Children in the Shoah, 1933 – 1945

Heinrich Himmler in a speech at Posen in October 1943 declared: I did not feel that I had the right to exterminate men [...] and let grow up children who would take revenge on our children and descendants. It was necessary to make the serious decision to wipe this people off the face of the earth.”

From the beginning of the persecutions set up by the Nazis and their collaborators, most children switch from a protected world, that of their family, to an unknown world, which despite their sufferings they must face: exile, exclusion, confinement, fear, hunger, isolation, murder.

Their fate, regardless of the country in Europe where they are located, is marked by particularly dramatic situations. However, as early as 1938, networks and individuals mobilized to try to save them, for example by hiding them, or when saving them was impossible, by providing an emotional, educational or moral entourage. stories, newspapers, drawings; intimate and spontaneous testimonies, oh how precious and of an incredible maturity, of their hopes, their struggles, their feelings, left before silence.

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