Difference between revisions of "Category:Holocaust Children Studies"

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* '''[[Internment Camps]]''' : [[Ferramonti]] (Italy) -- [[Gurs]] (France) -- [[Rivesaltes]] (France) -- [[Theresienstadt]] (Czechia)  
* '''[[Internment Camps]]''' : [[Ferramonti]] (Italy) -- [[Gurs]] (France) -- [[Rivesaltes]] (France) -- [[Theresienstadt]] (Czechia)  


* '''[[Transit Camps]]''' : [[Drancy]] (France) -- [[Fossoli]] (Italy) -- [[Malines]] (Belgium) -- [[Westerbork]] (Netherlands)
* '''[[Transit Camps]]''' : [[Drancy]] (France) -- [[Fossoli]] (Italy) -- [[Malines]] (Belgium) -- [[Risiera di San Sabba]] (Italy) -- [[Westerbork]] (Netherlands)  


* '''[[Concentration Camps]]''' : [[Auschwitz]] -- [[Bergen-Belsen]] -- [[Buchenwald]] -- [[Dachau]] -- [[Flossenburg]] -- [[Gross-Rosen]] -- [[Gunskirchen]] -- [[Mauthausen]] -- [[Majdanek]] -- [[Mittelbau-Dora]] -- [[Plaszow]] -- [[Ravensbruck]] -- [[Sachsenhausen]] -- [[Stutthof]]  
* '''[[Concentration Camps]]''' : [[Auschwitz]] -- [[Bergen-Belsen]] -- [[Buchenwald]] -- [[Dachau]] -- [[Flossenburg]] -- [[Gross-Rosen]] -- [[Gunskirchen]] -- [[Mauthausen]] -- [[Majdanek]] -- [[Mittelbau-Dora]] -- [[Plaszow]] -- [[Ravensbruck]] -- [[Sachsenhausen]] -- [[Stutthof]]  
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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 Dekel.jpg|Dekel (2019)
File:2019 Bell.jpg|Bell (2019)
File:2018 Ouzan.jpg|Ouzan (2018)
File:2018 Cohen.jpg|Cohen (2018)
File:2017 Nelson.jpg|Nelson (2017)
File:2016 Mazzeo.jpg|Mazzeo (2016)
File:2016 Gigliotti Tempian.jpg|Gigliotti Tempian (2016)
File:2014 Pressman.jpg|Pressman (2014)
File:2013 Maida.jpg|Maida (2013)
File:2011 Heberer.jpg|Heberer (2011)
</gallery>


==== 2019 ====
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.


* [[Mikhal Dekel]]. '''''Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey'''''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. -- "Fleeing East from Nazi terror, over a million Polish Jews traversed the Soviet Union, many finding refuge in Muslim lands. Their story―the extraordinary saga of two-thirds of Polish Jewish survivors―has never been fully told ... Author Mikhal Dekel’s father, Hannan Teitel, and her aunt Regina were two of these refugees. After they fled the town in eastern Poland where their family had been successful brewers for centuries, they endured extreme suffering in the Soviet forced labor camps known as “special settlements.” Then came a journey during which tens of thousands died of starvation and disease en route to the Soviet Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. While American organizations negotiated to deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews who remained there, Dekel’s father and aunt were two of nearly one thousand refugee children who were evacuated to Iran, where they were embraced by an ancient Persian-Jewish community. Months later, their Zionist caregivers escorted them via India to Mandatory Palestine, where, at the endpoint of their thirteen-thousand-mile journey, they joined hundreds of thousands of refugees (including over one hundred thousand Polish Catholics). The arrival of the “Tehran Children” was far from straightforward, as religious and secular parties vied over their futures in what would soon be Israel ... Beginning with the death of the inscrutable Tehran Child who was her father, Dekel fuses memoir with extensive archival research to recover this astonishing story, with the help of travel companions and interlocutors including an Iranian colleague, a Polish PiS politician, a Russian oligarch, and an Uzbek descendent of Korean deportees. The history she uncovers is one of the worst and the best of humanity. The experiences her father and aunt endured, along with so many others, ultimately reshaped and redefined their lives and identities and those of other refugees and rescuers, profoundly and permanently, during and after the war ... With literary grace, Tehran Children presents a unique narrative of the Holocaust, whose focus is not the concentration camp, but the refugee, and whose center is not Europe, but Central Asia and the Middle East. 10 illustrations"
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.  


