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Children and the Holocaust

The Nazis target a new generation of Jews

More than 1.5 million children from across Europe were murdered under the Nazi regime. The Nazis, obsessed with the notion of creating a 'biologically pure', 'Aryan' society, deliberately targeted Jewish children for destruction, in order to prevent the growth of a new generation of Jews in Europe.

Children defined by the Nazis as a 'threat' to German society, irrespective of their different backgrounds, languages, religions and customs, became potential victims of Nazism simply by being alive during the Nazi regime.

In the 1930s a series of Nazi laws were introduced aimed at removing the civil and economic rights of Jews and other groups. These laws had a severe impact on the lives of children:

• In 1938 Jewish children were expelled from German schools.
• They were banned from many public spaces, and everyday activities like going to the park or going swimming were forbidden.
• From the mid-1930s some Gypsy children were sterilised and were later rounded-up and incarcerated. Many of those sterilised underwent the procedure without giving their permission.

Lack of funds and strict visa and immigration controls prevented many Jewish families leaving Germany. However, some did leave to go to Palestine while others migrated to neighbouring European countries. The latter were often caught up in the Nazi regime again in later years.

About 10,000 mostly Jewish children escaped to Britain via Kindertransport, and were fostered or placed in hostels.

The Final Solution

The Nazis target a new generation of Jews

The first group of children to be targeted were disabled children described as "useless eaters". They were taken away from their parents under the guise of receiving the latest medical attention and maybe a cure. In fact, they were part of a top secret euthanasia programme.

After the invasion of Poland in 1939, Jewish men, women and children were rounded up and forced to live in ghettos established by the Germans. Many died of starvation or disease.

Two years later, in the Soviet Union, the invading German army was followed by Einsatzgruppen (operations groups) who went from town to town rounding up Jews and shooting them.

Then in December 1941 the Germans began the "Final Solution". The ghettos were cleared and Jews moved to the extermination camps. Many children died on the trains or on arrival in the gas chambers. Two camps - Auschwitz and Majdanek - operated a selection policy where the fittest were chosen for slave labour, while babies, small children and their mothers were sent straight to the gas chambers. Teenagers had a better chance of surviving selection, particularly if they claimed to have a skill.

Long term survival was rare and most of those selected to work died eventually of exhaustion and disease. The conditions were so extreme that even the fittest people rarely survived more than a few months in the camps. Some children were kept back from the gas chambers so they could be used for horrific medical experiments.

Gypsy families were also rounded up, shot or sent to concentration and extermination camps across Europe. In 1943 a Gypsy compound was established at Auschwitz where more than 20,000 adults and children were confined. Many died from lack of food and medical attention. In 1944 the elderly, unfit and younger children were gassed, and able-bodied men and women were transferred to work camps.

Some of the children under threat spent years hiding from the Nazi authorities - either by hiding physically in barns, attics and cellars, or by taking on false identities. There are a few examples of resistance movements working to move children to safety. For example, the Belgium priest, Joseph André, worked with the Comité de Défense des Juifs to save hundreds of Jewish children by finding them hiding places in convents, monasteries and private homes.

By the end of the war only a few thousand children had survived the camps.

Find out more

• Kindertransport