Children during the Holocaust
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Document 2-7. Addendum of Milovan Ðjilas to the July 28, 1942, diary entry of Vladimir Dedijer, in Vladimir Dedijer, The War Diaries of Vladimir Dedijer, Vol. 1: From April 6, 1941, to November 27, 1942 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 269–70.
Document 2-8. Body of a young boy killed in an antipartisan campaign on the slopes of Petrova Gora, a stronghold of communist resistance activity in Yugoslavia, 1942, USHMMPA WS# 01138, courtesy of Lydia Chagoll.
Document 2-9. Diary of Tanya Savicheva, Leningrad, December 1941 to May 1942, courtesy of the Saint Petersburg Museum of History, Saint Petersburg, Russia (translated from the Russian).
Document 2-10. Letter of Marie (Maruška) Šroubková, c. July 2, 1942, in Jolana Macková and Ivan Ulrych, eds., Fates of the Children of Lidice: Memories, Testimonies, Documents, trans. Elias Khelil (Nymburk: Lidice Memorial, 2004), 36.
The War’s Long Shadow: The Last Years of Conflict
Document 2-11. Bert Voeten, Doortocht: Een Oorlogsdagboek, 1940–1945, 4th ed. (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Contact, 1947), 198–99 (translated from the Dutch).
Document 2-12. Malnourished Dutch children in the German-occupied Netherlands, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 89175, courtesy of David Briggs.
Document 2-13. Testimony of Ernst Wirtz, 1948, United States of America v. Alfried Krupp, et al. (Case 10: “Krupp Case”), in Trials of War Criminals before the Nürnberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, 14 vols. (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein & Co., 1997), 9:1113–17.
3 Lives in the Balance
Strangers in a Strange Land: Emigration
Document 3-1. Youth Aliyah immigrants pose for photographer Dr. Franz Ziss upon their arrival at Kibbutz Ben Shemen agricultural school in Palestine, 1940, USHMMPA WS# 07152, courtesy of the Keren Kayemet Archives.
Document 3-2. Thea Gersten Hurst, Das Tagebuch der Thea Gersten: Aufzeichnungen aus Leipzig, Warschau und London, 1939–1947 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2001), 58 (translated from the German).
Document 3-3. Crayon drawing by Fritz Freudenheim, From Our Old Home to Our New Home, c. 1938, in Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin and Stiftung Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Heimat und Exil: Emigration der deutschen Juden nach 1933 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), 155.
Document 3-4. Letter of Walter Horwitz to his daughter Cilia (Cilly) Horwitz, February 15, 1939, in Reiner Lehberger and Ursula Randt, eds., “Aus Kindern werden Briefe”: Dokumente zum Schicksal jüdischer Kinder und Jugendlicher in der NS-Zeit (Hamburg: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg Behörde für Schule, Jugend und Berufsbildung, 1999), 39–40 (translated from the German).
Document 3-5. Letter of Liesel Joseph to Morris C. Troper, European director of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, June 17, 1939, USHMMA, Acc. 1997.36.12, Betty Troper Yaeger Collection (translated from the German).
Document 3-6. Letter of unidentified young St. Louis passenger to Morris C. Troper, July 1939, USHMMA, Acc. 1997.36.12, Betty Troper Yaeger Collection (translated from the German).
Document 3-7. German émigré scientist Albert Einstein welcomes a group of Jewish children newly immigrated to the United States from Germany, c. 1945, USHMMPA WS# 71763, courtesy of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Victims of Einsatzgruppen Activity
Document 3-8. Testimony of Rivka Yoselewska, May 8, 1961, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial in cooperation with the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1992–1995), 1:516–17.
Document 3-9. Report of military chaplain Dr. Joseph Maria Reuss, Catholic divisional chaplain, to Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth, First Generalstabsoffizier, 295th Infantry Division, August 20, 1941, in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “Schöne Zeiten”: Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1988), 135–36 (translated from the German).
Document 3-10. Lieutenant Colonel Helmuth Groscurth to commander in chief of the Sixth Army, Field Marshall Walther von Reichenau in re report on events in Byelaya Tserkov on August 20, 1941, August 21, 1941, in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “Schöne Zeiten”: Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1988), 140–42 (translated from the German).
Document 3-11. Testimony of August Häfner, May 31, 1965, in Ernst Klee, Willi Dressen, and Volker Riess, eds., “Schöne Zeiten”: Judenmord aus der Sicht der Täter und Gaffer (Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1988), 145 (translated from the German).