* [[Samantha Bell]]. '''''Children in the Holocaust '''''. Lake Elmo, MN: Focus Readers, 2019. -- Nonfiction <juvenile audience>. -- "Describes the experiences of children during the Jewish Holocaust, including those that escaped to England or elsewhere, those that went into hiding, and those interned in concentration camps. Personal narratives, informative infographics, and historical photos make this title a compelling and thought-provoking read for young history lovers." -- [[Samantha S. Bell]]  is the author and/or illustrator of more than 100 books for children.
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.


==== 2018 ====
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.


* [[Francoise S. Ouzan]], '''''How Young Holocaust Survivors Rebuilt Their Lives: France, the United States, and Israel'''''. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. -- "Drawing on testimonies, memoirs, and personal interviews of Holocaust survivors, Françoise S. Ouzan reveals how the experience of Nazi persecution impacted their personal reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reintegration into a free society. She sheds light on the life trajectories of various groups of Jews, including displaced persons, partisan fighters, hidden children, and refugees from Nazism. Ouzan shows that personal success is not only a unifying factor among these survivors but is part of an ethos that unified ideas of homeland, social justice, togetherness, and individual aspirations in the redemptive experience. Exploring how Holocaust survivors rebuilt their lives after World War II, Ouzan tells the story of how they coped with adversity and psychic trauma to contribute to the culture and society of their country of residence." -- [[Francoise S. Ouzan]] is Senior Researcher at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. Ouzan has published widely on displaced persons, antisemitism and American Jewry and recently co-edited Holocaust Survivors, Resettlement, Memories, Identities and Postwar Jewish Identity and Rebirth.
== Death and Survival ==


* [[Beth B. Cohen]]. '''''Child Survivors of the Holocaust: The Youngest Remnant and the American Experience'''''. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. -- "The majority of European Jewish children alive in 1939 were murdered during the Holocaust. Of 1.5 million children, only an estimated 150,000 survived. In the aftermath of the Shoah, efforts by American Jews brought several thousand of these child survivors to the United States. In Child Survivors of the Holocaust, historian Beth B. Cohen weaves together survivor testimonies and archival documents to bring their story to light. She reveals that even as child survivors were resettled and "saved," they struggled to adapt to new lives as members of adoptive families, previously unknown American Jewish kin networks, or their own survivor relatives. Nonetheless, the youngsters moved ahead. As Cohen demonstrates, the experiences both during and after the war shadowed their lives and relationships through adulthood, yet an identity as "survivors" eluded them for decades. Now, as the last living link to the Holocaust, the voices of Child Survivors are finally being heard."
Around 90% of the 1.6 million Jewish children living in Europe under Nazi rule perished during the Holocaust:


==== 2017 ====
* 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.


* [[Anne Nelson]]. '''''Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris'''''. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017. --- "This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust. Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups "kidnapped" hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations"
* 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.


==== 2016 ====
* 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.


* [[Tilar J. Mazzeo]]. '''''Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto'''''. New York, NY: Gallery Books, 2016. --- "From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler—the “female Oskar Schindler”—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II ... In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings ... But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than ninety percent of their families would perish ... Irena’s Children, “a fascinating narrative of…the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion” (Chaya Deitsch author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family), is a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption."
* 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.  


