List of Documents
1 Children in the Early Years of Antisemitic Persecution
From Assimilation to Marginalization
Document 1-1. Bertel Kugelmann, “My Story,” 1996, quoted in Paulgerhard Lohmann, “Hier waren wir zu Hause”: Die Geschichte der Juden vom Fritzlar, 1096–2000, vor dem Hintergrund der allgemeinen Geschichte der deutschen Juden (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2002), 257–58 (translated from the German).
Document 1-2. Irmgard Marx, “Everyday Terror,” 1989, in Elfi Pracht, ed., Frankfurter jüdische Erinnerungen: Ein Lesebuch zur Sozialgeschichte (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke Verlag, 1997), 227–32 (translated from the German).
Document 1-3. The antisemitic Der Stürmer newspaper portrays Jewish children ejected from a public swimming pool in Bad Herweck, near Mannheim, 1935, USHMMPA WS# 11196, courtesy of the Wiener Library Institute of Contemporary History.
In the Schoolroom
Document 1-4. A class essay by Gerd Zwienicki, “Does History Show That Racial Mixing Leads to the Decline of a People,” c. 1934, USHMMA, Acc. 2005.122.1 (translated from the German).
Document 1-5. Irene Spicker Awret, They’ll Have to Catch Me First: An Artist’s Coming of Age in the Third Reich (Madison, WI/Takoma Park, MD: University of Wisconsin Press/Dryad Press, 2004), 88.
“I Decide Who Is a Jew”
Document 1-6. Walter Grab, “The Jews are Vermin Except for my Jewish Schoolmate Grab,” in “Niemand war dabei, und keiner hat’s gewußt”: Die deutsche Öffentlichkeit und die Judenverfolgung, 1933–1945, ed. Jörg Wollenberg (Munich: Piper, 1989), 45–50 (translated from the German).
Document 1-7. A crowd of Viennese children look on as an Austrian Nazi forces a youth to paint the word Jud (Jew) on the facade of his father’s store, 1938, USHMMPA WS# 01510, courtesy of the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Zeitgeschichte.
Training Youth for Jobs Abroad
Document 1-8. Letter of Ernst Löwensberg, Burkeville, Virginia, to students of the emigration-training farm at Gross-Breesen, Silesia, June 16, 1938, USHMMA, Acc. 2000.227, Herbert Cohn Gross-Breesen Collection (translated from the German).
Document 1-9. Jewish teenagers unload a cart of hay at the Gross-Breesen’s emigration-training farm, Germany, c. 1936, USHMMPA WS# 68299, courtesy of George Landecker.
Reichskristallnacht
Document 1-10. Marguerite Strasser, “Then I Felt Like a Subhuman . . . ,” in Friedrich Kraft, ed., Kristallnacht in Bayern: Judenpogrom am 9. November 1938: Eine Dokumentation (Ingolstadt: Claudius Verlag, 1988), 109–10 (translated from the German).
The Dismissal of Jewish Children from “German” Schools
Document 1-11. Decree of the Reich Minister of Science, Education, and Adult Education re the Schooling of Jews, November 15, 1938 (translated from the German).
Document 1-12. Diary of Elisabeth Block, entry for November 17, 1938, in Elisabeth Block, Erinnerungszeichen: Die Tagebücher der Elisabeth Block, ed. Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte/Historischer Verein Rosenheim (Rosenheim: Wendelstein-Druck, 1993), 162–63 (translated from the German).
Document 1-13. A young girl reads her classroom lesson in Hebrew to her fellow classmates at a school sponsored by the Jewish Community of Berlin, c. 1935, USHMMPA WS# 32505, courtesy of the Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
What’s in a Name? Israel and Sara
Document 1-14. Eleanor Kraus, “Don’t Wave Good-bye” (unpublished manuscript, private collection, c. 1940), 144–46 (© Liz Perle and Steven Kraus, reprinted with permission).
2 Children and the War
The First Taste of Conflict
Document 2-1. Ten-year-old Kazimiera Kostewicz (Mika) discovers the body of her sister Anna, killed in a strafing run by German pilots on Polish civilians near Warsaw, September 1939, USHMMPA WS# 50898, courtesy of Julien Bryan.
Document 2-2. Julien Bryan, Warsaw: 1939 Siege, 1959 Warsaw Revisited (Warsaw: Polonia Publishing House, 1959), 20–21.