Document 3-12. A young mother with her two young children waits with other Jews from Lubny at an assembly point before their murder, c. April 1942, USHMMPA WS# 83014, courtesy of the Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung.
“We’ve Been Picked Up”: Roundups and Deportations
Document 3-13. Note of Klaus Scheurenberg to his father, Paul Scheurenberg, c. 1942, Scheurenberg collection, Stiftung Neue Synagoge Berlin—Centrum Judaicum, CJA 614 Nr. 8.
Document 3-14. Letter of Felicitas and Thomas Gumpel, July 14, 1942, in Reiner Lehberger and Ursula Randt, eds., “Aus Kindern werden Briefe”: Dokumente zum Schicksal jüdischer Kinder und Jugendlicher in der NS-Zeit (Hamburg: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg Behörde für Schule, Jugend und Berufsbildung, 1999), 52–53 (translated from the German).
Document 3-15. Lissy Asser, a young girl from Göttingen, waits with other German Jews at a deportation point in Hildesheim, c. March 1942. Lissy, her parents, and a younger brother are believed to have been murdered in Treblinka, USHMMPA WS# 69635, courtesy of the Stadtarchiv Hildesheim.
Document 3-16. Vita of Iser Franghieru, Hehalutz Orphanage, September 12, 1947, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Archive, RG 25.001, American Joint Distribution Committee, Case Files of Romanian Orphans.
Document 3-17. Iser Franghieru in a Bucharest orphanage, c. 1947, USHMMPA WS# 01827, courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Document 3-18. Letter of Pinchas Eisner to his brother Mordechai Eisner, Budapest, October 16, 1944, in Reuvan Dafni and Yehudit Keliman, eds., Final Letters (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholas 1991), 454–57.
4 Children in the World of the Ghetto
Into the Ghetto
Document 4-1. Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski, Vilna ghetto, entry for September 6, 1941, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 199–201.
Document 4-2. Interview of Seweryn Dobrecki by the Central Jewish Historical Commission, c. 1946, USHMMA, RG-15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, 301/3611/4-5 (translated from the Polish).
Document 4-3. Two children beg on the streets of the Warsaw ghetto, September 1941, USHMMPA WS# 32327, courtesy of Günther Schwarberg.
“The Garden of Eden”: Education in the Łód´z Ghetto
Document 4-4. Album page of a New Year’s greeting from the children of School No. 25, to Ghetto Elder Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Łódź ghetto, September 1941, USHMMPA WS# 22473, courtesy of YIVO Institute (translated from the Hebrew)
Document 4-5. Diary essay of Josef Zelkowicz, “The Breadwinner (The Seventh Apartment),” 1941, in Josef Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days: Writings from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Michal Unger, trans. Naftali Greenwood (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), 63–69.
Document 4-6. Children digging for “coal” in the Łódź ghetto, 1941, USHMMPA WS# 61900, courtesy of the YIVO Institute.
“Give Me Your Children”: The “Children’s Actions”
Document 4-7. Speech of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, Łódź ghetto, September 4, 1942, in Isaiah Trunk, Łódź Ghetto: A History, ed. and trans. Robert Moses Shapiro (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2006),
272–75.
Document 4-8. Children selected for deportation bid farewell to their families through the wire fence of the central prison during the Gehsperre action in the Łódź ghetto, September 1942, USHMMPA WS# 30057, courtesy of Beit Lohamei Haghetaot.
Document 4-9. Testimony of Adolf Avraham Berman, May 3, 1961, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial in cooperation with the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1992–1995), 1:425–26.
Death and Survival in the Ghetto
Document 4-10. Diary of an anonymous girl, Łódź ghetto, entries for March 10 and 11, 1942, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 236–38.
Document 4-11. Diary of Oskar Singer, entry for July 28, 1942, in Hanno Loewy et al., eds., “Unser einziger Weg ist Arbeit”: Das Getto in Łódź, 1940–1944 (Vienna: Löcker Verlag, 1990), 221–22 (translated from the German).
Document 4-12. Jewish children work at a box-making factory in the Glubokoye ghetto, Belorussia, c. early 1942, USHMMPA WS# 08059, courtesy of Karl Katz.
Document 4-13. Testimony of Dr. Aharon Peretz, May 4, 1961, in The Trial of Adolf Eichmann: Record of Proceedings in the District Court of Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Trust for the Publication of the Proceedings of the Eichmann Trial in cooperation with the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1992–1995), 1:478.