* [[Simone Gigliotti]] - [[Monica Tempian]], eds. '''''The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime: Migration, the Holocaust and Postwar Displacement'''''. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. --- "During the Nazi regime many children and young people in Europe found their lives uprooted by Nazi policies, resulting in their relocation around the globe. The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime represents the diversity of their experiences, covering a range of non-European perspectives on the Second World War and aspects of memory. This book is unique in that it places the experiences of children and youth in a transnational context, shifting the conversation of displacement and refuge to countries that have remained under-examined in a comparative context ... Featuring essays from an international range of experts, this book analyses the key themes in three sections: the migration of children to countries including England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and Brazil; the experiences of young people who remained in Nazi Europe and became victims of war, displacement and deportation; and finally the challenges of rebuilding lives and representing traumas in the aftermath of war. In its comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish experiences and how these intersected and diverged, it revisits debates about cultural genocide through the separation of families and communities, as well as contributing new perspectives on forced labour, families and the Holocaust, and Germans as war victims." --- [[Simone Gigliotti]] is Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies. [[Monica Tempian]] is a Senior Lecturer in German.
Only 10% of children survived the Holocaust (around 150.000):  


==== 2014 ====
* (a) Refugees, with their families or alone ([[Kindertransport]]), who left continental Europe before the war started, or in some cases, even during the war.


* [[Steven Pressman]]. '''''50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany'''''. New York, NY: Harper, 2014. --- "This is the astonishing true story of how one American couple transported fifty Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Austria to America - the single largest group of unaccompanied refugee children allowed into the United States. In early 1939, America's rigid immigration laws made it virtually impossible for European Jews to seek safe haven in the United States. As deep-seated anti-Semitism and isolationism gripped much of the country, neither President Roosevelt nor Congress rallied to their aid. Yet one brave Jewish couple from Philadelphia refused to silently stand by. Risking their own safety, Gilbert Kraus, a successful lawyer, and his stylish wife, Eleanor, traveled to Nazi-controlled Vienna and Berlin to save fifty Jewish children. Steven Pressman brought the Kraus's rescue mission to life in his 2013 HBO documentary, 50 Children. In this book, he expands upon the story, offering additional historical detail and context to a portrait of this ordinary couple and their extraordinary actions. Drawing from Eleanor Kraus's unpublished memoir, rare historical documents, and interviews with more than a dozen of the surviving children, and illustrated with period photographs, archival materials, and memorabilia, 50 Children is a tale of personal courage and triumphant heroism that offers a unique insight into a critical period of history."
* (b) [[Hidden Children]] (with their families, with non-Jews, with the partisans, in Christian boarding schools, etc.) or on the run [[Street Children]]


==== 2013 ====
* (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).


* [[Bruno Maida]]. '''La Shoah dei bambini: La persecuzione dell'infanzia ebraica in Italia''' (Turin: Einaudi, 2013). --- <Italy> <Intro> --- "La storia della persecuzione degli ebrei attuata dal fascismo tra il 1938 e il 1945 ci è ormai ben nota, ma raramente ci si è soffermati a riflettere su cosa abbiano significato quei tragici sette anni per i bambini italiani. Per i bambini «ariani», cresciuti nell'educazione al razzismo e alla guerra, e, soprattutto, per i bambini ebrei, allontanati da scuola, testimoni impotenti della progressiva emarginazione sociale e lavorativa dei genitori, e in moltissimi casi della distruzione e dell'eliminazione fisica della propria famiglia. Da questa prospettiva la storia che abbiamo alle spalle assume nuovi significati e stratificazioni. Il regime fascista iniziò ad attuare la discriminazione proprio dal mondo della scuola, e i bambini ebrei - prima espulsi, poi separati, esclusi e infine internati - furono vittime tra le vittime. Una parte di essi fu poi deportata, gli altri dovettero fuggire e nascondersi per molti mesi. Bruno Maida ne ripercorre la storia attraverso i progressivi stadi della persecuzione, attento a cogliere non solo lo sguardo che l'infanzia ebbe di fronte al turbinio dei fatti, ma la portata politica di una ferita impossibile da sanare."
* (d) [[Family Camps]] (Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt)


==== 2011 ====
The rate of survival mostly depended on three factors: (1) Age; (2) Country; (3) Location.
 
