo.jpg|Mazzeo (2016)
File:2016 Gigliotti Tempian.jpg|Gigliotti Tempian (2016)
File:2016 Gallico.jpg|Gallico (2016) <memoirs>
File:2016 Doillon.jpg|Doillon (2016) <film>


File:2015 Kadelbach.png|Kadelbach (2015) <film>
The normal situation of children is that adults are taking care of them. The Holocaust marked for an entire generation (around 1.6 millions of Jewish children in Europe) a complete reversal of their "normal" status. Adults became children (i.e. powerless), and children were forced to become adults. in order to survive, they had to take their lives in their own hands and make life-or-death decision for themselves and often also for their own relatives. This makes the Holocaust such a special time for the Jewish child, a time in which children have become protagonists without having asked for it.


File:2014 Pressman.jpg|Pressman (2014)
== Death and Survival ==


File:2013 Maida.jpg|Maida (2013)
Around 90% of the 1.6 million Jewish children living in Europe under Nazi rule perished during the Holocaust:
File:2013 Danquart.jpg|Danquart (2013) <film>


File:2011 Orlev.jpg|Orlev (2011)
* At the beginning, after Hitler rose to power in 1933, Jewish children were not targeted for extermination. They suffered discrimination, exclusion and humiliation. They could no longer attend schools, they could not pursue an education, meet with non-Jewish friends, etc. Many tried to escape with or without their families especially after Kristallnacht (Nov 9-10, 1938), when Jewish synagogues and properties were destroyed in a massive pogrom.  
File:2011 Heberer.jpg|Heberer (2011)
File:2010 Bailly English.jpg|Bailly (2010) en
</gallery>


=== 2000s ===
* After the beginning of the war, in September 1939, Jewish children experienced the ghettos. They began to die in the thousands because of hunger and disease.


<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
* Starting from June 1941, with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, for the first time Jewish children in Eastern Europe were shoot with their families in mass executions.  
File:2009 Bogner.jpg|Bogner (2009)


File:2008 Vromen.jpg|Vromen (2008)
* In 1942 began the systematic killing of children, They were deported from the ghettos to the death camps. Only some children who lied about their age and could work, were able to survive. Others were able to flee before being captured.  


File:2007 French Zargani.jpg|Zargani (2007) fr <@1975> <memoirs>
Only 10% of children survived the Holocaust (around 150.000):  
File:2007 Berg.jpg|Berg (2007) <reprint>


File:2005 Nicholas.jpg|Nicholas (2005)
* (a) Refugees, with their families or alone ([[Kindertransport]]), who left continental Europe before the war started, or in some cases, even during the war.
File:Fateless 2005.jpg|Koltai (2005) <film>


File:2004 Brenner.jpg|Brenner (2004)
* (b) [[Hidden Children]] (with their families, with non-Jews, with the partisans, in Christian boarding schools, etc.) or on the run [[Street Children]]
File:2004 Bailly.jpg|Bailly (2004)


File:2002 English Zargani.jpg|Zargani (2002) en <@1975> <memoirs>
* (c) [[Nazi Ghettoes]] and [[Labor Camps]] (mostly adolescents, and a few younger children who were kept alive to serve as errand boys or for medical experiments).
File:2002 Zapruder.jpg|Zapruder (2002)


File:2001 Brostoff.jpg|Brostoff (2001)
* (d) [[Family Camps]] (Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt)


File:2000 Harris.jpg|Harris (2000)
The rate of survival mostly depended on three factors: (1) Age; (2) Country; (3) Location.
</gallery>
 
=== 1990s ===
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1999 Fox.jpg|Fox (1999)
File:1998 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1998)
File:1997 Benigni.jpg|Benigni (1997) <film>
File:1996 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1996)
File:1996 Hochberg-Marianskwa.jpg|Hochberg-Marianskwa (1996) en
 
File:1995 Zargani.jpg|Zargani (1995) <memoirs>
File:1995 Boas.jpg|Boas (1995)
File:1994 Rosenberg.jpg|Fox (1994)
File:1994 Lukas.jpg|Lukas (1994)
File:1994 Levi.jpg|Levi (1994) <memoirs>
File:1994 Kraus.jpg|Kraus (1994)
File:1994 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1994)
 
File:1993 Valent.jpg|Valent (1993)
File:1993 Pacifici.jpg|Pacifici (1993) <memoirs>
File:1993 Marks.jpg|Marks (1993)
 
