Introduction
The Kennesaw State University Department of Museums, Archives and Rare Books (MARB) presents exhibitions, public programs, collections, and educational services supporting KSU’s mission and encouraging dialogue about the past and its significance today. The Museum of History and Holocaust Education, as a unit of MARB, has developed a series of online modules, including this one, for university students to explore pivotal moments from the history of World War II and the Holocaust.
This online unit discusses how persecuted children were treated before, during, and after the Holocaust. Highlighting a diverse selection of sources, this unit tells the story of how children experienced, persisted through, and survived the Holocaust.
Image: Traveling exhibition Never Forget: An Introduction to the Holocaust. Courtesy Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University
Essential Questions
Using the primary source material and content in this online unit, respond to the essential questions below. In your responses, include evidence from the content found in this online unit. Please refer to the directions provided by your instructor on submitting your responses to these essential questions as well as to the questions posed throughout this unit.
- What techniques did the Nazi party use to create divisions between “Aryan” and Jewish children?
- How did children cope with the violence and trauma of the Holocaust?
- In what ways have child survivors of the Holocaust shared their stories?
Image: A photograph of the children of Yosef Kalderon in Bitola, Macedonia. Portraits like these were used by occupation authorities to account for the Jewish population before deporting them. Courtesy United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)
The Beginnings
Antisemitism has a long history in Europe and the world. Throughout world history, Jews were often the scapegoats for social changes and economic downturns. This was true especially of a Germany suffering after the destruction of World War I and the harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
Adolf Hitler, who became dictator in 1933, only intensified this hatred, propagating the belief of Germans as the “Aryan” race, a superior race with a destiny to dominate Europe and the world. Hitler, influenced by the virulent antisemitism spreading throughout interwar Germany, believed the Jews to be an inferior race and painted them as “dangerous," preventing Germany from becoming an “Aryan” nation. By the late 1930s, systematic discrimination and persecution became widespread across Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg Laws passed in 1935 legally defined who was Jewish and what Jews could and could not do. For Jewish children, this meant they were no longer allowed to attend school or frequent public spaces such as movie theaters. Jewish children were seen as a threat to the power of the Nazi Party, as they represented a continuation and growth of their Jewish lineage and culture.
Image: The Lustig family, a Jewish family from Drohobycz, Ukraine, ca. early 1900s. Courtesy USHMM
Kristallnacht
From November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht (also called the Night of Broken Glass) took place across Nazi Germany. Over the course of two days, about 1,000 synagogues were burned and destroyed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Nazis also destroyed and robbed Jewish businesses, homes, schools, and cemeteries.
Ninety-one Jewish people were murdered, and an estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested during Kristallnacht, resulting in the expansion of concentration camps like Dachau and Buchenwald. Kristallnacht marked the first time in Nazi Germany that Jewish men were arrested solely for the crime of being Jewish. The arrests of Jewish women and children would soon follow.
In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany passed further legislation restricting the rights of Jewish Germans. Many of these laws targeted Jewish businesses and property, curtailing the livelihoods and savings of most Jews. Furthermore, the German government passed legislation that built on the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Jewish students who were still attending German schools were expelled. The following month, Jews were forbidden access to more public spaces, fully segregating German society and life.
Image: Jewish prayer books and religious texts damaged from a synagogue in Bobenhausen, Germany, being set on fire during Kristallnacht. Courtesy USHMM
The Yellow Star
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, German authorities mandated that Jews wear an identifying badge in the shape of the Star of David. Now a prominent symbol of the Holocaust, these badges not only made it easier to identify Jewish individuals but to separate, target, and persecute the Jewish community.
Click the buttons below and listen to the stories of children survivors of the Holocaust and their experiences wearing the yellow star.
