Children at Auschwitz

Transcript of the podcast

Using only estimates based on the examination of the existing and complete documentation, it can be acknowledged that there were around 232,000 children aged under 15 and youth, aged under 18, among at least 1.3 million people deported to the German Nazi Auschwitz camp during the almost five-year period of its operation. This number includes around 216,000 Jewish children, 11,000 Roma and Sinti, at least 3,000 Polish and over 1,000 Belorussian, Ukrainian, and other children. The number of children registered as prisoners in the first years of operation of Auschwitz was low but it steadily increased to reach a maximum in the latter half of 1944. Dr. Wanda Witek Malicka from the Memorial’s Research Center talks about the fate of children in Auschwitz.

The subject of the fate of children in Auschwitz is a comprehensive and extremely complicated one for many reasons. When we speak of children in the camp, we have to take into account different times of their arrival at the camp, and their varying ages because we are dealing with infants and teenagers who we can still treat as adolescents of different nationalities, different languages. But also, other categories of child prisoners, because we are talking about Poles and Jews on the one hand there was diversity among children, but on the other, there was no separate prisoner category. In a way, SS men did not see the existence of children in the camp because, from an administrative point of view, it seems that when Auschwitz was established, no one expected children to be brought there.

No, definitely not. Auschwitz was conceived as a camp for Polish political prisoners. Later, it also assumed the role of a mass extermination center. At the same time, in this initial period, the presence of children was unusual in the sense that there were no plans to imprison minors here. However, when we look at the age structure of the first transport of prisoners, it turs out that out of over 700 prisoners, there were at least 66 minors. They were not very young children; they were mostly people aged from 16-18. Nevertheless, there were already people in this lower age category and almost at the beginning of the camp’s existence, the so-called bricklaying school and the youth block were established which means minors were in the community and made up a significant proportion of it. Their presence had been noticed and taken advantage of. It was taken advantage of in the sense that in the first period of the camp’s existence, a lot of specialists were needed who dealt not only with brick laying but also construction work in general. And probably young people were considered potentially suitable for training as builders, and Mauerschule was established for them.

Let us then try to trace the history of the camp and the different moments in which children and adolescents appeared here. Perhaps it will allow us to understand the complexity of the subject a little better.

Apart from those minors who came in transports of political prisoners, basically from the very beginning of its existence the youngest prisoners who arrived in the first transport of prisoners was 14 years old. Such prisoners were brought in. On the other hand, a real problem appeared with the establishment of the women’s camp. Following the arrival of women, including pregnant women, to the camp from March 1942. Formally, the order of the Reich Security Main Office forbade sending pregnant women to concentration camps, but this applied to women being brought to the camps from Gestapo posts. Although, as practice shows, it was not observed, as there were also pregnant women in these transports. And most of all, this order did not apply to women brought to the camps as part of resettlement and pacification operations. It did not include Jewish women transported for mass extermination either. It often happened that pregnant women were sent to the camp—women whose pregnancy could not be noticed yet. And that was the moment when infants and very small children appeared in the camp. Initially, the fate of the youngest was traumatic. They had no chance of survival. Until 1943 all children born in the camp were murdered. Pregnant women whose pregnancies were disclosed were murdered with phenol injections to the heart or in the gas chambers. Sometimes a woman managed to hide her pregnancy and give birth to a child in the camp, but this child was also sentenced to death, and until 1943 it applied to all women: Polish, Jewish, prisoners of all categories. A change took place in the spring of 1943 when the murders of non-Jewish babies were ceased, then those infants whose mothers weren’t Jewish theoretically had a chance to survive because they were registered, marked with the next number of the series, and treated as newcomers to the camp. But in practice, in camp conditions, their chances of survival were almost zero. We actually do not know how many children were born during the entire period of the camp’s existence, but we know that there were about 700 babies born and registered in Auschwitz. Of whom, more or less, a little more than half were children born in the family camp for Roma people.

Of course, we mention this division in the Jewish and non-Jewish children, but I think it should be clearly emphasized that with the commencement of the deportation of huge transports of Jews—men, women, and children to Auschwitz. On the one hand Jewish children selected on the ramp were sent to the camp. And we will for sure talk about these two special family camps later, but I think it should be emphasized that most Jewish children, were children deported to the camp, and immediately after the selection murdered in gas chambers.