File:1991 Urman.jpg|Urman (1991) en <diary>
File:1991 Muller.jpg|Muller (1991) fr <memoirs>
File:1991 Dwork.jpg|Dwork (1991)
File:1991 Gilbert.jpg|Gilbert (1991)
File:1991 Durlacher.jpg|Durlacher (1991)
 
File:1990 Lagnado.jpg|Lagnado (1990)
File:1990 Holland.jpg|Holland (1990) <film>
</gallery>
 
== 1980s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1989 Nir.jpg|Nir (1989)
File:1988 Schloss.jpg|Schloss (1988)
File:1988 Lifton.jpg|Lifton (1988)
File:1988 Freiberg.jpg|Freiberg (1988)
File:1988 Eisen.jpg|Eisen (1988)
File:1988 Appleman.jpg|Appleman (1988)
File:1987 Sherin.jpg|Sherin (1987) <film>
File:1987 Malle.jpg|Malle (1987) <film>
File:1986 Minsky.jpg|Minsky (1986)
File:1986 Bauman.jpg|Bauman (1986)
File:1986 Auerbacher.jpg|Auerbacher (1986)
 
File:1985 Weinstein.jpg|Weinstein (1985) en <@1983> <memoirs>
File:1985 Klarsfeld English.jpg|Klarsfeld.en (1985) [1984]
 
File:1984 Schwarberg English.jpg|Schwarberg.en (1984) <1979>
File:1984 Orlev.jpg|Orlev.en (1984) <1981>
File:1984 Klarsfeld.jpg|Klarsfeld (1984)
File:1984 Hemmendinger.jpg|Hemmendinger (1984)
 
File:1982 Eisenberg.jpg|Eisenberg (1982)
 
File:1981 Zyskind.jpg|Zyskind (1981) en <@1977> <memoirs>
File:1981 Siegal.jpg|Siegal (1981)
File:1981 Rubinowicz.jpg|Rubinowicz.en (1981) <1960>
 
File:1980 Wiesel it.jpg|Wiesel.it (1980) <1958>
File:1980 Edelbaum.jpg|Edelbaum (1980)
File:1980 Bitton-Jackson.jpg|Bitton-Jackson (1980)
</gallery>
 
==== 1988 ====
 
* [[George Eisen]]. '''''Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games among the Shadows''''' (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). --- "Studies the importance of "playing" to the survival of children in Nazi organized ghettos and concentration camps. illustrates how the feeling of normalcy created through play, provided not only a means of control by adults ... But a psychological Force which allowed for spiritual survival. examines the nature of games played, emphasizing how games such as "blockade" and "gas Chamber" reflected the environment in which they were created and played."--Publisher description. --- [[George Eisen]] (b.1943) was born in German-occupied Hungary. As a little child he spent a year in hiding with his Jewish mother while his father was held prisoner in a concentration camp. He attended high school in Hungary, college in Israel and received a doctorate from the University of Maryland. He has taught in Cal Poly Pomona’s physical education department since 1979. He got the idea for his book while researching organized Jewish sports in pre-World War II Europe for his doctorate.
 
* [[Betty Jean Lifton]]. '''''The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak''''' (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). --- "A detailed biography of Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) - doctor, teacher, writer and educational theorist - who was deported along with the children of his orphanage in August 1942 from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, where they perished ... This is the tragic story of Janusz Korczak (as featured in the major motion picture The Zookeeper's Wife) who chose to perish in Treblinka rather than abandon the Jewish orphans in his care. Korczak comes alive in this acclaimed biography by Betty Jean Lifton as the first known advocate of children's rights in Poland, and the man known as a savior of hundreds of orphans in the Warsaw ghetto. A pediatrician, educator, and Polish Jew, Janusz Korczak introduced progressive orphanages, serving both Jewish and Catholic children, in Warsaw. Determined to shield children from the injustices of the adult world, he built orphanages into 'just communities' complete with parliaments and courts. Korczak also founded the first national children's newspaper, testified on behalf of children in juvenile courts, and, through his writings, provided teachers and parents with a moral education. Known throughout Europe as a Pied Piper of destitute children prior to the onslaught of World War II, he assumed legendary status when on August 6, 1942, after refusing offers for his own safety, he defiantly led the orphans under his care in the Warsaw Ghetto to the trains that would take them to Treblinka." --- [[Betty Jean Lifton]] (USA, 1926-2010) was an adopted child. For entire career as a psychologist, she kept a clear and present focus on children, on children’s issues, and on children’s literature. She authored several books on adoption.
 