Right Image: A close up of the Yellow Star of David Badge, as worn by Fritz Glueckstein from about 1942 to 1944. Courtesy USHMM
The Hitler Youth
The Nazi regime established the Hitler Youth in 1926, an organization whose primary goal was to indoctrinate German youth in Nazi ideology. The Hitler Youth trained young boys to become soldiers for the German Reich. The League of German Girls, the female counterpart to the Hitler Youth, encouraged German girls to become wives and mothers in order to grow the Nazi regime. Members of the Hitler Youth learned to promote and defend Nazi ideology fervently.
Click the button below to review an article discussing the influence of the Hitler Youth on children in Germany.
As you read the article found above, consider the following questions:
- Why did Adolf Hitler believe organizations like the Boy Scouts threatened Nazi ideology?
- Despite Hitler Youth’s intense message to “obey, or be punished”, why was the group so appealing to many young German men and women?
Left Image: Members of the Hitler Youth in 1933. Courtesy German Federal Archives via Wikimedia Commons
The Diary of Anne Frank
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in June 1929. The Frank family fled to Amsterdam to escape Nazi persecution following Hitler's rise to power. Beginning in May 1940, Nazi Germany occupied Amsterdam and on July 5, 1942, the Frank family began a life in hiding in what Anne called the Secret Annex. Receiving a diary on her 13th birthday shortly before going into hiding, Anne recorded her experiences, providing one of the most famous accounts of the Holocaust from a child's perspective. In August 1944, the Gestapo found and arrested Anne and her family. Anne Frank died in February 1945 at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before the end of World War II.
Click the button below to read the entries from June 14, 1942 to July 11, 1942 in Anne Frank's diary.
As you read, consider the following questions:
- How does Anne describe the increasing danger to Jews emerging in Holland?
- What events prompted Anne and her family to go into hiding?
- Based on these diary entries, how did Anne's age shape her experiences of these events?
Right Image: Anne Frank at a Montessori school in Amsterdam in 1940. Courtesy Anne Frank Fonds Basel via Wikimedia Commons
The Ghettos and The Concentration Camps
Nazi Germany began constructing ghettos in October 1939 with the first ghetto, Piotrków Trybunalski, in Poland. The main purpose of these ghettos was to separate and hold Jewish communities until Nazi Germany decided how to address what they called the "Jewish Question." Due to the poor living conditions inside the ghettos, many children suffered from malnutrition and illness.
At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, high-ranking Nazi officials devised the “Final Solution,” a plan to murder the entire Jewish population of Europe. As a result, Nazi Germany began the process of liquidating the ghettos, a process that continued until August 1944. The Jewish people living inside ghetto walls were sent to concentration camps and killing centers.
At concentration camps, young children, along with others who the Nazis viewed as weak (e.g. the elderly, the disabled, the infirm) were among the first to be murdered. Children who were not immediately killed were forced to do hard labor at concentration camps.
Some Jewish children escaped the horrors of the ghettos and the concentration camps. Many children who survived the Holocaust did so by "hiding in plain sight." Receiving false identity papers, some Jewish children found shelter in cellars, attics, or non-Jewish institutions such as Catholic convents. Other child survivors found safety outside of Nazi Germany. One such program that helped children immigrate to Allied countries was the Kindertransport. From 1939 to 1945, 10,000 Jewish children were separated from their families and sent to Great Britain in an effort to protect them from Nazi persecution.
Despite efforts to help children escape, an estimated 1.5 million Jewish children were killed during the Holocaust. In addition, 10,000 Romani children and 7,000 German and Polish children with disabilities were also murdered. Individuals with disabilities, including children, were some of the first victims of the Holocaust and many were killed in what was called the T-4 program. Beginning in the spring of 1939, Nazi Germany established a secret killing operation targeting children with mental and physical disabilities. While halted temporarily due to public pressure, the Nazis continued the program in secret until May 29, 1945, shortly after Allied victory in Europe.
Image: Jewish women and children at Auschwitz-Birkenau selected to be killed in the gas chambers in 1944. Courtesy USHMM
The Lonely Child
Rakhele Pupko-Krinski and Shmerke Kaczerginski were both part of the "Paper Brigade", a group that was dedicated to preventing Nazis from stealing Judaic valuables in the Vilna ghetto. Pupko-Krinski hid her child outside of the ghetto with her housekeeper. When Kaczerginski learned of this he wrote "The Lonely Child." This song was initially written as a poem, then recorded as a song in 1946 when Kaczerginski was living in a displaced persons camp.
Click the button below to listen to "The Lonely Child."
Translated Lyrics:
Who’s chasing me, who?/ And leaves me no peace?/ Oh mother, my mother dear/ Where are you, where?/ Your Sorele seeks you/ Your child’s crying out!/ Howling and wailing/ Like wind in the grass/ Your Sorele seeks you/ Your child’s crying out!/ Howling and wailing/ Like wind in the grass/ My father is missing/ Who knows where he’s gone?/ He was caught in a trap/ By a terrible foe/ The night was so dark/ When this happened to him/ Still darker than night/ Was my dear mother’s face/ The night was so dark/ When this happened to him/ Still darker than night/ Was my dear mother’s face/ All day she wanders/ All evening she roams/ All through the restless night/ The child worries on/ She hears in her mind/ Her father’s close footsteps/ Her mother still rocks her/ And sings her this song:/ “If it happens some day/ A mother you’ll be/ You must make your children/ Aware of our pain/ How your father and mother/ Suffered under the enemy/ Forget not the past/ Not for one single day!”/ How your father and mother/ Suffered under the enemy/ Forget not the past/ Not for one single day!
As you listen to this song and review the lyrics, consider the following questions:
- What is the message of this song?
- In what ways does this song portray the experience of children during the Holocaust?
- Kaczerginski wrote this song as an adult imagining the experience of a child. How might this impact the story he tells?
Image: Sarah Krinski (Sorele in the song) with her adoptive mother, Wiktoria Rodziewicz around 1943. Courtesy USHMM
From the Point of View of a Child
In ghettos and concentration camps, some children created art as a way to make sense of their experiences, resist the Nazis, to remember their past lives, and imagine a better future. This artwork provides historians with first-hand accounts of how children experienced the Holocaust.
Click the buttons below to examine children's drawings from the Holocaust highlighted in an article from the BBC and a collection from the Jewish Museum in Prague.
As you review this artwork, consider the following questions:
- What feelings and emotions do these pieces of art elicit in the viewer? What do these works of art reveal about the emotions and experiences of the artists?
- Based on these works of art, how did age influence and shape these children's experiences and understanding of the Holocaust?
Image: Drawing of a house done by a child at a children's home in Pringy, France. Courtesy USHMM
"Night" by Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel was born in what is now Romania in 1928. In 1944, Wiesel and his father were forced into a labor camp, while his mother and younger sister were immediately murdered at a concentration camp. After the Holocaust, Wiesel and his two older sisters would be the only survivors in his family. In 1958, he published Night, a semi-autobiographical novel about his experiences during the Holocaust.
Click the button below to read pages 47 to 65 (beginning with "The camp looked..." and ending with "tasted of corpses").
As you read this excerpt, consider the following questions:
- Eliezer describes two hangings in this section. He tells the reader that he witnessed many others. Yet he chose to write only about these two. Why are these two hangings so important to him? How do they differ from the others?
- Why do you think Eliezer and the other prisoners respond so emotionally to the hanging of the child?
- When the young boy is hanged, a prisoner asks, “For God's sake, where is God?” Eliezer hears a voice answer, “Where He is? This is where–-hanging here on this gallows.…” What does this statement mean? Is it a statement of despair? Anger? Or hope?
Image: Elie Wiesel at fifteen years old, shortly before he and his family were forced into concentration camps, ca. 1943. Courtesy Chicago Public Library via Wikimedia Commons
Mengele's Twin Experiments
Josef Mengele, a physician with the SS, conducted medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. Mengele and other German physicians were particularly interested in proving Nazi race ideology. Mengele became notorious for selecting twins for his supposed research. These experiments, however, had little to no scientific reasoning behind them, serving only as another form of torture. Those who survived often suffered from major health issues for the rest of their lives. Due to the inhumane conditions of these experiments, researchers today discredit the findings of Mengele and other German physicians.
Click the button below to learn about the experience of Eva Mozes Kor who was forced to participate in Mengele's experimentation on twins.
As you view the video above, consider the following questions:
- How did Eva Mozes Kor's and her sister's experiences in Mengele’s twin experiments impact them at the time? How were they impacted years later?
- What was the purpose of Eva Mozes Kor meeting and creating a document about the gas chambers with Dr. Hans Munch?
- Why did Eva Mozes Kor emphasize forgiveness, even after her traumatic experience during the Holocaust?
The Romani people were also targeted during the Holocaust including Romani children, many of whom were subjected to Mengele's experiments as well. The Romani people would call the genocide of their people during this time "porraimos", or "the Devouring."
Click the button below to read excerpts from the book, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey.
As you read, consider the similarities and differences between the experiences of Kor and Fonesca. What might account for these similarities and differences?
Right Image: Romani children in the Rivesaltes Internment Camp, ca. 1942. Courtesy USHMM
After the Holocaust
With the defeat of Nazi Germany, many child survivors were placed in orphanages or displaced persons (DP) camps, hoping to be reunited with their parents and families. Many survivors, including children (most of whom were now orphans), were part of the mass exodus known as Brihah, where they migrated to Yishuv (a Jewish settlement in Palestine) and later to Israel when it was established in 1948. As child survivors began to rebuild their lives, many started to record and tell their stories of persecution and survival. Their stories remind us of the importance of remembering the Holocaust and the hope that such an incomprehensible loss of human life could be prevented from happening again.
Image: Children who survived Buchenwald on a train to a children's home in Ecouis, France. The train has "Hitler kapout" on the side, which translates to "Hitler is finished". Courtesy USHMM
Kloster Indersdorf
The Holocaust left many children orphaned or separated from their parents. Many children began to rebuild their lives after the war in Displaced Persons Camps or children's homes. Kloster Indersdorf located in the U.S. Zone of occupied Germany was one of these homes established for child survivors.
Click the button below to read an article from The Smithsonian about Kloster Indersdorf.
As you read the article above, consider the following questions:
- What was the general demographic of children at Kloster Indersdorf?
- What did Kloster Indersdorf do to help child survivors adjust to life after the Holocaust?
- What was the UNRRA? What was their mission and how did they carry it out?
Image: Survivors attend a vocational training class at the Kloster Indersdorf children's center. Courtesy USHMM
"Remember Me?" from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Holocaust and World War II left millions of children displaced throughout Europe. In hopes of helping children reunite with surviving family members, relief workers took photographs of thousands of displaced children. With the project Remember Me, the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum has collected and digitized many of these photographs.
Below, find a series of photographs from the Remember Me project and a video highlighting the stories of some of the children in these photographs.
As you review the materials above, consider the following questions:
- How do these photographs enhance our understanding of the Holocaust?
- How was Nathan Kranowski impacted by the Holocaust?
- How does the question “Remember me?” relate to the aftermath of the Holocaust?
Let's Research:
To learn more about the various experiences of children during the Holocaust, select two interviews from the MHHE Legacy Series linked below. Take notes as you listen to each video clip and then respond to the accompanying essay prompt according to the directions provided by your instructor.
Write: Compare and contrast the stories of the two individuals you selected, focusing on their experiences as children of the Holocaust.
Image: Women who survived from the Mehlteuer factory showing their tattoos in 1945. Courtesy USHMM
This digital lesson was curated and designed by Alysa Matsunaga from the University of Georgia in collaboration with staff from the Museum of History and Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.