Yes, from the more than 230,000 children deported to the camp, only about 23,500 were registered. Therefore, I point to the imbalance to the affect that 90% of children died. Without becoming prisoners, they died immediately after arriving. The statistics show very well what categories of prisoners had the smallest chances of survival. When we talk about children in the camp, there were at least 3,000 Polish children, about 1,000 children from the Soviet Union, 11,000 Romani children and 216,00 Jewish children deported to the camp. About 4% of the Jewish children, and almost 100% of the remaining categories were registered at the camp. This means that from the very beginning, Jewish children had almost no chance to enter the camp, to become prisoners, to survive. As far as the criteria followed by the camp authorities during the selection are concerned, the smallest and the youngest children certainly did not have a chance to enter the camp. Here it is actually difficult to talk about any rigid criteria about how all the children had to be. How tall they had to be, or what criteria they had to meet in order to be able to enter the camp. As practice shows, times were hard. The general rule was those who appeared to be fit to work, who appeared to be useful, able to cope with hard physical work, were sent to the camp. Hence, as I mentioned, several year-old children, infants, premature babies, or teenagers could not be admitted to the camp. Although, we have an example of Thomas Bergenthal, sent to the camp in the summer of 1944, he was then a 10-year-old boy and he passed the selections successfully. In fact, he does not know why, as he mentions the transport was not subjected to selection. He assumes that perhaps because it was a transport from a labor camp, and perhaps the camp authorities decided that if it was a transport from a labor camp, then there were people able to work there. Whatever the reasons for this, the fact is that during the period of most intensified extermination, in the summer of 1944, he got into the camp as a 10-year-old and survived his stay there. There were exceptions to the rule, but there were actually very few of them in general. Former prisoners often mention that the prisoners who helped on the ramp, who took care of the loading and unloading of transports so that the extermination process would be reasonably functional, they very often told these minors to say that they were older than they actually were. But what was the age limit? It is not known. Halina Birenbaum mentions that she said she was 15 years old, although she was 13. Well, a 15-year-old girl is also not yet an adult. Despite this, she also got into the camp here. Most probably the key issue was prisoners’ appearance. Whether they looked like a persona capable of work.

A special place in Birkenau camp, if we are talking about the presence of Jewish children, was the family camp created for Jews deported from the ghetto in Theresienstadt. And this is truly a special place in the history of children in Auschwitz.

This is an exception in terms of Jewish children coming to Auschwitz. Even the youngest had a chance to enter and were registered. They did not go through the selection process. This camp operated from 1943 to 1944 and several thousand children passed through it. Unfortunately, here we have a big problem with the availability of data. We do not have detailed statistics for this camp. We do not know exactly how many children were there. We do not know how many children were born in this camp. Nevertheless, these children were treated slightly differently. That is, radically differently compared to the camp in general. First of all, these children could be with their parents. In fact, segregation applied, the men were in different barracks than the women, they had contact with each other, so the families here were not permanently separated as it was the case in the rest of the camp. So, the very fact that the children stay with their mother somehow gave them certain protection. A certain phenomenon in the camp scheme was the creation of a kindergarten. A so-called children’s garden. It was in the camp for the Jews from Theresienstadt. It was an institution run by the prisoners of the camp and created with children in mind. Those youngest children spent their days there, learn songs and poems, they played. Children older than six went to school where they could also study. Teachers recruited from among prisoners conducted classes there. On the other hand, this state of affairs of privileging these prisoners, not only minors from the family camp, but also adults, did not last long because the camp was liquidated and almost all of its inhabitants were murdered in gas chambers. Earlier, some were sent to camps to work in the Third Reich, and these are the people that survived. Those who stayed in Auschwitz died. So, the apparent privileges these children had did not change their fate. All these children died in the camp.

Another special place is yet another family camp in Birkenau. This time, created for Roma and Sinti people; Roma and Sinti who were deported in large groups with whole families. There is no selection because they were not Jews. They were sent to the family camp. In this way, 11,000 Roma children became prisoners of Auschwitz.