==== 1984 ====
 
* [[Serge Klarsfeld]]. '''''Les enfants d'Izieu''''' (Paris [France]: B. Klarsfeld Foundation, 1984) <French>. --- English tr. '''''The Children of Izieu''''' (New York, NY: H. Abrams, 1985). --- "Presents the story of an orphanage in Izieu, France that sheltered Jewish children from all over Europe who had escaped Nazi persecution. In 1944, one month before World War II ended, the Gestapo sent soldiers to the orphanage to arrest all the children and caretakers. Those arrested were taken to Auschwitz for immediate execution. The events are recounted through the stories of those who escaped the Nazi raid." --- [[Serge Klarsfeld]] (b.1935) is a Holocaust child survivor, a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Born in Bucharest into a family of Romanian Jews, they migrated to France before the Second World War began. Serge's father was deported and killed during the Holocaust. Serge was cared for in a home for Jewish children operated by the OSE (''Œuvre de secours aux enfants''). His mother and sister also survived the war in hiding in France. In 1979 Serge helped found and has ever since led the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France (Association des fils et filles des déportés juifs de France).
 
* [[Judith Hemmendinger]]. '''''Les enfants de Buchenwald: que sont devenus les 1000 enfants juifs sauvés en 1945?''''' (Lausanne, Suisse : P.-M. Favre, 1984). --- '''The Children of Buchenwald : Child Survivors and Their Post-War Lives''', English rev. ed. by Judith Hemmendinger and Robert Krell (Jerusalem ; Hewlett, NY. : Gefen House, 2000). --- Also translated into German. ---  Some of the 426 child survivors of Buchenwald tell their stories, from their lives in the camp, their liberation, and their struggle for normalcy and emotional well-being. --- Contents: From Auschwitz to Liberation - Arrival in France - The children at Ambloy - Lulek's story -- Romek's story - Taverny -- Destinations: leaving Taverny - Life journeys: 20 years later in New York - Life journeys: France - Life journeys: Israel - Elie Wiesel - Observations and conclusions.
 
==== 1982 ====
 
* [[Azriel Eisenberg]]. '''''The Lost Generation: Children in the Holocaust''''' (New York : Pilgrim Press, 1982). [[User:Gabriele Boccaccini|Gabriele Boccaccini]] ([[User talk:Gabriele Boccaccini|talk]]) "Collects firsthand accounts of the Nazi persecution of Jewish children during World War II and the efforts of the members of the organization, Youth Aliyah, to rescue these children ... Explores the wide range of experiences suffered by children during the Holocaust, including their lives in the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, as well as years spent hiding in the forests ... Passing as Aryans, or living under the protection of righteous gentiles. chapters 6 and 7 explore children's diaries, including Anne Frank's, and written testimonies by children." [[User:Gabriele Boccaccini|Gabriele Boccaccini]] ([[User talk:Gabriele Boccaccini|talk]]) [[Azriel Eisenberg]] (USA, 1903-1985). The child of Jewish immigrants, Eisenberg devoted his entire life to the cause of Jewish education. His interests led him to revisit the experience of children during the Holocaust. After the anthologies of the 1940s, his book was the first collection of children's accounts of the Holocaust.
 
==== 1981 ====
 
* '''The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz''' ([[Edinburgh, Scotland]]: [[Blackwood]], 1981) is the first English edition of a diary written in Polish by Holocaust victim [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (1927-1942) in 1940-42 (age 12-15), while living in Poland under Nazi rule. First published in Poland (Warszawa : Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960). Also published in German, Hungarian, Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Yiddish. --- "Dawid Rubinowicz began his diary in March 1940, after the Nazi invasion, and continued until at least June 1942. He left his diary, written in at least five copybooks, with his Polish neighbor and friend, Tadeusz Waciński. Later, the notebooks were passed on to Antoni Waciński, who kept them in his house for 15 years. A family that rented the house in the 1950s found the diary and read it aloud on the local radio. A few years later, journalist Maria Jarochowska arranged for it to be published for the first time. Excerpts from Dawid's diary also appear in several anthologies, including Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, edited by Alexandra Zapruder and We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust, edited by Jacob Boas." ---"Presents the diaries of a twelve-year-old Polish boy written between 1940 and 1942. Describes the Nazi occupation of Poland and the increasingly harsh decrees targeting Jews. Contains photographs" (USHMM). --- [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (1927-1942) was born and raised in Krajno, Poland, the son of a poor Jewish diary farmer. Dawid and his entire family perished in the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka. Dawid was only 15 when he died.
 
