Jewish children and the Holocaust - Research Paper Example

The odds of survival for the older children were comparatively higher as they could be used in ghettos and concentration camps for forced labour. The children who faced the Holocaust can be divided into three age segments: from infants to toddlers aged 6; children between ages of 7 and 12; and teenagers from age of 13 to 18. The chances of survival and the ability of performing labour at camps varied majorly between these age segments (Rosenberg 15). The ideology and the policies of Nazis specially targeted the Jews, which then resulted in the official German policy called ‘Final Solution’.

The Jews and their children faced a lot of suffering at the Nazis’ hands; as soon as the Nazis came into power in January 1933, they restricted the rights of the Jewish children (Wiesel 33). The Jewish children in Germany began enduring a progressively hostile atmosphere after 1935. They faced alienation from their close friends, even aggression at their hands, and spiteful and unfriendly attitudes. The letters to editors of Der Stürmer, a Nazi tabloid by the German children, expose a reprehensible outburst of passion and foolishness against their classmates who were Jewish.

Jewish and Gypsy children faced a massive amount of humiliations in the classrooms of Germany. The Social Darwinism as well as the degrading and oppressive doctrine of what was called the racial biology had a great role in humiliating these children and establishing their race as inferior. This resulted in development of education as a form of resistance in various Jewish schools in Germany after 1933, and it provided the background and experience for the secret schools which were created later in concentration camps and ghettos.

Passed on 25th of April 1933, ‘The Law against Overcrowding in German Schools and Universities’ was among the initial laws that directly affected the students that were Jewish. This tyrannical law