Actually, at the end of January 1943 an order was issued to arrest and deport to Auschwitz all gypsies. All Roma people living in the Reich and in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. These people were brought here starting from February 1943 and detained in section B2e, in the so-called family camp. The Romani camp, the so-called Zigeunerlager, was the first family camp that was established. The first of two that were established in Auschwitz. And it was also in this camp that so-called kindergarten for the youngest children was established. It is not entirely clear what their reasons for it were. It is known that Dr. Mengele participated in this initiative. He kind of noted, agreed and with his permission, the institution operated. Initially, the children received slightly better food. They had certain privileges. They could learn, they could play. However, it didn’t last long. With time, the terrible hygienic and sanitary conditions of this camp, no free access to running water, poor food, all this made these children sick. There were epidemics of typhus in the camp so the fate of these children, if they began to fall ill, was in fact sealed. These children were left untreated. There was nothing to treat them with. Their fate was dramatic. In the end, during the liquidation of the Romani camp, all these children were taken to gas chambers and murdered. Another characteristic phenomenon for the Romani camp is that this is where Dr. Mengele’s experiments on children began. In this nursery, this kindergarten, there were children among whom Dr. Mengele selected victims for his murderous experiments. Later, he also conducted these experiments on Jewish children and on Polish and Belorussian children. But it all started in the Romani camp. And these experiments were conducted without the knowledge, without the consent of not only these children also their parents. Experiments that caused suffering, which for many of them ended in death. Miklos Nisli mentions this in his book: “I was Dr. Mengele’s assistant. That for Dr. Mengele it was important, for example, to compare children, twins. Comparing them, from an anthropological point of view, in terms of their external and internal structure. Consequently, if one of the children died as a result of a disease, the other was immediately murdered so that the internal organs could be compared. So, these children suffered physically as a result of these experiments. And they suffered mentally because they were separated from their parents. They were terrified. These experiments were painful, so the fate of these children despite these apparent privileges, the fate of the gypsy children, certainly cannot be considered lighter or less cruel than the fate of the other children in the camp.

When we talk about numbers, the third of the largest groups of children were Polish children. And looking at the chronology of transports, we’re probably dealing with two large Polish groups. Children, who end up in the camps in very different circumstances, but also, in very different periods of the camps existence which also influence, among other things, the chances of their survival. That is, on the one hand the deportations of the Zamość region and on the other, the period of the Warsaw uprising.

Apart from polish children who were brought in transports of political prisoners there were also two large groups of children. The first was, as you mentioned, children brought from the Zamość region. It was the end of 1942, the beginning of 1943. There were about 100 children among over 1,000 deportees. Virtually, all these children died very shortly after being brough to the camp. The girls were imprisoned with the women in the women’s camp, where they most often died as a result of diseases, as a result of camp conditions, or as a result of exhaustion. On the other hand, the fate of the boys, who were murdered after a short stay in the camp as a whole group with phenol injections into the heart, was particularly traumatic. To conceal this crime, it was ordered to register the deaths in the following days and to register them as deaths of natural causes. So, in their death certificates it was actually written that they died as a result of various diseases, and not as a result of murder. These children had no chance of survival. As I said, they arrived in 1943 with practically two more years till the end. Therefore, they would have to survive a long way in the camp and as you mentioned earlier, time determined their chances of survival. Indeed, those children who arrived at the end of the camp’s existence, while, for obvious reasons, their chances of survival were greater. Only because the time they had to spend in the camp was shorter. Also, because the camp conditions improved to a certain extent over time. So, the chances of survival increased too. The second large group came with people deported from the Warsaw uprising. It was about 1,500 children. So, the group was really huge. These children were placed in a separate barrack. Initially, boys and the girls together with their mothers. Soon the girls were separated from the boys, and the boys were taken to the men’s camp. The mothers, on the other hand, were taken to another barrack. And the girls with small children and pregnant women, as they recall, stayed in barrack 16. Among these children a significant group did survive. This is because they were later transported together with their mothers to camps in the Third Reich near Berlin where they dealt with, among other things, clearing the city after bombings. On the other hand, many of these children did return after the war to Poland. To ruined Warsaw.

What other groups of child prisoners were kept in Auschwitz?

