Pre-War Life

In 1933 the largest Jewish populations were concentrated in Eastern Europe,

including Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, and Romania. Many of the Jews of
Eastern Europe lived in predominantly Jewish towns or villages, called
shtetls. Eastern European Jews lived a separate life as a minority within the culture
of the majority. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, which combines elements
of German and Hebrew. They read Yiddish books, and attended
Yiddish theater and movies. Although many younger Jews in larger towns were
beginning to adopt modern ways and dress, older people often dressed
traditionally, the men wearing hats or caps, and the women modestly covering
their hair with wigs or kerchiefs.
In comparison, the Jews in Western EuropeGermany, France, Italy, the
Netherlands, and Belgiummade up much less of the population and tended to
adopt the culture of their non-Jewish neighbors. They dressed and talked like their
countrymen and traditional religious practices and Yiddish culture played a less
important part in their lives. They tended to have had more formal education than
eastern European Jews and to live in towns or cities.
Jews could be found in all walks of life, as farmers, tailors, seamstresses, factory
hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners. Some
families were wealthy; many more were poor. Many children ended their schooling
early to work in a craft or trade; others looked forward to continuing their
education at the university level. Still, whatever their differences, they were the
same in one respect: by the 1930s, with the rise of the Nazis to power in
Germany, they all became potential victims, and their lives were forever changed.
What Led to Conflict
The start of the Holocaust was the combined result of many factors: "racism,
combined with centuries-old
bigotry, renewed by a nationalistic fervor which emerged in Europe in the latter
half of the 19th century, fueled by Germany's defeat in World War I and its
national humiliation following the Treaty of Versailles, exacerbated by worldwide
economic hard times, the ineffectiveness of the Weimar Republic, and
international indifference, and catalyzed by the political charisma, militaristic
inclusiveness, and manipulative propaganda of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime,
contributed to the eventuality of the Holocaust.

Ravaged by World War I, the German state was already in poor economic
shape before the Depression of the 1920's struck. Reparations demands and a
weakened infrastructure led to inflation and unemployment. The democratic
institutions artificially established by the Allies and a feeling of global alienation
as a result of a guilt clause and land seizures in the Treaty of Versailles
exacerbated social turmoil and left Germany looking for someone to blame.
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist German
Workers (Nazi) Party, was named chancellor of Germany by President Paul von
Hindenburg after the Nazi party won a significant percentage of the vote in the
elections of 1932. The Nazi Party had taken advantage of the political unrest in
Germany to gain an electoral foothold. The Nazis incited clashes with the
communists and conducted a vicious propaganda campaign against its political
opponents - the weak Weimar government and the Jews whom the Nazis blamed
for Germany's ills.
Life During Conflict
During the Holocaust between 1.1 and 1.5 million children were murdered. These
were Jewish, Romani (Gypsy), German children with disabilities, mental and
physical, Polish or children who did not fit the "perfect" Aryan race. Hitler's plan
was to create the perfect race. Jewish and non-Jewish children's fate fell into five
major categories: 1. The children were killed when they arrived at killing centers.
2. Children were murdered directly after birth or in an institution. 3. Children born
in ghettos and camps survived because prisoners hid them. 4. Children, typically
over the age of twelve, were used as laborers and as mental experiments for camp
doctors. 5. Lastly the children who were killed during reprisal operations or antipartisan operations.
When the ghettos were formed many children who lived in the ghettos died due to
starvation, exposure, un-proper clothing and poor shelter. To the Germans children
in the ghettos were "useless" if they were too young to work as laborers in camps.
Because they were too young to work, children, as well as the ill, elderly and
disabled were the first groups to be shipped off to killing centers or the first to be
shot into mass graves.
In the ghettos a council known as Judenrat was put in place to keep the order.
These were Jewish elders who had to make life or death, moral or immoral
decisions based on their own people. A horrific example of the Judenrat was
sending children to Chelmno, a killing center in September 1942. The Judenrat also
selected the children to be victims of mass grave shootings. Some of the older

members of the Jewish ghettos did not choose their own lives to sacrifice children,
but went to the killing centers with them. A man named Janusz Korczak, director
of an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto, refused to let the children go on without
him under his care and was murdered in the gas chambers with his orphans.
When children arrived at concentration and transit camps they were incarcerated.
In the concentration camps German physicians used children, especially twins, in
medical research studies and experiments that more often than not ended in death.
If the children were not chosen to be experiments they were put to work in unfit
conditions and typically separated from their parents or killed immediately by gas
or shooting.
Although children were vulnerable, terrified, and separated from their families,
they did find ways to survive. Children smuggled food, medicine and personal
items into the ghettos. Children participated in resistance activities and some
children even escaped with parents or other relatives and in some cases escaped on
their own. Another form of resistance was the Clandestine schools in the ghettos
and the concentration camps. Between 1938 and 1940 the Kindertransport brought
thousands of Jewish children, without their parents, to the safety of Great
Britain. In France, almost the entire Protestant population, as well as many
Catholic priests, nuns, and lay Catholics, hid Jewish children in the town from
1942 to 1944. In Italy and Belgium, many children survived in hiding. The children
in hiding often had to remain silent or even motionless in their hiding places for
hours at a time. Both children and their protectors lived in constant fear and
suspicion of their neighbors. If the protectors helping out and hiding Jews were to
be captured they would not be spared by the Nazis.