Children during the Holocaust

by Heberer, Patricia;

  Soon Margot realized that she was pregnant, which she took for granted. When she felt the baby’s movements, the couple began to collect rags, cotton, and scissors. Shortly before Easter, in 1944, Margot’s birth pains began. She knew the danger of screaming; she kept silent. Only her hands forcefully gripped the ladder next to her bunk. Her husband helped with the delivery. He cut the umbilical cord with scissors. It was a little girl. But the infant lived only a few hours. Margot thought that a poorly tied umbilical cord had caused the baby’s death. She suffered from serious postpartum complications, yet had no time to dwell on them. Two days after the delivery, the farm was raided. This time, the Germans came instead of the Polish police. Once more they found no trace of the fugitives. But the Draengers’ protector had had enough. Fearing for her own two children’s lives, she asked her charges to look for another place. Three days later, the Draengers left and entered a bunker, prepared by another peasant. They were fortunate. Somehow during the entire war, they managed to find Christians who were willing to protect them.13

  13. Yad Vashem testimony, 03/1686, recorded in September 1960 in Tel Aviv, Israel, 30–31. After the war the doctors advised Margot against pregnancy as they felt that giving birth to another child would endanger her life. Margot disregarded the physician’s warnings and in 1949 gave birth to a son. The problem predicted by the physicians did not materialize.

  Fathers also devoted themselves to saving their children. After his wife was shot by Ukrainians in July 1941, one such man, Dr. Richard Aptowicz, protected his son, Adam, born in 1933, for three years in the Kraków ghetto. Father and son had a challenging journey ahead of them. They passed through more than eight concentration camps, each seriously threatening their lives.14 As chapter 5 of this volume explains, a child in a concentration camp was a rare and unexpected presence—not surprisingly, one welcomed by some and opposed by others. Among the individuals whom this father remembered warmly was Mrs. Wolf, who devoted much attention to Adam, particularly when father and son were prisoners in the Skarzysko Kamienna munitions factory,15 in its notorious Department C, widely known for its cruel mistreatment of workers and very high death rate from toxic materials.16 Fortunately, this father and son were, in time, transferred to other camps. Among the various moves, the most effective one had to do with their arrival at Buchenwald, known for its long-lasting, well-organized underground, directed and run by political prisoners, some of whom were Jewish communists, while others were affiliated with a range of political parties. The prisoners came from a variety of countries, including Germany. In charge of the second block was an old-time underground member, German Jewish communist Emil Karlebach, a prisoner since 1939. One of the earliest initiators of the underground child rescue program, he personally accepted Adam into the children’s block (Kinderblock).17

  14. Ryszard Aptowicz, Yad Vashem testimony, 03/2712; Eugene Weinstock, Beyond the Last Path (New York: Boni & Gaer, 1947), 127, 191–93.

  15. See Felicja Karay, Death Comes in Yellow: Skarzysko Kamienna Slave Labor Camp (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996). The word “yellow” refers to the color that those prisoners who worked in Section C acquired from the poisonous substance trotyl. Not only did exposure to this chemical turn the workers’ skin yellow, but trotyl attacked various parts of the body, which led to deterioration and death.

  16. For additional sources describing the deadly effects of trotyl, see Ida Buszmicz, Yad Vashem testimony, 03/2798. For testimony by a former prisoner in Skarzysko Kamienna, Section C, who escaped from this camp, thanks to the help extended by Dr. Aptowicz, see: ŻIH 301/1322.

  17. Yad Vashem testimony, 03/2712, 23–24.

  At Buchenwald, children were protected in a variety of ways. First, they were shielded from heavy work, which was potentially lethal for young forced laborers. Second, many prisoners attempted to safeguard children in every way that they could and sacrificed their own rations so that youngsters could have access to larger portions and more nourishing food. Third, the well-established Buchenwald underground organization did everything in its power to prevent children of all ages from being removed from this camp. Adam was assigned to one of the children’s blocks, where he was prevented from overwork and received adequate nourishment and, very significantly, where he stayed until liberation. On the initiative of the camp elders, two separate Kinderblocks were established that included Jewish children belonging to a variety of groups. In effect, because of these efforts, 904 children were saved in Buchenwald.18 The youngest among them was Stefan Jerzy Zweig, featured in Document 5-13. The son of a Polish Jewish lawyer, Zacharias Zweig, Stefan was three and a half years old when he was liberated from Buchenwald.

