Hiding Children
Children were hiding and some times on there own because there parents told them to hide when they were left alone and most of the time they died with out care. The Germans and their collaborators killed as many as 1.5 million children, including over a million Jewish children. Children were even killed at birth.
Children over 12 were usually used as experiments, when they were in the Concentration camps and in the ghettos they had to be hidden to live. Children also in the ghettos were forbidden to learn. Life for the Jewish children was a very scary life and it cold is over at any time.
Some Jewish children went into hiding to escape the increasing persecution and, most importantly, the deportations.
Although the most famous example of children in hiding is the story of Anne Frank, every child in hiding had a different experience.The first was physical hiding, which is very similar to the example of Anne Frank, where children physically hid in an annex, attic, cabinet, etc. The second was identity hiding which is where Jewish children pretended to be Gentile and were out in society. When Children pretend to be the Aryan or blond haired and blue eyed race. These children had to be taught how to be christen and they went through crash cources in Christianity. In this crash course they were taught to kneel and fold there hands they were usally taught by the priest.
The Hidden Children of the Holocaust is a great book to tell a bit about what happened to children in the holocaust. These children are starved when they were in hiding and when people say that your bellybutton is touching your backbone that would seem like a luxury to these children in hiding. Most of these children had no family because they might have been taken away to concentration camps or know as death and work camps. These children were so scared that they could hardly think All they thought about was how to survive to the next day. Children hid in under floors in barn attics and basements they were some times could pass as an Aryan. They would take crash courses in Christianity. They would be taught to kneel and when to fold there hands. If these children survived the holocaust most could not bear to talk about the experiences that they had. These people paid a huge psychological price to survive. The Nazis imprisoned and killed millions of Jews.
Many Jews were running away from the Nazi because they feared Hitler’s power. Such as Henritte Parker, she and her family fled from Belgium after the communist party took over Latvia. That was their native country. As a child Henriette learned to speak four different languages, French, German, Czech, and Yiddish. They left Belgium for Paris with another family and tried to make it to the United States. They left their house with a half-eaten dinner on the table, taking two valises with them. They did not have any papers or visas when they left. They arrived in Paris on May 10, 1940, that same day Paris was invaded by the German solders. They knew that Paris not safe and so they tried to catch the boat to the United States. They were to late they knew that Paris was not safe. So they went back to Brussels in Belgium. A few months later they revived a letter that they were to be sent to a work camp. At that moment they decided that they would go into hiding. The father contacted a man, Mr.Desmett; this man came from a very Nobel family that had connections with the underground. They came to the house to take henriette to an unknown place. Henriette was separated from her parents, her parents, paid a non-Jewish family to take her in. After a while he left the house with a man that was hiding her parents. This was great timing because all the houses on the block were raided and took away all the Jewish children. She was moved in with a woman, named Julia Nicaise she was the head of the anti-nazi resistance. She stayed there till the end of the war and she became her godmother.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005142
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