The most heinous crime against humanity was committed during World War II. There are practically no families in Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union that did not suffer at the hands of the Nazis. Someone's fathers, sons, brothers died in the war, someone lost their relatives during the bombing, but the worst thing is the Holocaust of children forcibly taken from their parents. In the period 1933-1945, millions of innocent children of different nationalities and religions suffered. Few of them managed to survive, the fate of thousands of children in the post-war period was de alt with by humanitarian organizations.
Selective killing of children
Hitler was obsessed with the purity of the Aryan race, so he organized a special program to fight for its purification. The children of Jews and Gypsies were exterminated in the first place, since they were considered dangerous for Germany. Physically and mentally handicapped children from the occupied territories of the USSR, Poland and Germany itself were also exterminated. Holocaust of childrenaffected many families, both orphans and children forcibly taken from their parents ended up in concentration camps. All victims can be divided into several groups:
- children from 12 years old were used as labor force and for medical experiments;
- destroyed newborns;
- children killed immediately upon arrival at concentration camps;
- born in death camps and ghettos who managed to escape thanks to the people who sheltered them from the Nazis.
Nazi attitude towards children
In the ghetto, the unfortunate died most often from disease and starvation. This did not bother the Nazis much, since the kids did not have much value for them, in most cases they were destroyed along with the disabled and the elderly in the first place. Holocaust children over the age of 12 were used as labor force, but the conditions were such that they could not last long. The weak Nazis were sent to the gas chambers, shot, or simply left to die in agony. The Holocaust of children has become a shame for the whole nation, the Germans still cannot clear themselves before the public for those terrible deeds. The fate of the kids, as a rule, was in the hands of the Judenrat, by its order the guys were deported to the death camps.
Surviving children
Blonde-haired, blue-eyed children with fair skin were more fortunate, they were taken away from their parents, but not killed, but sent to be raised in "racially full" German families, since such appearance was "Aryan". The Holocaust of children did not affect the thousands of little Jews who were deported from Germany andNazi-occupied countries under the Kindertransport program. There were also brave people who agreed to hide the unfortunate under their roof. Many children found shelter in Belgium, Italy, in France they were hidden by nuns, Catholic priests, Protestant families.
The Holocaust Monument will always remind people of the unprecedented cruelty and brutality of some historical figures and warn against the repetition of such horrors. No one has the right to dispose of the life of another person, make him a slave or kill him at his own whim.