* [[Patricia Heberer]]. '''''Children during the Holocaust'''''. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011. --- "This compelling book, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes, and fates, of its youngest victims. Following the arc of the persecutory policies of the Nazis and their sympathizers and the impact these measures had on Jewish children and adolescents, the chapters begin with the years leading to the war, to the roundups, deportations, and emigrations, to hidden life and death in the ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping in the wake of war. This volume examines the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood in Jewish homes, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens and explores the ways in which children's experiences paralleled and diverged from their adult counterparts. The author also reflects upon the role of non-Jewish children as victims, perpetrators, and bystanders ... The ten chapters follow the arc of the persecutory policies of the Nazis and their sympathizers and the impact these measures had on Jewish children and adolescents--from the years leading to the war, to the roundups, deportations, and emigrations, to hidden life and death in the ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping in the wake of war. This volume examines the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood in Jewish homes, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens and explores the ways in which children's experiences paralleled and diverged from their adult counterparts." --- [[Patricia Heberer]], PhD, museum historian, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is a specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany.
 
=== 2000s ===
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:2009 Bogner.jpg|Bogner (2009)
File:2008 Vromen.jpg|Vromen (2008)
File:2005 Nicholas.jpg|Nicholas (2005)
File:2004 Brenner.jpg|Brenner (2004)
File:2004 Bailly.jpg|Bailly (2004)
File:2010 Bailly English.jpg|Bailly (2010) en
File:2001 Brostoff.jpg|Brostoff (2001)
File:2000 Harris.jpg|Harris (2000)
</gallery>
 
==== 2009 ====
 
* [[Nahum Bogner]]. '''At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland''' (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009). --- "Hidden under false identities in cities, on farms and in convents and monasteries, young Jewish children survived the war by the grace of kindhearted strangers. Their story is told by an historian who survived the war as a child. He describes how the emotional closeness so essential for survival made it so hard for the children to leave their host families after the war ... The book was awarded the Buchman Prize of Yad Vashem for Holocaust Literature."
 
==== 2008 ====
 
* [[Suzanne Vromen]]. '''Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis''' (Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press,2008). --- "In the terrifying summer of 1942 in Belgium, when the Nazis began the brutal roundup of Jewish families, parents searched desperately for safe haven for their children. As Suzanne Vromen reveals in Hidden Children of the Holocaust, these children found sanctuary with other families and schools--but especially in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages ... Vromen has interviewed not only those who were hidden as children, but also the Christian women who rescued them, and the nuns who gave the children shelter, all of whose voices are heard in this powerfully moving book. Indeed, here are numerous first-hand memoirs of life in a wartime convent--the secrecy, the humor, the admiration, the anger, the deprivation, the cruelty, and the kindness--all with the backdrop of the terror of the Nazi occupation. We read the stories of the women of the Resistance who risked their lives in placing Jewish children in the care of the Church, and of the Mothers Superior and nuns who sheltered these children and hid their identity from the authorities. Perhaps most riveting are the stories told by the children themselves--abruptly separated from distraught parents and given new names, the children were brought to the convents with a sense of urgency, sometimes under the cover of darkness. They were plunged into a new life, different from anything they had ever known, and expected to adapt seamlessly. Vromen shows that some adapted so well that they converted to Catholicism, at times to fit in amid the daily prayers and rituals, but often because the Church appealed to them. Vromen also examines their lives after the war, how they faced the devastating loss of parents to the Holocaust, struggled to regain their identities and sought to memorialize those who saved them ... This remarkable book offers an inspiring chronicle of the brave individuals who risked everything to protect innocent young strangers, as well as a riveting account of the "hidden children" who lived to tell their stories."
 