Document 4-14. Diary of Eva Ginzová, entries for September 28, 1944, and April 23, 1945, Theresienstadt, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 180, 187–88.
5 Children in the Concentration Camp Universe
At the Edge of the Abyss
Document 5-1. Janina Hescheles, “Bełżec,” Janowska, 1943, published in Michał Borwicz, ed., Pieśń ujdzie cało: Antologia wierszy o żydach pod okupacją niemiecką (Warsaw/Łódź/Kraków: Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna w Polsce, 1947), 270–71 (translated from the Polish).
Death at Auschwitz
Document 5-2. Jewish women and children from Transcarpathian Rus who have been selected for the death walk to the gas chamber, Auschwitz, May 1944, USHMMPA WS# 77342, courtesy of Yad Vashem.
Document 5-3. Testimony of Magda Szabo, August 24, 1964, Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, in Fritz Bauer Institute and the State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau, eds., Der Auschwitz-Prozess: Tonbandmitschnitte, Protokolle, Dokumente (DVD) (Berlin: Directmedia Publishing, 2004) (translated from the German).
Document 5-4. Ink drawing by Helga Weissová, “Selection,” 1945–1946, in Helga Weissová, Zeichne, was Du siehst! Zeichnungen eines Kindes aus Theresienstadt/Terezin, ed. Niedersächsischen Verein zur Förderung von Theresienstadt/Terezin, e.V. (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1998), 139.
Document 5-5. Miklós Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, trans. Tibère Kremer and Richard Seaver (Hungarian ed., 1946; New York: Frederick Fell Publishers, 1960), 114–20.
In a Living Hell: Survival in Camps
Document 5-6. Diary of Michal (Michael) Kraus, handwritten with illustrations, 1945–1947, 54–60, USHMMA, Acc. 2006.51, Michael Kraus Collection (translated from the Czech).
Document 5-7. Personal testimony of Hanna Hoffmann-Fischel, c. 1960, in Inge Deutschkron, Denn ihrer war die Hölle: Kinder in Gettos und Lagern (Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1965), 49–52 (translated from the German).
Document 5-8. Oral history of Berel Dov Freiberg, recorded by Bluma Wasser, 1945, in Isaiah Trunk, ed., Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), 268–78.
Document 5-9. Testimony of anonymous girl (Janka Avram), interviewed by Icek Shmulewitz, New York, 1955, in Isaiah Trunk, ed., Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), 117–19.
Document 5-10. Following the liberation of Auschwitz, child survivors display their tattooed arms, January 1945, USHMMPA WS# 12110C, courtesy Wytwornia Filmow Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych.
Document 5-11. Testimony of Szymon (Simon) Srebrnik before the examining judge of the district court in Łódź, Władysław Bednarz, June 29, 1945, in Archives of the District Museum in Konin, Chełmno Witnesses Speak, ed., Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak, trans. Juliet D. Golden (Konin: Council for the Protection of Memory of Combat and Martyrdom in Warsaw/District Museum in Konin, 2004), 125–29.
Document 5-12. Prisoner personal information card of Stefan Jerzy Zweig, Buchenwald, August 5, 1944, USHMMA ITS Digital Collections, Buchenwald—Individual Documents, Male Section, R. 1.1.5.3, 7503616 1.
Document 5-13. Survivors of Buchenwald walk through the liberated camp with Stefan Jerzy Zweig, a four-year-old Jewish boy protected by the camp’s underground resistance, April and June 1945, USHMMPA WS# 19041, courtesy of the Fédération Nationale des Déportés et Internés Résistants et Patriotes.
6 Children in the Web of Racial Hygiene Policy
Compulsory Sterilization
Document 6-1A. Letter of Dr. Gotthold Lehmann, director of the State Institute for the Deaf and Mute and Teaching Institute for Teachers of the Deaf and Mute, to Frau E., Freienwalde, c. July 1936, USHMMA, RG-10.320, Horst Biesold Collection (translated from the German).
Document 6-1B. Letter of Dr. Gotthold Lehmann, director of the State Institute for the Deaf and Mute and Teaching Institute for Teachers of the Deaf and Mute, to Frau E., Freienwalde, July 31, 1936, USHMMA, RG-10.320, Horst Biesold Collection (translated from the German).
