Children of the HolocaustThe Germans killed 1.5 million children, which included over a million Jews and tens of thousands of Romani (Gypsy) children.
At death camps, like Auschwitz-Birkenau, they sent children to the gas chambers. Older children were put to work in concentration camps. Anne Frank is famous for her diary, published by her father, Otto Frank. Anne died of typhus at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The Nazis really wanted to kill the youngest Jews because they were going to be the next generation that the Nazis would strongly dislike. If any of the young children survived the ride in the cattle cars, they were immediately taken to a gas chamber to be killed. Older children , usually ages 13-18 had a greater chance of surviving because they were forced laborers. Just in the Aushwitz-Birknau camp 5,000-7,000 children died. In the Jewish ghettos, lots of children died of starvation and lack of clothing. At death camps, the majority of children were sent to be killed almost immediately. The estimates of children in hiding were 10,000 to 100,000. |