-----
 
== 1970s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1979 Schwarberg.jpg|Schwarberg (1979)
File:1979 Pisar.jpg|Pisar (1979) <memoirs>
File:1979 Friedländer.jpg|Friedländer (1979) en <@1978> <memoirs>
 
File:1978 Stoessinger.jpg|Stoessinger (1978) <memoirs>
File:Oberski Dutch.jpg|Oberski (1978) <memoirs>
 
File:1975 Imre.jpg|Kertész (1975) hu <memoirs>
 
File:1974 Heyman.jpg|Heyman (1974) en <@1948> <diary>
 
File:1973 Rudashevski.jpg|Rudashevski (1973 @1968) en]]
File:1973 Joffo.jpg|Joffo (1973) fr <memoirs>
 
File:1972 Reiss.jpg|Reiss (1972)
File:1970 Ziemian.jpg|Ziemian (1970)
</gallery>
 
==== 1979 ====
 
* [[Günther Schwarberg]]. '''''Der SS-Arzt und die Kinder: Bericht über den Mord vom Bullenhuser Damm''''' <German> (Hamburg [Germany]: Gruner und Jahr, 1979). -- English tr. by  [[Henri Nannen]]. ''The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm: The SS Doctor and the Children'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). --- "On the night of April 20, 1945, 20 Jewish children who had been used in medical experiments at Neuengamme, their four adult caretakers and six Soviet prisoners were murdered in the basement of the school ... The twenty Jewish children (10 boys and 10 girls, age 5 to 12, from Poland, France, Italy and Slovenia) came from Auschwitz concentration camp. They were chosen by Josef Mengele and sent to Neuengamme as a "gift" to his colleague Kurt Heissmeyer, to be used as guinea pigs for experiments on tuberculosis". --- [[Günther Schwarberg]] (1926-2008) was a German journalist and author whose 1979 series of articles in German news magazine ''Der Stern'' and subsequent book "The SS Doctor and the Children" brought the World War II era war crimes committed in Neuengamme concentration camp and Bullenhuser Damm School in Hamburg to the public's conscience in Germany, and the rest of the world.
 
==== 1974 ====
 
* '''The Diary of Éva Heyman''' (1974) is the first English edition of a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Éva Heyman]] (1931-1944) in 1944 (age 13), while living in Hungary under Nazi rule. Published in Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974. Originally published in Budapest: Uj Idok Irodalmi Intézet R.T. (Singer és Wolfner), 1948. Also published in Hebrew, Catalan, French and Italian. --- "The diary of Éva Heyman, born in 1931 in Nagyvárad, northern Transylvania (now Oradea, Romania), presented by her mother, Ágnes Zsolt. Her diary covers the period from 13 February (her 13th birthday) to 30 May 1944. At the time of the German occupation in March 1944, Éva was a student at the Jewish school. Her great-grandfather and a great-uncle had been Chief Rabbis of the Neolog Jewish community in the town in the 19th-20th centuries. Éva's parents had divorced, and her mother married the Hungarian Jewish writer Béla Zsolt, who lived in Budapest; Éva remained in Nagyvárad and was raised by her maternal grandparents, the Rácz family. In her diary, she gives a graphic description of the harsh events of the time, both in her home environment and in the city at large. When the ghetto was established in Nagyvárad, Éva's parents, who had been visiting in Nagyvárad, were also interned. They managed to escape from the ghetto to Budapest, where they were rescued on the Kasztner train. Éva, her grandparents, her biological father (Béla Heyman), his mother, as well as other family members were all deported to Auschwitz. Éva arrived in Auschwitz on 6 June, and was gassed on 17 October. Her mother presents here a very brief but heartrending description of Éva's experiences in Auschwitz. At the end, it was Mengele himself who sought her out and put her on the truck to be taken to the gas chamber. Her diary survived because she gave it to the family's cook who came to visit them in the ghetto on 30 May." --- "Presents diary entries from the last few months of a young girl’s life, from her thirteenth birthday on February 13, 1944 to May 30, 1944, just before she was deported to Auschwitz. Conveys her fears and describes daily life in a ghetto in Nagyvarad, Romania. Includes endnotes and an appendix of letters written to her mother about Eva from people close to the family" (USHMM).
 