Document 6-2. Memorandum of the Prussian Minister of the Interior to the German Foreign Office, March 28, 1934, Political Office of the German Foreign Office, R 99166, Partei, 84/4 (translated from the German).
The Many Faces of Lebensborn
Document 6-3. Letter of Frau A. to Lebensborn, e.V., October 7, 1938, Bundesarchiv Berlin, NS 19/1064 (translated from the German).
Document 6-4. German medical personnel examine Polish children at an internment camp set up by the Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of German Ethnicity in Łódź to select youngsters “acceptable” for Germanization and adoption by German families, 1941, USHMMPA WS# 90416, courtesy of the Instytut Pamieci Narodowej.
Document 6-5. Testimony of Otto Uebe, November 4, 1947, United States of America v. Ulrich Greifelt et al. (Subsequent Nuremberg Case No. 8, RuSHA Trial), in Trials of War Criminals before the Nürnberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, 14 vols. (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein & Co., 1997), 4:1060–62.
“Euthanasia”
Document 6-6. Circular decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior, re obligatory registration for “Deformed, etc., Newborns,” etc., August 18, 1939 (Bundesarchiv Berlin, R 1501/5586, Reichsinnenministerium) (translated from the German).
Document 6-7. Annamarie R., a young disabled girl born in Kassel, Germany, on January 30, 1935. She was murdered, likely by an overdose of medication, in the Eichberg “euthanasia” facility c. June 27, 1941, USHMMPA WS# 58297 HHStAW Abt 3008-Picture Collection, courtesy of the Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden.
Document 6-8. Excerpts from the patient file of Anita Hart, March 30, 1943, to June 22, 1943, File No. 13029, USHMMA, RG-14.030M, Bezirkskrankenhaus Kaufbeuren (translated from the German).
The Danger of “Gypsy Blood”: Roma and Sinti
Document 6-9. ITO/ITS Report of Johannes Meister, children’s search officer, regarding Gypsy children of Sankt Josefspflege in Mulfingen, c. 1948, USHMMA, RG-07.004*01, Zigeunerkinder aus der Sankt Josefspflege in Mulfingen (translated from the German).
Document 6-10. Sinti children pose with a nun at the St. Josefspflege home
at Mulfingen, ca.1943–1944. The children, spared as “research material” from immediate deportation, were later transferred to Auschwitz, USHMMPA WS# 08632, courtesy of the Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma.
Document 6-11. Trial proceedings of Supreme Court of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic v. Ain-Ervin Mere (in absentia), Ralf Gerrets, and Jaan Viik (Mere Trial), USHMMA, RG-06.026.12, Estonian State Archives of the former Estonian KGB State Security Committee, Records Relating to War Crimes Investigations and Trials in Estonia, 1940–1987.
Children As “Research Material”
Document 6-12. Testimony of Johann Frahm, March 3 to June 18, 1946, UK v. Max Pauly, et al. (Curio-Haus Case), March 29, 1946, USHMMA, RG-59.016M, Reel 4, Judge Advocate General’s Office, United Kingdom, War Crimes Case Files, Second World War, 1945–1953, Public Record Office.
Document 6-13. Relief workers lead child survivors from Birkenau following the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces. Leading the ranks (beside the nurse) are Miriam and Eva Mozes, survivors of Josef Mengele’s infamous experimentation with twins, January 1945, USHMMPA WS# 88591, courtesy of the Instytut Pamieci Narodowej.
Document 6-14. Miklós Nyiszli, Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account, trans. Tibère Kremer and Richard Seaver (Hungarian ed., 1946; New York: Fell, 1960), 175–78.
Document 6-15. Hygiene-Bacteriological Research Station of the Waffen SS, Southeast, delivery slip for the head of a corpse, signed by Dr. Josef Mengele, June 29, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 00592, courtesy of the Auschwitz Memorial Museum (Państwowe Muzeum w Oświęcim-Brzezinka) (translated from the German).
7 The Lives of Others
Youth Organizations in the Third Reich
Document 7-1. A young boy leaps into the clasped arms of his schoolmates during outdoor physical education exercises at the Hitler Youth training facility in Memmingen, Germany, USHMMPA WS# 30590, courtesy of the Holocaust Museum Houston.
Document 7-2. Editorial of W. Thomas, director of the Berlin Deaf Athletes’ Association, Youth Supplement of the Newsletter of the Berlin Deaf Athletes’ Association, May 1, 1937, USHMMA, RG-10.320, Horst Biesold Collection (translated from the German).