Document 2-3. Inge Deutschkron, Ich trug den gelben Stern, 4th ed. (1975; Cologne: Verlag Wissenschaft und Politik, 1983), 60–67 (translated from the German).
Document 2-4. Interview of Idel Kozłowski (Kozlovskij) by the Central Jewish Historical Commission, February 14, 1947, USHMMA, RG-15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, LódŹ, 301/3626 (translated from the Russian).
Document 2-5. A Jewish child in occupied France wears the yellow star, USHMMPA WS# 63042, courtesy of Michael O’Hara.
Caught in the Crossfire: The War on Civilians
Document 2-6. Olive McNeil, London, England, undated testimony, quoted in Jane Waller and Michael Vaughan-Rees, Blitz: The Civilian War, 1940–1945 (London: McDonald Optima, 1990), 12–13.
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).
Document 7-3. Young women remember the League of German Girls, 1946, in Gisela Miller-Kipp, ed., “Auch Du gehörst dem Führer”: Die Geschichte des Bundes Deutscher Mädel (BDM) in Quellen und Dokumenten. Forschungsreihe Materialien zur Historischen Jugendforschung (Weinheim: Juventa Verlag, 2001), 315–16 (translated from the German).
Nonconformity and Dissidence: The Edelweiss Pirates
Document 7-4. Report of the Gestapo, Düsseldorf, December 10, 1937, in Detlev Peukert, Die Edelweisspiraten: Protestbewegungen jugendlicher Arbeiter im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1983), 28–30 (translated from the German).
Document 7-5. Handwritten flyer distributed by the Wuppertal troop of the Edelweiss Pirates, “To the Subjugated German Youth,” c. 1942, in Detlev Peukert, Die Edelweisspiraten: Protestbewegungen jugendlicher Arbeiter im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1983), 81 (translated from the German).
Document 7-6. The “Cologne Navajos’ Fight Song,” c. 1944, in Detlev Peukert, Die Edelweisspiraten: Protestbewegungen jugendlicher Arbeiter im Dritten Reich. Eine Dokumentation, 2nd ed. (Cologne: Bund-Verlag, 1983), 51 (translated from the German).
Hearts and Minds: Nazi Propaganda
Document 7-7A. Excerpt from a children’s textbook in the Third Reich: “You Are Carrying the Load!” (“Hier trägst Du mit!”), in Jacob Graf, Biologie für höhere Schulen (Biology for Secondary Schools) (Munich: Lehmann Verlag, 1943), table 25.
Document 7-7B. Excerpt from a children’s textbook in the Third Reich: A story problem in Arithmetic for Volksschulen: Governing District Cologne and Aachen, School Years in Seven and Eight, 1941, quoted in Ute Hoffmann, Todesursache “Angina”: Zwangssterilisation und “Euthanasie” in der Landes-Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Bernburg (Magdeburg: Eigenverlag des Ministeriums des Innern des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt, 1996), 24 (translated from the German).
Document 7-8. German school children read the antisemitic children’s story Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom), c. 1938, USHMMPA WS# 69561, E39 No. 2381/7, courtesy of the Stadtarchiv Nürnberg.
Document 7-9. Game board “Juden raus!” (“Jews, Get Out!”), Günther & Co., 1938, USHMMPA WS# 11894, courtesy of the Leo Baeck Institute.
Perpetrators and Victims
Document 7-10. Letter from the director of the Trade and Vocational School for Boys to the Department of Education, Frankfurt am Main, October 1, 1935, in Kommission zur Erforschung der Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, eds., Dokumente zur Geschichte der Frankfurter Juden, 1933–1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Waldemar Kramer, 1963), 111 (translated from the German).
Document 7-11. Report of the Centralverein Landesverband Pommern (Pomerania), signed Michelsohn, to the Central Office of the Centralverein, in re Schivelbein, August 16, 1935, USHMMA, RG-11.00, Osobyi Archive Moscow, 721-1-3019, Centralverein Records, 91 (translated from the German).
Document 7-12. Decision of the State Court, Karlsruhe, concerning the appeal of Franz Josef Seitz against the removal of parental custody, Karlsruhe, April 15, 1937, USHMMA, RG-32.008*01, Willi Seitz Collection (translated from the German).
German Children and the War
Document 7-13. Members of the Hitler Youth practice donning gas masks during an air raid drill, c. 1937, USHMMPA WS# 31512, courtesy of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.
Document 7-14. School essay of an eleven-year-old girl, Nuremberg, 1946, in Emmy E. Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents: Children Witness World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000), 49.