==== 1973 ====
 
* '''The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto''' (1973) is a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Yitskhok Rudashevski]] (1927-1943) in the years 1941-43 (age 14-16), when living in the Vilma Ghetto. Originally published in Hebrew in 1968. --- Published in Tel Aviv [Israel]: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1973. Originally published in Hebrew (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-meuhad, 1968). Also published in French (2016), and Lithuanian/Yiddish (2018). --- Yitskhok Rudashevski wrote a diary from June 1941 to April 1943 which detailed his life and struggles living in the Vilna ghetto. His diary was discovered by his cousin Sore Voloshin, in 1944. His cousin Voloshin fought the German army and the Soviet Union, later returning to the hideout, and found Yitskhok's diary. The diary was published in 1973 in English translation by the Ghetto Fighters' House publisher in Israel. --- "This is the diary of one of the "other Anne Franks," teen diarists of the Holocaust who are not nearly as famous as she. Yitskhok Rudashevski was fourteen when he began his diary in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania during the Nazi occupation. He was a gifted writer and wrote movingly of how his family and all the other Vilna Jews were confined to a ghetto and the ghetto kept shrinking and shrinking as the Nazis conducted "Aktions" and killed vast numbers of people, usually by machine-gunning them en masse at nearby Ponar. Rudashevski did not survive; he and his family went into hiding, but they were caught and almost all of them were executed. He was fifteen years old when he died. His account of the suffering of the Vilna Jews, and his own struggle to remain human amid the disaster, is well worth reading." --- "Diary of a boy who died during the liquidation of the Vilna ghetto. Records events occurring in the ghetto and his activities with Rudashevski’s school and youth club. Contains endnotes and appendixes including a testimony by the author’s cousin describing her discovery of the diary."--Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM). --- [[Yitskhok Rudashevski]] (1927-1943) was a young Jewish teenager who lived in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania during the 1940s. He was shot to death in the Ponary massacre on Oct 1, 1943 during the liquidation of September–October 1943.
 
==== 1970 ====
 
* [[Joseph Ziemian]]. '''''The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square'''''. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1970). --- "The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square is the true account of a band of Jewish children, ages seven to sixteen, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto during the last three years of World War II (1943-1945). The author, Joseph Ziemien, finds two of the children by accident at a soup kitchen in Central Warsaw ... The astonishing, true story of a group of Jewish children who managed to escape from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 and survive in the Aryan section of the Nazi-occupied city. Sentenced to death, hounded at every step, they kept themselves alive by peddling cigarettes in Warsaw's Three Crosses Square - where the author, a member of the Jewish Underground in Poland, met and helped them and recorded their story. Several of the children were finally caught and killed, but most survived and are alive today. The story of the cigarette sellers has been published in Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and a dramatised version has been broadcast in Israel. The book was awarded a literary prize by the World Jewish Congress in New York."
 
------
 
== 1960s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1967 Kuper.jpg|Kuper (1967)
File:1967 Berri.jpg|Berri (1967) <film>
File:1965b Kosinski.jpg| Kosinski (1965)
File:1965 Flinker.jpg|Flinker (1965) en
File:1963 Lowrie.jpg|Lowrie (1963)
File:1963 Beyer.jpg|Film (1963)
File:1948 Lena.jpg|Küchler-Silberman (1961) en]]
File:1960 Leopold.jpg|Leopold (1960) <film>
File:1960 Wiesel.jpg|Wiesel (1960) en
</gallery>
 
