Children in the Holocaust
During the Holocaust, children were especially vulnerable to death under the Nazi regime. An estimated 1.5 million children, nearly all Jewish, were murdered during the Holocaust, either directly by or as a direct consequence of Nazi actions. This was among the most notable Nazi crimes against children.
The Nazis advocated killing children of unwanted or "dangerous" people in accordance with their ideological views, either as part of the Nazi idea of the racial struggle or as a measure of preventive security. They particularly targeted Jewish children, but also targeted ethnically Polish children and Romani children and children with mental or physical disabilities. The Nazis and their collaborators killed children for these ideological reasons and in retaliation for real or alleged partisan attacks. Early killings were encouraged by the Nazis in Aktion T4, where children with disabilities were gassed using carbon monoxide, starved to death, given phenol injections to the heart, or hanged.
A much smaller number were saved. Some simply survived, often in a ghetto, occasionally in a concentration camp. Some were saved in various programs like the Kindertransport and the One Thousand Children, in both of which children fled their homelands. Other children were saved by becoming Hidden Children. During and even before the war, many vulnerable children were rescued by Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants.
Medical experimentation
The German authorities also incarcerated a number of children in concentration camps and transit camps. Physicians and medical researchers of the Schutzstaffel, a Nazi paramilitary organization, used children, especially twins, in concentration camps for medical experiments that often resulted in the deaths of the children. In their "search to retrieve 'Aryan blood'", or the perfect race, SS race experts ordered hundreds of children in occupied Poland and the occupied parts of the Soviet Union to be kidnapped and transferred to the Reich to be adopted by racially suitable German families. Although the basis for these decisions was "race-scientific," often blond hair, blue eyes, or fair skin was sufficient to merit the "opportunity" to be "Germanized." On the other hand, female Poles and Soviet civilians who had been deported to Germany for forced labor were often forced into sexual relations with a German man; many cases resulted in pregnancy, and the women were forced to have abortions or to bear their children under conditions that would ensure the infant's death, if the race experts determined that the child would have insufficient German blood.Josef Mengele was a physician who worked at Auschwitz, a concentration camp. His research subjects were better fed and housed than other prisoners and temporarily safe from the gas chambers. He established a kindergarten for children who were the subjects of experiments, along with all Romani children under the age of six. The facility provided better food and living conditions than other areas of the camp and even included a playground. When visiting his child subjects, he introduced himself as "Uncle Mengele" and offered them sweets. However, he was also personally responsible for the deaths of an unknown number of victims. Author Robert Jay Lifton describes Mengele as sadistic, lacking empathy, and extremely anti-Semitic, claiming that he believed that the Jews should be eliminated entirely as an inferior and dangerous race. Mengele's son Rolf said that his father showed no remorse for his wartime activities. A lack of regulations on his experiments allowed Mengele to perform his experiments freely.
A former Auschwitz prisoner doctor said:
Mengele had a fascination with twins. He was interested in the difference between identical and fraternal twins as well as how genetic diseases affected them and where they originated. The experiments also distinguished between genetic traits and those developed by the environment of the child. Mengele was known to pretend to be off duty while a train of new prisoners arrived so that he could personally select any twins whom he saw. He operated on children, partly to find genetic weaknesses in the makeup of Jewish or Romani people in order to provide scientific evidence for the ideas of the Nazi party. Mengele hypothesized that his subjects were particularly vulnerable to certain diseases because of their race. In addition to that, he believed that they had degenerative blood and tissue based on his samples. Mengele or one of his assistants subjected twins to weekly examinations and measurements of their physical attributes. He performed experiments such as unnecessary amputation of limbs; in another experiment, he intentionally infected a twin with typhus or another disease and transfused the blood of the infected twin into the other one. Many of his subjects died while undergoing these procedures. After an experiment was over, the twins were sometimes killed and their bodies dissected. Miklós Nyiszli, a prisoner at Auschwitz, recalled one occasion where Mengele personally killed fourteen twins in one night through a chloroform injection to the heart. If one twin died of disease, Mengele killed the other so that comparative reports could be prepared after their deaths.
