Holocaust: Killing of Children - Essay Example

The Jewish population in Europe was 9 million in 1933. As part of their ‘Final Solution’ the Nazis killed two out of every three Jews in Europe. Under the Nazi tyranny, about three million Soviet prisoners of war died out of starvation and neglect, and maltreatment. The Nationalist Socialist government, during the beginning of the Nazi rule, created concentration camps to capture political and ideological challengers. In his book Frankl mentions, "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread” (86). These camps were also used to detain Roma, Jews, and other victims of racial hatred. Ghettos, forced labour camps, and transit camps were established to monitor the Jewish population. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, Einsatzgruppen and militarized battalions of Order Police Officials were used to carry out the mass murder of the Jews and other racial groups. Millions of Jews and other groups were deported from Germany and occupied territories, to killing centres, ghettos and extermination camps where they were killed in gas chambers. “Before the war began, the Nazis had used the word ‘evacuation’ to mean ‘expulsion’” (Rossel and Altshuler, 43). In an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of the prisoners, they were moved by train or forced marches. These marches were called death marches and continued till 7th May 1945, this was when the German forces surrendered to the Allies.

“Children, swept up by the winds of terror, became perhaps the most explicit targets of destruction from the early stages of Nazi action” (Eisen, 12). By their ideological views that is, for security reasons or as part of the so-called racial struggle, the Nazis killed children from what they called the unwanted and dangerous groups. The Germans and their allies killed these children as retaliation to supposed partisan attacks or as part of their ideology.

“In its relentless racist attack lasting from 1939 to 1945, the Nazi Holocaust exterminated 1.5 million innocent children throughout Europe” (Vromen, 1). This included thousands of Gypsy children, German children who were mentally and physically disabled, polish children, children living in the captured Soviet Union and over a million Jewish children. Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents were deployed as forced labour.

The destiny of these children can be categorized as being killed at the time of birth, getting killed at the killing centres, being killed in institutions, surviving by being hidden by the prisoners, being used in medical experiments, being used as labourers, or being killed during reprisal operations. Jewish children died from starvation, lack of clothing, lack of shelter and exposure. The Germans considered the ghetto children to be useless and unproductive and called them “useless eaters” and were very indifferent towards their death. Upon arriving at the Killing centres and Auschwitz-Birkenau, the children were directly sent to the gas chambers. Thousands of children were shot by the German authorities at the edges of mass graves in the occupied Soviet Union and Poland. The agonized Jewish council chairmen had to decide the first victims for killing; they had been forced to do so by the German authorities. There were around 5000-7000 Romani children including children of Lidice and Soviet Union villages were killed in Auschwitz concentration camps in the euthanasia program. A lot of children were imprisoned as well. The children were used in medical experiments which led to death most of the time. Many adolescents who were deployed in forced labour died due to the conditions, these used to mostly be Jewish teens. Some children who were orphan children both Jewish and non-Jewish were kept in transit camps in horrifying conditions. Some of these children were kept in detention camps and concentration camps.

SS race experts ordered the kidnapping of children from occupied territories of Poland and the Soviet Union and transferring to the Reich so racially suitable German families could adopt them. The females from Poland and the Soviet Union who were victims of forced sex by Germans were forced to have abortions or the infants were killed if the race experts thought that the child may have less German blood. Many children learned and discover ways to survive, many started to smuggle food and medicines into the ghettos and also some of their possessions to trade to get them out of the ghettos. Some of them escaped with their parents, some ran away to family camps that were maintained by Jewish partisans. In a British rescue operation, “Kindertransport” between 1938-40 a thousands of refugees were rescued, in France Catholics and Protestants hid Jewish children from 1942-1944. In Belgium and Italy, hidden children survived.

Many survivors of the Holocaust including thousands of children found shelter in Displaced Persons camps organized by the Allied powers. Jews in these camps immigrated to the United States, Israel and other nations. In 1957 the last Displaced Persons camp was closed. The Holocaust eradicated most of the Jews in Europe.