==== 1965 ====
 
* '''Young Moshe's Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe''' (1965) is the English ed. of a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Moshe Flinker]] (1926-1944) in the years 1942-1943 (age 15-17), when living in hiding in Brussels, Belgium with his family. --- "Moshe Flinker died in Auschwitz but he left copy books describing his innermost thoughts during the fateful days prior to his deportation. His surviving sisters rescued his writings from the cellar of the house in which they had all hid. In his unnatural underground existence he did not fully realize the methodical extermination being perpetrated by the Nazis, but he came very near in a remarkable portrayal of the Jewish situation, which he recorded in January 1943."--Publisher description. --- "Diary of a Belgian teenage boy who died with his parents in Auschwitz. Focuses on his strong identification with the rest of the Jewish community and his feelings of guilt for living safely with his family."--Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM). --- "Moshe Flinker was a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy whose family had fled from Holland to Belgium in an attempt to avoid deportation to the east.  During this period of hiding and flight, Moshe was no longer able to go to school or to engage in the activities of normal life. In an attempt to stave off idleness, he decided to begin a diary. Moshe used his diary to record the experiences that his family faced in their struggle to endure Nazi persecution.  He also wrestled continuously with the question of why this suffering plagued the Jewish people.  On November 30, 1942 he wrote, “Now I return to the question mentioned above and its solution: what can God mean by all that is befalling us and by not preventing it from happening?  This raises a further question, which must be settled before we can proceed further with the main problem.  This second question is whether our distress is part of the anguish that has afflicted the Jewish people since the exile, or whether this is different than all that has occurred in the past.  I incline to the second answer, for I find it very hard to believe that what we are going through today is only a mere link in a long chain of suffering.” Moshe was a deeply religious young man and he sought to understand his present circumstances in the light of biblical history.  He looked for insight from the persecutions of the past and longed for God’s promised redemption of the Jewish people.  He believed that this deliverance would come when the conditions were right, both in the severity of persecution and in the responses of the victims.  Much of his diary was dedicated to this type of analysis.  He concluded his November 30th entry with these words, “I should like to pray to the Lord of Israel that He may fulfill in the near future the prayer: ‘Return us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.’’--Holocaust Center of Florida. --- Published in Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1965. Originally published in Hebrew (Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1958). --- Also published in Russian, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Yiddish. --- [[Moshe Flinker]] (1926-1944) was born in The Hague on October 9, 1926, and was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home. After being subjected to increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish measures following the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, the Flinker family fled to Belgium in 1942. In Belgium, Moshe and his family were able to pass as non-Jews with the help of false identity papers and relative anonymity ... Moshe was a deeply religious young boy who grappled with the theological problems posed by the unprecedented persecution of the Jews. He was also a gifted linguist who knew and studied eight languages, including Arabic, which he saw as fundamental to his future life in Palestine ... In April 1944, after being betrayed by a known Belgian Jewish collaborator, Moshe, his mother, and his sisters Esther Malka and Leah, were arrested at their home and deported to Malines. His father, tipped off by a neighbor, prevented Moshe’s four other siblings from going home and arranged for them to find refuge in the Tieffenbrunner orphanage near Antwerp ... Two weeks later, Moshe’s father was caught and sent to Malines, where he found his family. They were all deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Moshe’s mother, Mindel, was murdered on arrival. Esther Malka and Leah remained in the women’s camp ... Moshe and his father spent several months in Auschwitz-Birkenau before they were transferred to Echterdingen labor camp, where they both contracted typhus. From there, they were sent to Bergen Belsen, where they both succumbed to typhus in January 1945 ... Esther Malka and Leah survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and were reunited with their four siblings in Brussels after the liberation. They all emigrated to Israel.
 
==== 1963 ====
 
* [[Donald A. Lowrie]]. '''The Hunted Children''' (New York, NY: Atheneum, 1963). --- "Of all the stories to emerge from the wretchedness that was World War Two, the most ghastly and the least believable is the record of conditions in European internment camps for refugees, political prisoners, and other ""undesirable elements,"" men, women, and children ... As chairman of the ""Nimes Committee"" for the coordination of relief work among national and international organizations both Christian and Jewish, Donald Lowrie knew as much about camp conditions as anyone who survived the war. He was in close touch with the methods of financing legal and extralegal operations, and personally fought many rounds in the battle for visas, travel permits, and special concessions that had to be wrung from a treacherous Vichy. One chapter title, ""Hiding Six Thousand Children,"" expresses the staggering task of gathering up the fragments of refugee youth (preponderantly, of course, Jewish youth), concealing them, and sustaining them until they could be spirited away or liberated at the close of hostilities."--Kirkus Review. --- [[Donald Alexander Lowrie]] (USA, 1889-1974) -  As YMCA secretary served in Russian and Eastern Europe (1916-32), with his wife Helen Ogden Lowrie. Lowrie retired from the YMCA in 1932 and became the Director of the United States House at the Cité Université in Paris. The approaching world war and rising wave of refugees convinced Lowrie to return to the YMCA in 1938. He worked with Paul B. Anderson to provide American Association relief to Russian, Czech, and Bulgarian refugees in France. Lowrie remained in France until October 1942, when he relocated to Switzerland to provide YMCA services to refugees there. From 1945 to 1950, Lowrie represented the World's Committee of the World's Alliance of YMCA's in relief work for displaced persons in France.
 
==== 1961 ====
 
* [[Lena Küchler-Silberman]]. '''''My Hundred Children''''', English ed. London: Souvenir Press; and  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961 @1948.
 
====1960====
 
* [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (M / Poland, 1927-1942). First published in Polish (Warszawa : Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960). English ed. '''The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz''' ([[Edinburgh, Scotland]]: [[Blackwood]], 1981).
 
== 1950s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1959 Frank.jpg|Stevens (1959) <film>
File:1959 Edith Bruck.jpg|Bruck (1959) <memoirs>
File:1958 Wiesel.jpg|Wiesel (1958) <memoirs>
File:1958 Geve.jpg|Geve (1958) <memoirs>
File:1958 Apitz.jpg|Apitz (1958) <novel>
File:1955 Goodrich Hackett.jpg|Goodrich - Hackett (1955) <play>
File:1952 Frank.jpg|Frank.en (1952) <1947> <memoirs>
</gallery>
 
====1959====
 
* [[Edith Bruck]] / Edith Steinschreiber (F / Hungary, 1932). '''Chi ti ama così''' <Italian> (Milan: Lerici, 1959). English ed.: '''Who Loves You Like This''', trans. Thomas Kelso (Philadelphia, Pa. : Paul Dry Books, 2001).
 
