Children in the Holocaust

Children in the Holocaust 

During the Holocaust the Nazis saw Jewish children as the next Jewish generation so they didn’t care how old were them, they just killed them. They separated children according to their age. There were 3 groups the first one was from infants and toddlers up to age 6, the second one was young children ages 7 to 12 and the third one was adolescents from 13 to 18 years old. Their respective changes for survival and their ability to perform physical labor varied enormously by age.

The destiny of Jewish children was also categorized in the following way: 1) children killed when they arrived in killing centers; 2) children killed immediately after birth or in institutions; 3) children born in ghettos and camps who survived because prisoners hid them; 4) children, usually over age 12, who were used as laborers and as subjects of medical experiments; and 5) those children killed during reprisal operations or so-called anti-partisan operations.

The methods of children's euthanasia were developed between February and May 1939. First, the Nazi officials registered their potential victims. Thus, registration forms, called Meldebogen, collected data from midwifes and doctors reporting all infants born with specific medical conditions. The first killings of children in special wards by overdoses of poison and medicaments already occurred in October 1939. Disobedient parents who attempted to remove their children from the killing wards were rarely able to succeed.

The killing of disabled children marked the beginning of the euthanasia program and continued throughout the war. Although it is impossible to calculate the number of children killed in these special children's wards during World War II. They also invented a program to kill every German child that was born with a disease, deformation or even a physical problem. Because they said that they were the next generation of the Nazi regime so if they were born with some defect they wouldn’t be able to continue with the regime.

But in the other hand we have the Jewish children that lived in the ghettos, Jewish children died from starvation and contact as well as privation of acceptable clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to this figure death because they considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and later “useless eaters.” Because children were generally too young to be installed at forced labor, German authorities generally selected them, along with the elderly, ill, and disabled, for the first expulsions to killing centers, or as the first victims led to mass graves to be shot.

A few Jewish children survived by hiding and participating in the underground partisan resistance, as runners, messengers, and smugglers, but because nobody ever talked about that there is nothing to that secures it completely.

Germans were really cruel with children as we already talk they killed them for many reasons, and in many ways. They not only killed Jewish kids they also killed German kids because of their diseases. I think in that time Germans became really cruel specially with kids in the case of Jewish kids I think that they shouldn’t have killed them because they were the next Jewish generation they could just told them that they need to forget about their religion and start behaving like a German. And in the case of Germans kids I think that is completely ridiculous to kill them just because they thought that if they had any disease or difficulties they couldn’t continue with the regime because they could help them with the doctors that worked for the Nazis.

Written by: Eileen Gallagher