Category:Holocaust Children Studies

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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

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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 1.2 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...

Bibliography

2010s

  • Serri (2019)

  • Kraus (2019) en

  • Dekel (2019)

  • Bell (2019)

  • Ross (2018) <memoirs>

  • Ouzan (2018)

  • Cohen (2018)

  • 2018 Berg.jpg

    Berg (2018) repr <memoirs>

  • Virtzberg (2017) en <@1967> <memoirs>

  • Nelson (2017)

  • 2017 Duguay.jpg

    Duguay (2017) <film>

  • 2016 German Zargani.jpg

    Zargani (2016) de <@1975> <memoirs>

  • Mazzeo (2016)

  • Gigliotti Tempian (2016)

  • Gallico (2016) <memoirs>

  • 2016 Doillon.jpg

    Doillon (2016) <film>

  • 2015 Kadelbach.png

    Kadelbach (2015) <film>

  • Pressman (2014)

  • Maida (2013)

  • Danquart (2013) <film>

  • Orlev (2011)

  • Heberer (2011)

  • Bailly (2010) en

2000s

  • Bogner (2009)

  • Vromen (2008)

  • 2007 French Zargani.jpg

    Zargani (2007) fr <@1975> <memoirs>

  • 2007 Berg.jpg

    Berg (2007) <reprint>

  • Nicholas (2005)

  • Fateless 2005.jpg

    Koltai (2005) <film>

  • 2004 Brenner.jpg

    Brenner (2004)

  • Bailly (2004)

  • 2002 English Zargani.jpg

    Zargani (2002) en <@1975> <memoirs>

  • Zapruder (2002)

  • Brostoff (2001)

  • Harris (2000)

1990s

  • Fox (1999)

  • Kestenberg (1998)

  • 1997 Benigni.jpg

    Benigni (1997) <film>

  • Kestenberg (1996)

  • Hochberg-Marianskwa (1996) en

  • Zargani (1995) <memoirs>

  • Boas (1995)

  • Fox (1994)

  • Lukas (1994)

  • Levi (1994) <memoirs>

  • Kraus (1994)

  • Kestenberg (1994)

  • Valent (1993)

  • Pacifici (1993) <memoirs>

  • Marks (1993)

  • Urman (1991) en <diary>

  • Muller (1991) fr <memoirs>

  • Dwork (1991)

  • Gilbert (1991)

  • 1991 Durlacher.jpg

    Durlacher (1991)

  • Lagnado (1990)

  • 1990 Holland.jpg

    Holland (1990) <film>

1980s

  • Nir (1989)

  • Schloss (1988)

  • Lifton (1988)

  • Freiberg (1988)

  • Eisen (1988)

  • Appleman (1988)

  • 1987 Sherin.jpg

    Sherin (1987) <film>

  • 1987 Malle.jpg

    Malle (1987) <film>

  • Minsky (1986)

  • Bauman (1986)

  • Auerbacher (1986)

  • Weinstein (1985) en <@1983> <memoirs>

  • 1985 Klarsfeld English.jpg

    Klarsfeld.en (1985) [1984]

  • 1984 Schwarberg English.jpg

    Schwarberg.en (1984) <1979>

  • 1984 Orlev.jpg

    Orlev.en (1984) <1981>

  • Klarsfeld (1984)

  • 1984 Hemmendinger.jpg

    Hemmendinger (1984)

  • Eisenberg (1982)

  • Zyskind (1981) en <@1977> <memoirs>

  • Siegal (1981)

  • Rubinowicz.en (1981) <1960>

  • Wiesel.it (1980) <1958>

  • Edelbaum (1980)

  • Bitton-Jackson (1980)

1970s

  • Schwarberg (1979)

  • Pisar (1979) <memoirs>

  • Friedländer (1979) en <@1978> <memoirs>

  • Stoessinger (1978) <memoirs>

  • Oberski Dutch.jpg

    Oberski (1978) <memoirs>

  • Kertész (1975) hu <memoirs>

  • Heyman (1974) en <@1948> <diary>

  • Rudashevski (1973 @1968) en]]

  • Joffo (1973) fr <memoirs>

  • Reiss (1972)

  • Ziemian (1970)

1960s

  • Kuper (1967)

  • 1967 Berri.jpg

    Berri (1967) <film>

  • 1965b Kosinski.jpg

    Kosinski (1965)

  • Flinker (1965) en

  • Lowrie (1963)

  • 1963 Beyer.jpg

    Film (1963)

  • 1948 Lena.jpg

    Küchler-Silberman (1961) en]]

  • 1960 Leopold.jpg

    Leopold (1960) <film>

  • Wiesel (1960) en

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

1950s

  • Stevens (1959) <film>

  • 1959 Edith Bruck.jpg

    Bruck (1959) <memoirs>

  • Wiesel (1958) <memoirs>

  • Geve (1958) <memoirs>

  • Apitz (1958) <novel>

  • Goodrich - Hackett (1955) <play>

  • Frank.en (1952) <1947> <memoirs>

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

  • 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

Media in category "Holocaust Children Studies"

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

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