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Essay on Jewish Children during the Holocaust

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"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

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