  18. See U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Vol. 1: Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS–Business Administration Main Office (WVHA), ed., Geoffrey Megargee (Bloomington: Indiana University Press in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2009), 293.

  One particular source of help for young Adam came from Motel, a prisoner who had recently come to Buchenwald from Skarzysko Kamienna, where he had earlier benefited from Dr. Aptowicz’s care. Now he was eager to reciprocate and thank the doctor for his past help. Motel was also familiar with Buchenwald’s underground members and willing to use his influence to promote Dr. Aptowicz and his son. At Motel’s initiative the Buchenwald underground investigated Dr. Aptowicz’s past. Impressed by his credentials and particularly by the help he had been extending to camp inmates, they arranged for Dr. Aptowicz to stay in the children’s block and hide there for the duration of any future Aktion. The blocks for the young were very well protected by the resistance members. American troops liberated Buchenwald in April 1945. Father and son moved to Kraków; in 1950, the pair moved with the doctor’s new wife to Israel.

  As with Jewish fathers, the wartime experiences of mothers varied greatly; thus, so did the fates of their children. Cyla Fast, born in 1907, was married to an engineer who, at the start of the German invasion of Lvov, was arrested with a group of prominent Jewish men. His wife was never officially informed of her husband’s fate. Expecting the birth of their first baby, Cyla had waited in vain for his return. Most probably, exposed first to degrading experiences, her husband, a gifted engineer, was murdered with a large group of Jewish men, all of whom had shared their elitist class affiliation. Cyla had a hard time accepting the circulating rumors about the killing of this entire group of men. In the fall of 1941, still missing and waiting for him, Cyla gave birth to their daughter. Now the mother and baby experienced a series of forced moves from one place to another, each entailing the loss of property, of freedoms, and of people. Soon, Cyla and the baby ended up in the Lvov ghetto.

  During one of the ghetto deportations, mother and baby were pushed outside their home and into a group of ghetto inmates. At that point Cyla was approached by a Ukrainian, who asked her what she, a Christian, was doing there in a group of Jews. Noticing that the baby must have pushed her Jewish armband down, making it invisible, she told the Ukrainian that she had been passing by and was simply pushed into the group of waiting ghetto inmates. She went along with his suggestion that she was not Jewish, knowing that her looks and her knowledge of both the Russian and Polish languages denied her Jewishness. In a sense, this Ukrainian was giving her a chance to live. And so, on his own, he turned to one of his superiors, explaining why Cyla should be free to return to her home.

  This is how mother and baby moved into the Christian world. When the two reached the outskirts of town with its high grass, they sat down to rest. She was at a loss as to what to do next. At that point, a woman came by and invited mother and child to her nearby cottage. Later on, thanking her for the hospitality, Cyla left to seek out some of her Polish friends for help. In fact, one of these friends helped her buy false papers. She stayed for two weeks in the homes of two other Polish friends. Then
yet another Polish friend located a young, unmarried Polish woman who was willing to adopt the six-month-old baby. This required a birth certificate, which the local priest supplied, together with other needed documents. Again, the unexpected happened. At the moment of parting, the baby clung to her mother, crying loudly. There was something so disheartening and sorrowful in the infant’s crying that the Polish woman who came for her could not take her. The baby stayed with Cyla, who soon found a job as a cook on an estate. She welcomed the work and the peace that came with it. In her free time she befriended a teacher, a woman who was out of work, and a Polish woman who was helping Jews who lived in a nearby forest. Cyla supplied food to these new friends.