Document 7-15. Interview with Harry Bahrmann, Völkischer Beobachter, c. March 1945, in Franz Seidler, Deutsche Volkssturm: Das letzte Aufgebot, 1944–1945, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Herbig, 1991), 322.
Document 7-16. Journal of Lili G., entries for April 15 through May 9, 1945, in Reinhard Rürup, ed., Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, 1941–1945: Eine Dokumentation zum 50. Jahrestag des Überfalls auf die Sowjetunion (Berlin: Argon-Verlag, 1991), 257–58 (translated from the German).
Document 7-17. A German mother shields the eyes of her young son as American troops force her and other townspeople to view the bodies of Soviet civilians from a mass grave near Suttrop, Germany, May 3, 1945, USHMMPA WS# 08197, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
8 The World of the Child
Escape into Learning
Document 8-1. Diary/memoir of Miriam Wattenberg, entry for July 12, 1940, in Mary Berg, Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary by Mary Berg, ed. S. L. Shneiderman, trans. Norbert Guterman and Sylvia Glass (New York: L. B. Fischer, 1945), 32–33.
Document 8-2. Diary entry of Pola Rotszyld (Yad Vashem Archives, sign. 03/438) in Barbara Engelking-Boni, “Childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto,” in Children and the Holocaust: Symposium Presentations of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (Washington DC: USHMM, 2004), 35.
Document 8-3. Three girls study at a clandestine Jewish school in Prague, c. 1942, USHMMPA WS# 37424, courtesy of the Jewish Museum of Prague Photo Archive.
Document 8-4. Diary of Yitskhok Rudashevski, Vilna ghetto, entry for March 14, 1943, in Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 223.
At Play during the Holocaust
Document 8-5. Children at play in a field in Marysin, Łódź ghetto, c. 1941, USHMMPA WS# 33844, courtesy of the Archiwum Panstowe w Łódźi, sygn. 1120, fot. 27-832-6.
Document 8-6. Oskar Rosenfeld, entry in The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, August 25, 1943, in Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, 1941–1944, trans. Richard Lourie et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 373–74.
Document 8-7. Painted wooden butterfly toy, Small Fortress, Theresienstadt ghetto, 1941–1945, USHMMPA WS# N00049, original reposited in Pamatnik Terezin Narodni Kulturni Pamatka.
Document 8-8. 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), 1:478–79.
Document 8-9. 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), 52–55 (translated from the German).
Document 8-10. An eight-year-old resident of the Vilna ghetto describes the game “Jews and Germans” (Genia Silkes Collection, YIVO Institute), quoted in George Eisen, Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games among the Shadows (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988), 72.
Document 8-11. In the Łódź ghetto, children, one dressed as a ghetto policeman, play a peculiar version of cops and robbers, 1943, USHMMPA WS# 80401, courtesy of Beit Lohamei Haghetaot.
Innocence and Knowledge
Document 8-12. Excerpt from Josef Zelkowicz’s essay “The Optimist in the Potato Queue,” Łódź ghetto, September 5, 1942, in Josef Zelkowicz, In Those Terrible Days: Writings from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Michal Unger, trans. Naftali Greenwood (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2002), 306–7.
Document 8-13. Young children from the Marysin colony wait to be conveyed to the deportation assembly point during the Gehsperre, Łódź ghetto, September 1942, USHMMPA WS# 50334, courtesy of the Instytut Pamieci Narodowej.
Document 8-14. Watercolor by Helga Weissová, Birthday Wish I (Pŕání k narozeninám I), Theresienstadt ghetto, December 1941, USHMMPA WS# 60926, courtesy Helga Weissová.
Document 8-15. Diary of Elisabeth Block, entry for March 8, 1943, in Elisabeth Block, Erinnerungszeichen: Die Tagebücher der Elisabeth Block, ed. Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte/Historischer Verein Rosenheim (Rosenheim: Wendelstein-Druck, 1993), 265–66.
In Hopes and Dreams: Coping with the Holocaust
Document 8-16. 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), 52–55 (translated from the German).
Document 8-17. Just as youngsters at Birkenau reenacted Snow White, children in the Novaky labor camp perform a play about another popular Disney character, Mickey Mouse, Slovakia, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 40080, courtesy of Mira Frenkel.
Document 8-18. Drawing of Ilona Goldman (Alona Frankel) for her parents in hiding, Marcinkowice, Poland, 1942, USHMM Collections, gift of Alona Goldman Frankel.
Document 8-19. Abram Koplowicz, “When I Am Twenty,” Łódź ghetto, c. 1943, in Institute of Tolerance/State Archives in Łódź (in cooperation with the Centre de Civilization Française and the Embassy of France in Poland), eds., The Children of the Łódź Ghetto (Łódź: Bilbo, 2004).
Document 8-20. Watercolor by Nelly Toll, Teacher with Children Wearing Black Uniforms, Lvov, Poland, c. 1943–1944, USHMMPA WS# 94466, courtesy of Nelly Landau Toll.
9 Children and Resistance and Rescue
Youth and Armed Resistance
Document 9-1. Emmanuel Ringelblum, “Little Stalingrad Defends Itself,” c. April 1943, in Joseph Kermish, ed., “To Live with Honor and Die with Honor”: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S.” (Oneg Shabbath) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), 601–3.
Document 9-2. 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), 283–87.
Document 9-3. Members of the Bielski partisan family camp, including several small children, shortly before liberation, Naliboki Forest, Belorussia, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 77654, courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archives.
Document 9-4. Oral history of Rachmiel Łozowski, Tel Aviv, 1947, USHMMA RG 15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, 301/540 (translated from the Yiddish).
Unarmed Resistance: The Children’s War
Document 9-5. “Let the Jewish Youth Remember,” Słowo Młodych (Young People’s Voice), Warsaw ghetto, spring, 1942, USHMMA, RG-15.070M, Zespół podziemie–prasa konspiracyjna [Clandestine Publications], 230/13/1.
Document 9-6. Arrested at a checkpoint, a Jewish boy holds a bag of smuggled goods, Warsaw ghetto, c. 1941, USHMMPA WS# 60611B, courtesy of the YIVO Institute.
Document 9-7. Henryka Łazowertówna (Lazowert), “The Little Smuggler,” Warsaw ghetto, c. 1941, in Michał Borwicz, ed., Pieśń ujdzie cało: Antologia wierszy o Żydach pod okupacją niemiecką (Warsaw: Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna w Polsce, 1947), 115–16 (translated from the Polish).
Document 9-8. Historians believe the girl in the center of the photograph to be teenage resistance member Masha Bruskina, being marched with her comrades Kiril Trus and Volodya Shcherbatsevich to their place of execution by German soldiers, Minsk, October 26, 1941, USHMMPA WS# 14101, courtesy of the Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-197-026-43.
Document 9-9. The hanging of teenage resistance figures, believed to be Masha Bruskina and Volodya Shcherbatsevich, by an officer of the German 707th Infantry Division, Minsk, October 26, 1941, USHMMPA WS# 25136, courtesy of Ada Dekhtyar.
In Hiding
Document 9-10. Emmanuel Ringelblum, “Jewish Children on the Aryan Side,” 1943, in Emmanuel Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War, ed. Joseph Kermish and Shmuel Krakowski (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974), 140–45.
Document 9-11. Oral history of Szepsel Griner by the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, c. 1947, USHMMA RG 15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, 301/2284 (translated from the Polish).
Document 9-12. Louise Israels celebrates her second birthday in hiding, Amsterdam, July 30, 1944, USHMMPA WS# 16427, courtesy of Louise Lawrence-Israels.
Children and Aid Organizations: The Politics of Rescue
Document 9-13. Child identification card of Helmuth Ehrenreich, Police Presidium of Frankfurt am Main, June 16, 1939, USHMMA, Acc. 2006.396, Ehrenreich Family Papers (translated from the German).
Document 9-14. Letter of Gilbert Kraus to George Messerschmidt, assistant secretary of state, February 3, 1939 (National Archives and Records Administration, RG-59, General Records of the Department of State, Decimal File 150.6265/610).
Document 9-15. Aided by philanthropists Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a group of Austrian Jewish children finds safe haven in the United States, June 3, 1939, USHMMPA WS# 96464, courtesy of Anita Willens.
Document 9-16. Child’s drawing of Château de la Hille, La Hille, France, c. 1942, USHMMPA WS# 45699, courtesy of Vera Friedlander.
When Rescue Fails
Document 9-17. Jewish refugee children pose at a children’s home in Izieu, France, summer 1943, USHMMPA WS# 15513, courtesy of Serge Klarsfeld.
Document 9-18. Telex from Klaus Barbie, commanding officer of the Security Police and Security Service IV B, Lyon, to Department IV B 4, Paris (Barbie Telex), April 6, 1944, in Serge Klarsfeld, The Children of Izieu: A Human Tragedy, trans. Kenneth Jacobsen (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1985), 95 (translated from the German).
10 Elsewhere, Perhaps?
“Over This Field of Death, Peace Breaks Out”: Liberation
Document 10-1. David P. Boder, interview with Gert Silberbart, Geneva, August 27, 1946, USHMMA RG-50.472, spool 9-82 and 83 (translated from the German).
Document 10-2. Young boys join adult survivors in cheering their U.S. Army liberators at Dachau, April 29, 1945, USHMMPA WS# 45075, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration, College Park.
Document 10-3. Oral history testimony of P. H. by the Canadian Jewish Congress, Montreal, February 1946, in Isaiah Trunk, ed., Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis (New York: Stein and Day, 1982), 326–28.
Document 10-4. Diary of Alice Ehrmann (Alisah Shek), entries for May 10, 11, and 18, 1945, in Alisah Shek, “Tagebuch,” in Theresienstädter Studien und Dokumente, 1994, ed. Miroslav Kárný, Raimund Kemper, and Margita Kárná (Prague: Verlag Academica, 1994), 196–99 (translated from the German).
The Search for Family Members
Document 10-5. Hedvig Dydyna holds a name card intended to help surviving family members locate her at the Kloster Indersdorf DP camp, Germany, c. May 1945, USHMMPA WS# 06677, courtesy of Lilo Plaschkes.
Document 10-6. Interview with Maria Straucher by the Central Jewish Historical Commission, Kraków, December 2, 1947, USHMMA, RG-15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, 301/3292/1-2, 1949 (translated from the Polish).
Document 10-7. Renée Pallarés (right) and her family helped save Diane Popowski, an infant who had been with her mother at the Agde internment camp in France. In 1949, nine-year-old Diane reluctantly returned to her widowed father. She reunited with the Pallarés family some years later. USHMMPA WS# 13346, courtesy of Diane Popowski Fenster.
Document 10-8. Interview with Gizela Szulberg by the Central Jewish Historical Commission, Bytom, September 3, 1947, USHMMA RG 15.084, Holocaust Survivor Testimonies, 301/2731/2-3 (translated from the Polish).
Where Is Home?
Document 10-9. An exercise class for preschoolers in the Bergen-Belsen DP Camp, Germany, 1947, USHMMPA WS# 11811, courtesy of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Document 10-10. Report card of Regina Laks from the Herzel Hebrew Public School, Schlachtensee DP Camp, Berlin, January 18, 1947, USHMMPA WS# 96426, courtesy of Regina Laks Gelb.
Document 10-11. Diary of Michal (Michael) Kraus, handwritten with illustrations, 1945–1947, 2, 23–28, USHMMA, Acc. 2006.51, Michael Kraus Collection (translated from the Czech).
Document 10-12. “Where are our parents, you murderers?” a young survivor of Buchenwald writes on the side of the train car that will take him and other “Buchenwald Boys” from Germany to an orphanage in France, June 1945, USHMMPA WS# 44251, courtesy of Willy Fogel.
Document 10-13. Page of convoy list of Buchenwald’s orphaned children taken from Germany to Écouis, France, June 8, 1945, in Judith Hemmendinger and Robert Krell, The Children of Buchenwald: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Post-War Lives (Jerusalem: Gefen Press, 2000), 180.
Document 10-14. Judith Feist Hemmendinger remembers the “Buchenwald Boys,” 1984, in Judith Hemmendinger and Robert Krell, The Children of Buchenwald: Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Their Post-War Lives (Jerusalem: Gefen Press, 2000, 27–31).
The Process of Remembering
Document 10-15. Elie Wiesel, Un di Velt hot Geshvign, trans. Vera Szabó (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-Farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1956), 66–71 (translated from the Yiddish).
Document 10-16. Aharon Appelfeld, Beyond Despair: Three Lectures and a Conversation with Philip Roth, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (New York: Fromm International Publishing Corporation, 1994), 36–37.
Documents 10-17 and 10-18. Halina Birenbaum, “There Is My Soul” (1994) and “My Life Started from the End” (1983), in Halina Birenbaum, Sounds of a Guilty Silence: Selected Poems, trans. June Friedman (Kraków: Centrum Dialogu, 1997), 5, 35–36.
Document 10-19. A boy displays his Auschwitz tattoo as other children from the Neu Freimann DP camp look on, USHMMPA WS# 29314, courtesy of Jack Sutin.