Kimberly Layre :)

Children of the Holocaust

Nazi ideologiesRacism toward Jews--seen as less than human

Nazis believed killing children that belonged to an “unwanted” group, according to their ideology, was beneficial

Resulted in the development of the Final Solution ( Nazi plan to annihilate the Jewish people)

PersecutionBegan in Germany in 1933

By 1939, the country's Jews had been systematically deprived of their civil rights/property

Although children were seldom the targets of Nazi brutal violence in the beginning, still persecuted along with their families for religious and political reasons

After 1939, implementation of anti-Semitic policies in German occupied territories: Jews were marked by the Star of David, and segregated

Not permitted to attend German schools

Jews forced into ghettos (placed in the most isolated sections of town)

• Lodz, Poland, September 1942

• Jewish residents harassed in the ghetto

• Randomly seized people on the streets, apartments raided

• Open gunfire by Nazis

• Children often became the sole support of their families

• Smuggle themselves out of the ghetto to find food for family

Child’s fate Killed when arrived in killing centers

Killed immediately after birth

Over age of 12 used for hard labor and medical experiments

Starvation--children seen as “useless eaters”

Lack of adequate clothing and cramped living conditions

Concentration campsCamp authorities sent majority of children directly into gas chambers

SS and police forces shot thousands of children at the edge of mass graves

Burned in large open holes in ground

Children selected to fill the first transports to the killing centers, or the first victims of shooting operations

• Decision by Jewish Council September 1942 to deport children to Chelmno killing center an example of choices made by adults under German commands

• Non-Jewish children not spared

• Infants born in the camps were generally killed on the spot, especially if Jewish

• SS physicians and medical researchers used children for medical experiments

• Assigned to harsh physical labor

• 5,000-7,000 children victims of euthanasia program

“Euthanasia Program”• Philipp Bouhler, the director of Hitler's private chancellery, and Karl

Brandt, Hitler's attending physician--began to organize a secret killing operation targeting disabled children

• August 18, 1939, the Reich Ministry of the Interior asked all physicians and nurses to report newborn infants and children under three, who showed signs of severe mental or physical disability

• October 1939, public health authorities encouraged parents of children with disabilities to admit young children to specially designated pediatric clinics throughout Germany and Austria

• Clinics were really children's killing wards where recruited medical staff murdered these children by lethal overdoses of medication, or by starvation

Kindertransport

• Informal name of series of rescue efforts for children

• Brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940

Real life Story: Cary KrellVienna, Austria

• October 15, 1944: Cary and parents shipped to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp

• Her mother taken and sent to Auschwitz--immediately murdered

• Cary and her father eventually taken to Auschwitz too

• Mr. Krell smuggled Cary into men's barracks dressed as a boy

• One day, a boy noticed Cary's odd way of going to the bathroom and revealed her secret

• She was separated from her father and sent to women's barracks

• Stopped gassings in Auschwitz at this point, but there was little food, and unsanitary conditions spread disease

• Cary, weakened by hunger, died of typhus on January 6, 1945, a few weeks before her ninth birthday and liberation of Auschwitz

Aftermath• When World War II began in September 1939:

approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies/ allies occupy

• End of war: over 1 million of them, and perhaps as many as 1.5 million dead

• Small number of European Jewish children still alive at the end of the Holocaust, thousands survived because hidden

• Movie Clips for students

References• Children and the Holocaust. (1996). Middle Tennessee University. Retrieved October

17, 2010, from http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/children.html

• Florida Center for Instructional Technology. (2005). A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. Retrieved October 15, 2010, from http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/people/children.htm

• Grace Productions. Children of the Holocaust. Retrieved October 19, 2010, from http://www.graceproducts.com/fmnc/kcary.htm

• Soumerai, E. & Schulz, C. (2009). The Holocaust. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.

• United States Holocaust Museum. (2010). Children During the Holocaust. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005142

• United States Holocaust Museum. (2010). Euthanasia Program. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005200

• Willis, L. (Ed.). (2009). The Holocaust. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.

• http://www.graceproducts.com/fmnc/kcary.htm