  All ran smoothly until a new law was passed requiring Poles to get special working papers. As a result, the estate manager discovered that Cyla’s birth certificate was fake, and he asked her to leave immediately. She was glad that he did not denounce her to the authorities. Several Christian friends helped by keeping her for a day or two. This sporadic aid, together with her strong will to protect her baby, kept her going. Her prospects improved drastically when one of her friends found her a job with a German officer who was looking for a cook. There she worked practically until the 1944 takeover by the Red Army. In fact, this officer wanted to take her and the baby with him to protect them from the “barbarian Russians.” Cyla had a hard time explaining to him why she had to stay behind. At the end of the war, she wrote, “My little daughter has been the sunshine of my life. Till this day she continues to bring me good luck. At dangerous times this child would distract a murderer’s attention from me to herself. Occasionally, too, the compassion people felt for her made them invite us both into their homes during our horrible wanderings.”19

  19. See Yad Vashem testimony, 033/634, in which Cyla describes her gratitude to the Catholic priest who was most generous with his help. She also expressed appreciation to the various Polish friends who offered her protection. After the war, only gradually did she identify herself as a Jew. After locating some relatives in Israel, she and her daughter settled in that country, where she worked as a librarian.

  Such happy endings were extremely rare. The effects of war and persecution often left their mark upon mother-child relationships and continued to exert an enduring pressure upon the surviving parties that sometimes reached beyond the grave. This volume provides only a glimpse of the universe of loss that defines the history of children during the Holocaust: the loss of childhood and innocence and, for many hundreds of thousands of Jewish children, the loss of life and loved ones. My most painful experiences had to do with temporary and permanent losses of those I loved. High on this list was Czuczka. My parents made all the necessary arrangements to save her—but failed. When our trusted Pole went to the designated place to pick Czuczka up, he found her murdered body on the ground. Throughout Poland, the devastation of Jewish communities and families was almost complete. In 1939, Lublin had a Jewish population of forty thousand. When the war was over in 1945, about 150 Jews came back to this city. Among these, there were only three intact families. My parents, my sister, and I were one of them.

  Chapter 1

  Children in the Early Years of Antisemitic Persecution

  On November 27, 1938, the family of Elisabeth Block, Bavarian Jews from the small village of Niedernburg, made an outing in the surrounding countryside. “At around 11:30 we all made ourselves ready to drive with the car,” wrote fifteen-year-old Elisabeth, “because the whole week we have had such lovely weather. [. . .] At Chiemsee we got out and hunted for shells. The lake mirrored the splendid blue of the mountains; it was a wonderful sight. We also got out in Traunstein [. . . and] drove along the German Alpine Road, where we also looked out upon the glacier garden. [. . .] Only at quarter to six did we finally turn for home.”1

  1. Elisabeth Block, Erinnerungszeichen: Die Tagebücher der Elisabeth Block, ed. Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte/Historisicher Verein Rosenheim (Rosenheim: Wendelstein-Druck, 1993), 163–64.

  As elsewhere in her diary, Elisabeth Block devoted her energies that autumn day in 1938 to describing those things that absorbed her most: the intimacies of family life, the familiar pastimes enjoyed with relatives and friends, and the splendor and beauty of nature. Elisabeth does not, however, mention in her journal entries concerning her trip to Chiemsee a development that must have troubled each family member: the excursion would be the Blocks’ last outing together in their own automobile. Beginning on December 3, 1938, German Jews would be forced to surrender their drivers’ licenses and registration papers. Also omitted in the text are allusions to the lingering effects that the family continued to experience in the wake of the nationwide pogrom against Jews on Reichskristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) on November 9 and 10, 1938. Although the well-assimilated Blocks had been spared the worst of the antisemitic excesses in their insulated hamlet of Niedernburg, local Sturmabteilung (SA) and Nazi Party activists had plundered and vandalized Jewish-owned shops and businesses in nearby Rosenheim. More significantly, Elisabeth’s uncle, Dr. Leo Levy of Bad Polzin,2 had been murdered in his apartment by SA men in the midst of the pogrom, an event Elisabeth references only in passing in her journal.3 Further disturbing developments—the exclusion of Jewish pupils from “German” schools and the economic and social dislocation caused by the stringent antisemitic decrees issued in the wake of Kristallnacht—receive similarly short shrift. Worse trials lay ahead, although, as always, the maturing teenager was loathe to record them: the loss of the family home4 and business; the compulsory sterilization of Elisabeth’s father; the 1941 forced labor provisions for all able-bodied German Jews. Until the family’s transfer to Munich-Milbertshofen, a collection camp (Sammellager) for Jews pending deportation, Block remained largely silent in the face of such ominous developments.

