Children of the Holocaust

Over one million Jewish children died during the Holocaust. They were ripped out of their homes and taken away from their families, and stripped of their childhoods. Innocent lives were caught in a war that they were not able to stop. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he promised Germany that he would improve life their by getting rid of the one race that caused the problems, the Jews. Jews, including Jewish children, were sent to concentration camps, inspected, and if approved, were sent to work. All others would have been sent to be killed. Being sent to work did not ensure survival, children would be given very little food and water, and beaten severely, which caused their death. None of the children of the Holocaust will ever forget the experience they went through, they will always remember.

The Germans wanted to control the size of the Jewish population by forcing Jews to lived in segregated sections of towns call Jewish residential quarters or ghettos. They created over 400 ghettos where Jewish adults and children were forced to reside and survive. Most ghettos were located in the oldest, most run-down places in town, that German soldiers to pick to make life in the ghetto as hard as possible. Overcrowding was frequent, several families lived in one apartment, plumbing was apprehended, human excrement was thrown out with the garbage, contagious diseases ran rapid, and hunger was everywhere. During the winter, heating was scarce, and many did not have the appropriate clothing to survive. Jerry Koenig, a Polish Jewish child, remembers: “The situation in the Warsaw Ghetto was truly horrendous- food, water, and sanitary conditions were non-existent. You couldn’t wash, people were hungry, and very susceptible to disease...

... middle of paper ...

... everyone with a purpose, and that purpose was to do God’s Will. God’s Will is meant to glorify God, not persecute innocent people for their ethnic and religious background. One of God’s most repeated commands is to love our neighbor as yourself. God wants us as Christians to display God’s love through how we treat others. The Holocaust was one display of how one should not treat another person.

The Holocaust was one of the biggest disasters the world has ever seen. More than 1.5 million children were murdered 1.2 Jewish children, along with thousands of gypsy children, and thousands of handicapped children. The effects of the Holocaust can be felt today, not only by what we learn and read, but by those who have endured the pain of the Holocaust and saw their friends and family being tortured and killed. They victims will never forget, they will always remember.