<<Previous / Next>>
Behind Barbed Wire
Polish children imprisoned in Auschwitz stare out from behind the barbed wire fence. Each child's face reflects an untold story. A poet once said that the death of a child is the loss of infinite possibility. What can be said of the murder of more than a million children?
Children of the HolocaustThe experiences of children during the Holocaust varied widely from country to country and year by year as the war progressed. Parents were unable to protect their young, as assets, resources, social status, and even freedom were stripped away by the Nazis. Families could not and did not know, until it was too late, that "resettlement in the East" meant almost certain death. Yet, throughout Europe, parents had to make instant decisions whether to keep the family together and face an uncertain future, or go into hiding, sometimes together, sometimes individually.
Some children spent the war years hiding in attics or basements, passed from family to family. Religious and family values and economic considerations had to be weighed against life itself. Should a young child be given to non-Jewish friends, or turned over to strangers in one of the organizations that helped to hide Jewish children in Poland, the Netherlands, and France? Should a child be hidden in a monastery or convent, where he or she might be protected but cease to be a Jew? Very young children soon forgot their true identities and assumed their new ones.
In the camps, parents who refused to be separated from their children were sent at once to the gas chambers. One million children under the age of fifteen were murdered by the Nazis in the "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem."