Holocaust Children Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Holocaust Children - Essay Example Some of these groups were Socialists, Communists, homosexuals, and Jehovah's witnesses. The Jewish population in Europe was at 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 labor 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 mass murder of the Jews and other racial groups. Millions of Jews and oth er groups were deported from Germany and occupied territories, to killing centers, 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 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). In accordance with 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 German 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 disable, polish children, children living in the captured Soviet Union and over a million Jewish children. Jewish and non-Jewish adolescents were deployed as forced labor. The destiny of these children can be categorized as being killed at the time of birth, getting killed at the killing centers, being killed in institutions, surviving as by being hidden by the prisoners, being used in medical experiments, being used as laborers, 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 centers 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 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 aut