Children in the Holocaust

Children were especially vulnerable during the Holocaust.  The Nazis advocated killing children of “unwanted” or “dangerous” groups in accordance with their ideological views, either as part of the “racial struggle” or as a measure of preventive security.

The fate of Jewish and non-Jewish children can be categorized in several ways children killed when they arrived at the camps; children killed immediately after birth or in institutions; children born in  ghettos  and camps who survived because prisoners hid them; children, usually over age 12, who were used as laborers and as subjects of medical experiments; and those children killed during reprisal operations or so-called anti-partisan operations.

In the ghettos, Jewish children died from starvation and exposure and lack of adequate clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to this mass death because they considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and hence “useless eaters.”

Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers, the camp authorities sent the majority of children directly to the gas chambers.  SS and police forces in German-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet Union shot thousands of children at the edge of mass graves.  Sometimes the selection of children to fill the first transports to the killing centers or to provide the first victims of firing squads resulted from the agonizing and controversial decisions of Jewish council (Judenrat) chairmen. The decision by the Judenrat in Lodz in September 1942 to deport children to the Chelmno killing center was an example of the tragic choices made by adults when faced with German demands.  Janusz Korczak, director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, however, refused to abandon the children under his care when they were selected for deportation.  He accompanied them on the transport to Treblinka and into the gas chambers, sharing their fate.

Finding a rescuer was quite difficult, particularly one who would take of children for a period of years.  Some individuals took advantage of a persecuted family’s desperation by collecting money, then reneging on their promise of aid—or worse, turning them over to the authorities for an additional reward.  More commonly, stress, anguish, and fear drove benefactors to force the Jewish children from their homes.

Organized rescue groups frequently moved youngsters from one family or institution to another to ensure the safety of both the child and the foster parent. In the German-occupied Netherlands, Jewish children stayed in an average of more than four different places.  Some changed hiding places more than a dozen times.

Among the most painful memories for hidden children was their separation from parents, grandparents, and siblings.  Separation tormented both parents and children. Each feared for the other’s safety and was powerless to do anything about it. Youngsters and parents often had to bear their grief in silence so as not to jeopardize the safety of the other.  For many hidden children, the wartime separation became permanent.

These children were tortured, starved, beaten, and killed for no reason other than hatred and evil. In (Mark 10:14) we read: But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased and said unto them,”Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of Heaven.”  His heart was grieved just as ours should be because of the treatment of His children.  Let us pray for the peace and protection of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6) that this will “never happen again”.

To read more about children during the Holocaust please see United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem..

The Warsaw Diary of Mary Berg

At least 1.1 million Jewish children were murdered during the Holocaust. Of the millions of children who suffered persecution at the hands of the Nazis and their Axis partners, only a small number wrote diaries and journals that have survived.  The diary of Miriam Wattenberg (“Mary Berg”) was one of the first children’s journals which revealed to a wider public the horrors of the Holocaust.

Miriam was born in Lódz on October 10, 1924.  She began a wartime diary in October 1939, shortly after Poland surrendered to German forces. The Wattenberg family fled to Warsaw, where in November 1940, Miriam, with her parents and younger sister, had to live in the Warsaw ghetto. The Wattenbergs held a privileged position within this confined community because Miriam’s mother was a US citizen.

Shortly before the first large deportation of Warsaw Jews toTreblinka in the summer of 1942, German officials detained Miriam, her family, and other Jews bearing foreign passports in the infamous Pawiak Prison near the center of the ghetto, while most of the rest of the inhabitants were deported to their deaths.

She watched them leave from the prison windows. “The whole ghetto is drowning in blood.  Sometimes a child huddles against his mother, thinking that she is asleep and trying to awaken her, while, in fact, she is dead” she wrote. “How long are we going to be kept here to witness all this?” German authorities eventually transferred the family to the Vittel internment camp in France, and allowed them to immigrate to the United States in 1944.

Published in 1945 under the pseudonym “Mary Berg”, Miriam’s diary was one of the very few eyewitness accounts of the Warsaw ghetto available to readers in the English-speaking world before the end of World War II.

Mary Berg’s Warsaw Ghetto became known worldwide.  Over the next two years, translated versions appeared in five countries and Berg became a New York celebrity.  She marched on City Hall with signs demanding action to save Jews still alive in Poland.  She gave talks before audiences and interviews on the radio.

Most early reviews of her writings wanted to transform it into a heroic story.  Berg did not want to be a hero.  She wrote, “We, who have been rescued from the ghetto, are ashamed to look at each other.  Had we the right to save ourselves? Here everything smells of sun and flowers and there—there is only blood, the blood of my own people.”  

Berg published her diary as a call to action. “I shall do everything I can to save those who can still be saved,” she wrote. “I will tell, I will tell everything, about our sufferings and our struggles and the slaughter of our dearest, and I will demand punishment for the [Germans]….who enjoyed the fruits of murder….A little more patience, and all of us will win freedom!”  But, alas, not all of them did.

Imagine the nightmares that the survivors of the Holocaust had to face every day even after being released from prison camps, ghettos, as well as concentration camps.  Children were alone without their parents, parents could not find their children and others had lost every family member. Let us pray that these atrocities never happen again. As we do, our prayers must be for the peace and protection of Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6).

To read more about Mary Berg please see Tablet and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.