==== 2005 ====
 
* [[Lynn H. Nicholas]]. '''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web''' (New York: Knopf, 2005). --- A general introduction to the lives of children in Europe under Nazi rule (Jews and non-Jews). --- "In this riveting, powerful narrative, Lynn Nicholas shows how children under the Nazis became mere objects available for use in the service of the totalitarian state. Nicholas recounts the euthanasia and eugenic selection, racist indoctrination, kidnapping and “Germanization,” mass executions, and slave labor to which the Nazis subjected Europe’s children. She also captures the uprooted children’s search for their families in the aftermath of the war. A disturbing and absolutely necessary work, Cruel World opens a new chapter in World War II studies."
 
==== 2004 ====
 
* [[Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick]], ed. '''''Die Mädchen von Zimmer 28: Freundschaft, Hoffnung und Uberleben in Theresienstadt''''' (München: Droemer Knaur 2004) --- Collection of memoirs of Holocaust survivors from <Theresienstadt>. --- '''The girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt''', English ed. by [[John E. Woods]] and [[Shelley Frisch]] (New York : Schocken Books, 2009). ---- Also translated into Polish, Czech, and Portuguese. --- "From 1942 to 1944, 15,000 children passed through the internment camp on their way to Auschwitz. Only 100 of them survived the war. In this book, 12 of these children--mothers and grandmothers today in their 70s--tell how they did it ... German journalist Hannelore Brenner met these child survivors."
 
==== 2001 ====
 
* [[Anita Brostoff]], ed. '''Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood during the Holocaust''' (New York : Oxford University Press, 2001). --- "A collection of "over one hundred brief stories written by survivors from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Balkan countries ... along with "poignant recollections of American liberators who were devastated by the horrors they discovered after the fall of the Nazis ... In a series of writing workshops at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, survivors who were children or teens during World War II assembled to remember the pivotal moments in which their lives were irreparably changed by the Nazis. These "flares of memory" preserve the voices of over forty Jews from throughout Europe who experienced a history that cannot be forgotten ... Ninety-two brief vignettes arranged both chronologically and thematically recreate the disbelief and chaos that ensued as families were separated, political rights were abolished, and synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed. Survivors remember the daily humiliation, the quiet heroes among their friends, and the painful abandonment by neighbors as Jews were restricted to ghettos, forced to don yellow stars, and loaded like cattle into trains. Vivid memories of hunger, disease, and a daily existence dependent on cruel luck provide penetrating testimonies to the ruthlessness of the Nazi killing machine, yet they also bear witness to the resilience and fortitude of individual souls bombarded by evil."
 
==== 2000 ====
 
* [[Mark Jonathan Harris]] - [[Deborah Oppenheimer]]. '''Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport''' (New York, NY, and London: Bloomsbury, 2000). --- "Chronicles the events and people involved in the rescue of 10,000 children from Nazi territories, and what happened after the war. Official tie-in to the Warner Brothers documentary. First hand account of the extraordinary rescue mission of 10,000 children before the outbreak of World War II. For nine months before the outbreak of World War II, Britain conducted an extraordinary rescue mission. It opened its doors to over 10,000 endangered children, 90 percent of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. These children were taken into foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents. Most of the children never saw their families again. Into the Arms of Strangers recounts the remarkable story of this rescue operation, known as the Kindertransport, and its dramatic impact on the lives of the children who were saved. The book is the companion to the feature-length documentary which was released in the theatres by Warner Bros. in Fall 2000. It contains stories in their own words from the child survivors, rescuers, parents, and foster parents. They recount, in harrowing detail, the effects of the Nazi's reign of terror, the horror of Kristallnacht, the agonizing decision by the parents to send their children away, the journey, the difficulties of adjustment in Britain, the outbreak of war, and the children's tragic discovery afterward that most of their parents had perished in concentration camps. The stories are heartbreaking, but also inspiring. These are the stories of those who survived with the help of others; they are stories about the strength and resolve of children; and most astonishing, these are stories not yet heard about the Holocaust."


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

Latest revision as of 10:09, 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


Timeline.jpg

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.

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