  2. Formerly a German spa town in Pomerania, today this is the Polish city of Połczyn-Zdrój.

  3. Block, Erinnerungszeichen, 162.

  4. In October 1939, the Blocks learned that they must relinquish their family home to other owners, but were allowed to inhabit one of its upper rooms.

  Elisabeth Block’s reticence concerning the difficulties she and her family encountered as a result of National Socialist anti-Jewish policy was perhaps an atypical response to persecution. For a generation of Jewish children like Elisabeth, the 1930s in Nazi Germany was a time of danger, anguish, and uncertainty. Nazi antisemitic measures isolated Jewish youngsters from their “Aryan” friends and classmates, deprived them of physical and financial security, and subjected them to scorn and humiliation. How did these children respond to such difficult circumstances? How did they view the discriminatory practices aimed at themselves and their loved ones? What strategies did they employ in order to cope with the emotional and psychological trauma they experienced?5 This chapter follows the arc of persecutory policies against Jews in Nazi Germany and their impact and consequences for Jewish children.

  5. For a discussion of German Jewish reactions to persecution in general, see Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman, Jewish Responses to Persecution, Vol. 1: 1933–1938 (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010).

  From Assimilation to Marginalization

  Some 523,000 Jews lived in Germany in January 1933.6 Comprising less than 1 percent of the total population, German Jewry had throughout the nineteenth century waged a hard-fought battle for emancipation and gained full civil rights with the unification of the German state in 1871. Although tacit—and open—anti-Jewish sentiment persisted and received added impetus with the formation of antisemitic political parties and the development of new “racially based” antisemitic theories at the turn of the century, the establishment of the democratic Weimar Republic (1918–1933) marked an era of unprecedented integration of Jewish citizens into German social, cultural, and economic life.7 The process of assimilation, manifested by soaring rates
of intermarriage8 and a rise in conversions to Christianity, facilitated Jewry’s tenacious and thoroughgoing participation in nearly all aspects of German society. At the same time, German Jews cultivated a diverse, yet distinct, identity ranging in scope from the mainstream assimilationists to more marginal Orthodox and Zionist circles. An overwhelmingly middle-class community as a result of the economic opportunities that came with industrialization, a majority of Jews lived in Germany’s great cities: Berlin, Frankfurt, Breslau,9 Cologne. Just the same, in 1933, one in five German Jews still lived in a small town. Wherever they lived, most Jews thought of themselves as Germans, as inherently a part of the country and society in which they lived.10

  6. Of these, approximately four hundred thousand were German citizens; the remaining number represented chiefly eastern European Jews, many of whom had been born in Germany and held permanent residence status.

  7. Karl Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward German Jews, 1933–1939 (London: André Deutsch, 1970), 36ff.

  8. In 1927, for example, 54 percent of all German Jews who wed contracted their marriage with a non-Jewish partner.

  9. Today this is the Polish city of Wrocław.

  10. Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. 5ff. See also Edward Timms and Andrea Hammel, eds., The German-Jewish Dilemma: From the Enlightenment to the Shoah (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999); Hermann Levin Goldschmidt, The Legacy of German Jewry, trans. David Suchoff (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007); George Mosse, German Jews beyond Judaism (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1985); Paul Mendes-Flohr, German Jews: A Dual Identity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999); Marion Kaplan and Beate Meyer, eds., Jüdische Welten: Juden in Deutschland vom 18. Jahrhundert bis in die Gegenwart (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2005); Arnold Paucker et al., eds., The Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1986).