====1958====
 
* [[Elie Wiesel]]. '''''La nuit'''''. Paris: 1958.
 
* First edition (in Hebrew) of the Diary of [[Moshe Flinker]] (M / Belgium, 1926-1944): Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1958. Then published in English in 1965: '''Young Moshe's Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe''' (Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1965).
 
* [[Thomas Geve]] / Stefan Cohn (M / Germany, 1929). '''Youth in Chains''' (Jerusalem : R. Mass, 1958).
 
* Bruno Apitz, '''Naked Among Wolves''' (1958), inspired by the story of [[Stefan Jerzy Zweig]] (M / Poland, 1941).
 
==== 1956 ====
 
* [[Elie Wiesel]] (M / Romania, 1928-2016).  '''און די וועלט האָט געשוויגן''' / ''Un di Velt Hot Geshvign'' ["And the World Remained Silent"] <Yiddish> (Buenos Aires: Central Union of Polish Jews in Argentina, 1956). Revised French ed. '''La Nuit''' (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1960). English ed. '''The Night''', trans. Stella Rodway (New York: Hill & Wang; and London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1960). International bestseller. Translated in more than 20 languages.


== External links ==
== External links ==

Latest revision as of 11:09, 5 January 2023

Holocaust Children Studies (Home Page)
Holocaust Children Studies (Home Page)

Auschwitz Children.jpg


Holocaust Children Studies is a field of research that specialized on the experience of children during the Holocaust.

4 Enoch includes the biography of over 800 children:

  • Mass Shootings : Babi Yar (Ukraine) -- Bronna Gora (Belarus) -- Gurka Polonka (Ukraine) -- Leipaja (Latvia) -- Odessa (Ukraine) -- Ponary (Lithuania) -- Rumbula (Latvia)

This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan


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Holocaust Children Studies : 2020s -- 2010s -- 2000s -- 1990s -- 1980s -- 1970s -- 1960s -- 1950s -- 1940s -- 1930s

General : 2020s -- 2010s -- 2000s -- 1990s -- 1980s -- 1970s -- 1960s -- 1950s -- 1940s -- 1930s -- 1920s -- 1910s -- 1900s -- 1850s -- 1800s -- 1700s -- 1600s -- 1500s -- 1450s -- Medieval -- Home



Overview

Nazi Ghettos.png


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 1.2 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.”

All Jews were targeted for death, but the mortality rate for children was especially high. Only around 150,000, or 6 to 11% of Europe’s prewar Jewish population of children survived as compared with 33% of the adults. The majority of them were teenagers, between 16 and 18 years old. The younger 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. The older had a better chance of survival.

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. Even when they were half-orphans, frequently surviving parents did not have the means or desire to care for their children.

The largest group of surviving children (60,000) was in Romania. There were 15,000 children alive in France; 12,000 in Hungary as well as in Bulgaria; 7,000 in Poland as well as in Italy; 4,000 in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands; between 2,500 and 4,500 in Czechoslovakia; 2,400 in Greece. A few thousand children survived in Concentration camps: 1,600 in Theresienstadt, 900 at Buchenwald, 500 at Bergen-Belsen, 300 at Auschwitz, etc. As many as 60,000 child survivors emigrated to the United States after the war.

Geography and Chronology of the Holocaust

(1) Racial Laws, Discrimination, Segregation (1933-38)

The first to be affected by the Holocaust were the Jewish children living in Germany. They were subjected to racial laws, discriminated, expelled from schools. Many of them left emigrated with their families.

Second came in 1938 the Jewish children living in Austria and Jewish children living in Czechia. They were subjected to the same restrictive measures as their companions in Germany. Racial laws were enacted in Italy and Hungary as well.

(2) Persecution (1938-1939 & beyond)

Kristallnacht marked the beginning of a new, more violent stage in the persecution. In Germany, Austria and Czechia, synagogues were burned, properties were destroyed. People were arrested, intimidated, some even murdered. Emigration now became a race against time. Nearby countries (and even much far away countries, like China) became places of refuge. It was difficult however to obtain visas since many countries had strict immigration laws. Many children left alone in a Kindertransport in order to reach safety abroad.

