"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children" (Nelson Mandela). If this statement is considered true, then it's fair to say that during times of the Holocaust, the German society was at an all time low. Children during the Holocaust did not have a carefree childhood, like they should have, but instead were placed under strenuous conditions. They had to go through being separated from all family and friends, being chosen the first to go to, and in most cases a permanent loss of family members. The Holocaust was undoubtedly a horrific experience for everyone involved but for children it must have been traumatizing. It is in a child's nature to be dependant of its parents and family …show more content…
For their protection, children were being sent away by their families to go into hiding and they very rarely knew who they were staying with. They were being taken in by strangers and had no idea what was going to happen to their other family. The stress of not knowing if their parents or siblings were even alive was something that they thought about constantly and they always had the agonizing fear that they would get caught and killed. (Hidden Children of the Holocaust). Not only was separation hard for the children, but they were often times killed first. Before the war, there was approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the area and by the end of the war at least one million of them were dead (Hidden Children of the Holocaust). Someone had to go first to the killing centers and it was always a tough decision. But more often than not "...the selection of children to fill the first transports to the killing centers or to provide the first victims of shooting operations resulted from the agonizing and controversial decisions of Jewish council chairmen" (Children During the Holocaust). The children were being chosen by their own people to be killed first. They would have rather sacrificed little kids to spare themselves a few days than to surrender themselves in hopes that the children would survive. On top of that, the Nazis believed that children were just "useless eaters." Obviously, with that view of
According to the texts and eyewitness accounts, the Holocaust had horrendous effects on the people who lived through it. During this time Jews were being rounded up and put into concentration camps by order of the German government. Writings and testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust are around even to this day. According to these sources, Holocaust survivors suffered tremendously since they were treated as less than human , they lost loved ones, and were constantly abused.
Over one million Jewish children died during the Holocaust. They were ripped out of their homes and taken away from their families, and stripped of their childhoods. Innocent lives were caught in a war that they were not able to stop. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he promised Germany that he would improve life their by getting rid of the one race that caused the problems, the Jews. Jews, including Jewish children, were sent to concentration camps, inspected, and if approved, were sent to work. All others would have been sent to be killed. Being sent to work did not ensure survival, children would be given very little food and water, and beaten severely, which caused their death. None of the children of the Holocaust will ever
Although Jews were the primary victims of the Holocaust, many other groups were targeted based on racial or political grounds. Other groups that were attacked by the Nazis included LGBTQ individuals, the physically and mentally disabled, Roma(gypsies), Poles, Slavic Peoples, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and members of political opposition groups. These Non-Jewish victims were not considered as victims of the Holocaust. So, why did Adolf Hitler kill 11 million people? First, we need to inspect Hitler’s crazy ideas. Adolf Hitler was the Chancellor of Germany during the Holocaust. He came to power in 1933, when Germany was experiencing financial trouble. Hitler promised the Germans that he would bring them great wealth and he stated that he would make
In the book Escape Children of the Holocaust, author Allan Zullo highlights the struggles of three innocent Jewish children, Hanci Hollander, Halina Litman and Gideon Frieder. All three children were born in different countries affected by the Holocaust; Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. If you did not know, the Holocaust was a gruesome time in the world’s history. There were concentration camps for Jews. All because of one Austrian man, Adolf Hitler, who hated the Jews so much he did not want one Jew left standing. Consequently, he made the Nazi Germans hunt, enslave and kill the Jews.
Society was being obligated to do things that they never thought they would have to do. To illustrate, on “January 18, 1945: Death march of nearly 60,000 prisoners from the Auschwitz camp system in southern Poland” (The Holocaust and World War II: Timeline). This date shows what was beginning to happen at the camps and what people like Ibi and Arek were being forced to do. This march lost innocent people's dignity that has been built throughout their life. They were just being forced to do something inhumanly that lost their respect. Parents did not just have to do this, but they had to watch their kids be put through this pain. In addition to that there was nothing that they could do to help their kids because they had to do it too. Internally this was just one event where they lost themselves on the inside due to what they were being put through. To illustrate Arek “was tattooed with the number B7608. From that day onward Arek lost his name and was only referred to by his number” (Arek Hersh | Survivor Stories). People lost their name and their true self when going to the internment camps. Then to having to sit and watch this happen to themselves is just cruel. At this point society lost who they truly were. They were not really seen as a true human. After being given a combination of letter and numbers to replace their name, then they were referred to that combination. Internally people lost
The Jews that survived all of this were evacuated out of the camps by train or by ship. As winter approached, the Allies reached the border of Germany, and the Germans thought they ruled all of Germany because of the Allies reaching the border. The SS were still evacuating prisoners from the camps from the East and the West by foot. The search for the family always ended in tragedy. For the parents, it was to find their child dead or missing. For the hidden children, it was to find their family members dead and no one to claim them. For months and years, the Jewish parents searched for their children that the Nazis had sent into hiding. Parents would look in newspapers, tracing services, and survivor registries in hopes of finding their children. Although they would often find their children with the original rescuers, sometimes the rescuers would refuse to give the children back.