He was known for experimenting with eyes. One of his particular studies regarded heterochromia iridum, a condition where people's eyes are differently colored. After he killed heterochromatics, he removed their eyes and sent them to Berlin for study. Another of Mengele's experiments with eyes involved attempts to change eye color by injecting chemicals into the eyes of living subjects. His experiments on dwarfs and people with physical abnormalities included taking physical measurements, drawing blood, extracting healthy teeth, and treatment with unnecessary drugs and X-rays. Many of the victims were sent to the gas chambers after about two weeks, and their skeletons were sent to Berlin for further study. Mengele sought pregnant women, on whom he would perform experiments before sending them to gas chambers. Witness Vera Alexander described how he sewed two Romani twins together back-to-back in an attempt to create conjoined twins. The children died of gangrene after several days of suffering.
Concentration camps
During the existence of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II, the Croatian Ustaše established numerous concentration camps like those in Jasenovac, Đakovo, and Jastrebarsko in which many Serbian, Jewish, and Romani children died as inmates. Among them, there was Sisak concentration camp, which was specially formed for children as part of Jasenovac concentration camp.Sisak children's concentration camp was founded on 3 August 1942 following the Kozara Offensive. It was part of an assembly camp, officially named the "Refugee Transit Camp". This concentration camp consisted of a special part officially called the "Shelter for the Refugee Children" under the auspices of the "Ustasha Female Lineage" and "Ustasha Security Service", and under the direct control of Antun Najžer. The camp was located in several buildings in Sisak: the former Yugoslav Falconry Association, the Sisters of St. Vincent nunnery, a rice warehouse, Rajs Saltworks warehouse, Novi Sisak elementary school, and the "Karantena". All these buildings were considered unsuitable for the housing of children. For example, in the Falconry Association, there were no doors; it was drafty because it was built for drying salt. Children, even those who were only a few months old, had to lie on the floor with only a thin layer of straw without any clothes or blankets. When a typhus epidemic broke out, Najžer ordered the transfer of the infected children to an improvised hospital, only serving to increase the number of deaths.
The first group of children arrived on 3 August 1942; there were 906 of them. The very next day another group of 650 children was brought; a third group arrived on 6 August with 1,272 children. In Teslic glasshouse and the newly built barracks, which were named "Karantena", a general concentration camp for men, women, and children had been established. During August and September 1942, Ustaše took parents away from 3,971 children by sending the parents to forced labor. From August 1942 to 8 February 1943, there were 6,693 detained children, mostly Serbs from Kozara, Kordun, and Slavonia. Despite the actions of Diana Budisavljević and a group of humanitarians – Jana Koh, Vera Luketić, Dragica Habazin, Ljubica and Vera Becić, Kamil Bresler, Ante Dumbović, and the sisters of the Red Cross – up to 40 children died every day. Lazar Margulješ testified about conditions at the concentration camp:
Jana Koh, former secretary of Croatian Red Cross stated following about the conditions in the Camp:
The barracks were connected by the corridors guarded by the Ustashas. Not far from the ambulance, from another barracks, the sad cries of the children were heard. There was set, on the bare floor, four hundred children: newborns, children from a few weeks or months, up to ten years of age. How many children came, and where they were dispatched, could no longer be found out. The children in the children's barracks cried inexorably and were calling their mothers, who were only a few steps away from the children, but the fascist criminals did not let mothers to approach their children. Older children tell us through tears, that they can not calm the little ones, because they are hungry, there are no one to change diapers of the little ones, and they are afraid that everyone will die. These children, who have not yet reached the age of ten, swear to us, "Come on, sister, bring us mothers, bring at least mothers to these little ones. You will see, if you do not bring them their mothers, they will suffocate, by the tears alone."
Coroner David Egić officially recorded that out of 6,693 children, 1,152 died in the Camp, while teacher Ante Dumbović later claimed that the number was 1,630.