Children in Crisis: Voices from the Holocaust
Days of Remembrance, April 15-22, 2007

“The first to perish were the children...From these a new dawn might have risen.”

Speech at the Museum, April 18, 2007

George W. Bush, President of the United States

The United States Congress established Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of victims of the Holocaust, just as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is our permanent living memorial to those victims.

This year Holocaust Remembrance Day is Sunday, April 15, 2007. The Museum has designated "Children in Crisis: Voices from the Holocaust" as the focus for the 2007 observance.

A first-grade class at a Jewish school. Cologne, Germany, 1929-1930. USHMM

When World War II ended in 1945, six million European Jews were dead, including more than one million Jewish children. All Jews were targeted for death, but children were among the most vulnerable victims of the Nazi regime and its collaborators. The very young, like the very old, were often the first victims in the ghettos of German-occupied eastern Europe. Many children died from lack of food, clothing, and shelter, as well as from diseases that flourished in the unsanitary and overcrowded conditions imposed in the ghettos.

Deportation of Jewish children from the Lodz ghetto, Poland, during the "Gehsperre" Aktion, September 1942 USHMM/courtesy of Jacob Igra

As part of the "Final Solution," the Nazis targeted children for death as so-called "useless eaters," incapable of exploitation as forced laborers. In some cases, adults sacrificed their lives to give comfort to children as long as possible. Janusz Korczak, director of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, courageously refused to abandon children chosen for deportation. He accompanied them on the transport to the Treblinka killing center where he was killed along with nearly 200 children in his charge.

Children were frequently among the first to be murdered when the Germans and their collaborators sought to destroy a Jewish community. Upon arrival at Auschwitz and other killing centers, most children were sent straight to their deaths in the gas chambers. Jewish children also perished attempting to evade or resist the Germans and their allies. Paula Wajcman was murdered at age fourteen when her hiding place was discovered during the destruction of the Kielce ghetto in Poland. Seven-year-old Franco Cesana was killed while fighting as a partisan in Northern Italy in 1943. In 1942, twelve-year-old Shulamit Perlmutter fled the destruction of the ghetto in Horochow, Poland. She spent the next eighteen months hiding alone in the nearby forests until she was discovered near death by Soviet troops.

Only a small fraction of European Jewish children survived the Holocaust, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these young people faced constant fear and danger. Theirs was a life in shadows, where a careless remark, the murmurings of inquisitive neighbors, or a denunciation could lead to discovery and death. Most of these "hidden" children survived the Holocaust because they were protected by people and institutions of other faiths. In France, almost the entire Protestant Huguenot population in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon hid Jewish children. Some children, like Augusta Feldhorn in Belgium, quickly learned to master Christian prayers and rituals in order to keep their Jewish identity concealed from even their closest friends. Other non-Jews provided hiding places for both Jewish children and their family members. Seven-year-old Gavra Mandil and his five-year-old sister Irena, as well as their parents, were saved by their Muslim neighbors in Albania.

During the Holocaust, Jewish children channeled their suffering into creative expression. Some wrote letters and drew pictures about life under extreme circumstances, while others like teenagers Dawid Sierakowiak and Anne Frank kept diaries of their experiences. Neither of these diarists lived to see the end of the war. Their voices are evidence of their lives and tragically premature deaths, of hope and of cruelty. And their drawings and words are evidence that testifies to what they experienced.

Smallest Witnesses

Liberation from Nazi tyranny brought no end to the suffering of the girls and boys who remained alive. Many had no homes to which they could return; no place where they felt truly safe. Thousands would face the future with no parents, grandparents, or siblings.

International Red Cross Poster showing photographs of children in refugee camp in Chad. Titled "Help us find our family." Chad, 2005 USHMM/Jerry Fowler

In any campaign of genocide, children are among the most vulnerable targets. The specter of racial hatred has resurfaced again and again in the decades since the Holocaust. In 2005, human rights workers gave paper and crayons to refugee Sudanese children to occupy them while they interviewed their families about the unfolding genocide in Darfur. Unbidden, the children drew scenes of devastation—pictures of brutal attacks by the "Janjaweed" militia, shootings, rapes, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to find refuge in neighboring Chad. These images are a testament to the impact this ongoing crisis has had on its youngest victims. Genocide is a real and present threat. The voices of children from the Holocaust serve as a potent reminder that the time for action in Darfur is now.