The Nazis’s dehumanized the jews by depriving them of basic human needs like family. When families first get to the camp the men and women, brothers and sisters, fathers and sons get separated from each other. The separation of families is shown on page 29 when an SS officer commanded, “Men to the left!
From 1933 to 1945, millions of lives were thrown into chaos because of the Holocaust. Families were ripped apart and values were washed away as citizens were forcefully placed in concentration camps to either be immediately killed or to work until they died. Every person within the camps faced unthinkable trauma. Once everyone was released, the prisoners began to search for lost loved ones and a sense of normality. However, the anguish did not end with the end of the Holocaust. Following the Holocaust, first generation survivors developed abnormal values, societal dependence, and a need to avoid the topic of the Holocaust as an effect of their trauma; these side effects were then passed down to future generations
The Holocaust was the murder and persecution of approximately 6 million Jews and many others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The Nazis came to power in Germany in January of 1933. The Nazis thought that the “inferior” Jews were a threat to the “racially superior” German racial community. The death camps were operated from 1941 to 1945, and many people lost their lives or were forced to work in concentration camps during these years. The story leading up to the Holocaust, how the terrible event affected people’s lives, and how it came to and end are all topics that make this historic event worth learning about.
The holocaust greatly effected the population of the Jews and their families. The Jew mortality rate after the second World War was two times that of the general German population. This was due to health problems provoked during the holocaust and the persecution on their will to
The children continued to be effected, there were just less frequent reports of children being physically harmed. Some of the teenage boys who were transported fought against their home country, Germany, in World War II (Ward). Due to this, some of the boys were often killed during combat. The original plan was to prevent the transports from being injured. This was effective for the majority of the time although, some were still injured. There was no way to keep every child 100% safe. Homes were promised to the transports by The Movement for the Care of Children from Germany. There were fears that many of the transports would not have homes due to the amount of children being transported at once. These fears slowly faded as different groups and organizations promised to find and provide a place to stay for every transported child. To ensure the safety of the children while on the train, soldiers searched every transports belongings before they were allowed to enter the train (Ward). Bags were checked for any weapons or suspicious items that could be used to harm another individual. The soldiers wanted to fulfill their job and do their best by making sure that every child that entered the transports made it safely off. While the children were still psychologically effected, they were mostly protected from the violence of the
“The fact is they know I went through hell.” -Professor Bacharach, Holocaust Survivor. Ever since many centuries ago, Jewish people were treated unfairly and unjustly according to their religion and characteristics. The Holocaust was a fearful and painful genocide because of anti-semitism throughout European countries. Up to six million Jews died in the harrowing genocide, along with the death of many other religious and ethnical groups ("Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution"). As much as a fraction of the number of Jews survived. With much grief and sorrow during the Holocaust, the survivors had to suffer the emotional and physical trauma after the event. Survivors had to face the reality of rebuilding their lives after the
A very shocking moment in people’s life is when they are kids and they live during the holocaust. Children in the holocaust were beaten, tortured and killed in either a concentration camp or death camp. If they did survive
The German Nazis forced the Jewish families into being separated into different camps. The genders would be separated once they got off the trains and go into different camps. For example, when Shmuel mentions to Bruno that his mom was separated away from them, “And Mama was taken away from us.” (Boyne 130). “Children, the elderly, and pregnant women” were executed by the Nazis once they arrived to the camps (“Hidden Children” 1).
As shown above, the need to leave Nazi Germany grew eminently, and unfortunately, an innumerable amount of people did not successfully escape the clutches of Nazi hands. Thankfully, some came forth and saved as many lives as possible due to the mistreatment of Jewish and other minority groups, concentration camps, and Kristallnacht. Everyday people realized the importance of saving future generations from Nazi terrorism, which led to the departure of thousands of children from Nazi-occupied Europe.