(3) Ghettos, Hunger, Disease, Forced Labor (1939-41 & beyond)

In Sept 1939 Germany conquered Eastern Poland. Children living in Poland were immediately subjected to violent persecution, and eventually forced to live in overcrowded ghetto where thousands of them died of hunger and disease.

In May 1940, the Holocaust also hit children living in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In occupied Western countries, Nazi authorities initially refrained from open violence in order not to provoke reactions from the local population. Racial laws were enacted and Jews were gradually deprived of any right and freedom. In occupied France and Italy, then an ally of the Germans, children of "foreign Jews" (even those born in Italy) were forced to live in internment camps.

(4) Extermination (1941-1945)

The Operation Barbarossa marked the beginning of the most violent stage in the Holocaust. For the first time, children living in Eastern Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were directly targeted for extermination, first by specially appointed firing squads, then by deportation to death camps. By the beginning of 1942 death camps became fully operative. Jews were now deported from the Polish ghettos or from special transit camps in Western Europe directly to the gas chambers in Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. Children (especially orphans or the little ones) were the first ones to be murdered. (while only adolescents could have some chances as forced laborers).

After Sept 1943 the extermination was extended to Italy (now under German occupation) and following the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, also in Hungary.

(5) Liberation (1945)

Germany was losing the war. At the end of 1944-beginning 1945 the first concentration camps were liberated. Only a few children were found alive in Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. More consistent groups of children were liberated at Buchenwald, Berger-Belsen, Theresienstadt, Gunskirchen, ect. The end of the war also meant freedom for the thousands and thousands of children who were in hiding everywhere in Europe.

Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...

The Uniqueness of the Holocaust Experience

Why are we devoting so much time to children during the Holocaust?

Children have rarely a life of their own. Their lives depend on the adults who take care of them. There are very little opportunities for children to be known apart from their families. The Jewish child is no exception (we know the names of only a few children who have distinguished themselves as children in Jewish history).

In antiquity, most of the stories about children in the Bible present "ordinary" stories of child rivalry, family conflict, ecc. Only a few children are remembered for something really special that happened to them: Joseph (was sold as a slave, became the viceroy of Egypt), David (killed Goliath in battle), Daniel (served the Persian administration), etc.

With the creation of schools more opportunities were offered to children to distinguished themselves outside of their own families, first of all for their learning as "exceptional students" (child prodigies). Josephus, Jesus, etc. The Rabbis had a term to עילוי‎ or עלוי (i'lui) to denote child prodigies who distinguished themselves in the study of the Torah for their intelligence and memory.

The Emancipation gave Jewish children (both boys and girls) the opportunity to distinguish themselves in other fields than religion, namely, as child singers, child actors, child musicians, as well as students of science.

The normal situation of children is that adults are taking care of them. The Holocaust marked for an entire generation (around 1.6 millions of Jewish children in Europe) a complete reversal of their "normal" status. Adults became children (i.e. powerless), and children were forced to become adults. in order to survive, they had to take their lives in their own hands and make life-or-death decision for themselves and often also for their own relatives. This makes the Holocaust such a special time for the Jewish child, a time in which children have become protagonists without having asked for it.

Death and Survival

Around 90% of the 1.6 million Jewish children living in Europe under Nazi rule perished during the Holocaust:

  • At the beginning, after Hitler rose to power in 1933, Jewish children were not targeted for extermination. They suffered discrimination, exclusion and humiliation. They could no longer attend schools, they could not pursue an education, meet with non-Jewish friends, etc. Many tried to escape with or without their families especially after Kristallnacht (Nov 9-10, 1938), when Jewish synagogues and properties were destroyed in a massive pogrom.
  • After the beginning of the war, in September 1939, Jewish children experienced the ghettos. They began to die in the thousands because of hunger and disease.
  • Starting from June 1941, with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, for the first time Jewish children in Eastern Europe were shoot with their families in mass executions.
  • In 1942 began the systematic killing of children, They were deported from the ghettos to the death camps. Only some children who lied about their age and could work, were able to survive. Others were able to flee before being captured.

Only 10% of children survived the Holocaust (around 150.000):

  • (a) Refugees, with their families or alone (Kindertransport), who left continental Europe before the war started, or in some cases, even during the war.
  • (c) Nazi Ghettoes and Labor Camps (mostly adolescents, and a few younger children who were kept alive to serve as errand boys or for medical experiments).

The rate of survival mostly depended on three factors: (1) Age; (2) Country; (3) Location.

External links

Media in category "Holocaust Children Studies"

The following 72 files are in this category, out of 72 total.