Another large group, about 1,000 children brought from the territories of the Soviet Union, were children brought as a result of pacification actions in the regions of mainly Minsk and Vitebsk, but also Lviv. Those children who were brought to the camp in 1943 were also separated from their mothers and in fact they had to fend for themselves in the camp reality. Many of these children fell victim to the Germanization campaign. They were taken away. Those that were deemed racially valuable were transported from Auschwitz to various centers. First to the resettlement center in Litzmannstadt to Potulice and then to Germany. Some of them managed to establish their identity after the war, however, many of them simply disappeared forever. That’s it.

Let us go back to the subject of infants. When we talk about extermination, we talk about selections, we talk about conditions. The birth of children here was something terrible. That is, their fate was of course terrible. Most of the children born in the camp were murdered. On one hand, again the camp had to deal with these issues somehow. And on other hand, the prisoners in the camp also tried to help somehow or adapt to the situation when infants appeared among the prisoners.

As I mentioned, in 1943 the murders of non-Jewish infants ceased. So, the question of the presence of children in the community of prisoners emerged. Initially, women were allowed to birth children. We are talking about non-Jewish prisoners. At the beginning of 1943, they could have children. On the other hand, these children were murdered in a terrible way as the prisoners would call midwife Schwester Klara, simply took the children their mothers and drowned them in a bucket. The mothers had a chance of survival as long as the delivery was uneventful. As long as there were no infection, and as long as they did not die of exhaustion. However, from most likely May 1943, these infants were left alive. The question is whether or not such an infant had a chance to survive. These children actually were born in 1943. We know examples of children who survived, but these are very few cases. Such a special case is the son of Anna Pfefferling who gave birth at the time when infants were still murdered. Thanks to the help of other prisoners, she hid her son on a bunk, and she managed to hide her child in the block for a long time. How? Hard to say. Certainly, other prisoners had to help her because she couldn’t have done it alone. As Anna Pfefferling herself recalls, after giving birth she had to return to hard work almost immediately, pretending that her condition allowed her to do such work. When the prisoner’s child was discovered in the block, it was already the period when infants were registered as newcomers, and probably thanks to this the child survived. The child was registered, as his mother recalls. Thanks to the help of, among others, nurses, and camp friends, she managed to keep her child alive until liberation. He survived. There is a photo of him in the collection from when he was less than 3 years old. This is, as I said, an exceptional story. Most of these babies died shortly after being born, unless the mother could feed her baby naturally, which was very rare. Most of these women were exhausted and starved. And therefore, could not nurse. If they could nurse, then they were in a very good situation. If not, then the child was not entitled to any food allowance, any milk rations. So, these kids just starved to death. Most often there was no layette provided, so the mothers had to organize in the camp some sheets, some onesies. Here these prisoners mentioned that in the delivery room, which was organized in block 16, and later in block 17, the women exchanged or donated children’s clothes. If they managed to get any when the children grew up, they passed the clothes on to other mothers. Very often, women had to give up their own portion of bread, their own portion of food. They put it away in order to be able to exchange it for some kind of sheet which they would later tear for diapers for their child. There was nowhere to wash them, so if they wanted to wash them, they had to use their portion of herbal tea. If they managed to get water, they did the washing. But again, they could not dry it in a visible place. They dried those diapers on their bunks. So, taking into account the special needs of infants, the conditions were difficult. Most of these children, as I mentioned before, died as a result of a disease, as a result of starvation, as a result of exhaustion. Here, the women who received parcels from home were in a good position because having parcels containing food, any products or clothes, caused that their situation was a bit better. The vast majority of theses infants born in the camp died, although there were cases of babies born in 1944, mainly in the second half of 1944, who actually lived to see liberation. Most of these children struggled with health problems that were a consequence of their stay in the camp, a consequence of malnutrition in these first key months of life, and a consequence of the atmosphere of incessant fear. Importantly, those infants born in the maternity ward, after some time, were taken from mothers as the women were forced to return to work. They were located in a separate block where female prisoners, whose job it was, were to take care of them. However, these were children separated from their mothers, practically left to themselves. So, the emotional losses that they experienced in this first period of life, very often influenced their later fate. As I mentioned, infants were registered as prisoners, they had numbers tattooed on their bodies, most often on their thighs as it was impossible to do so on their hands. Children who were considered racially valuable were not tattooed. Many mothers who gave birth in the camp lived in constant fear not only that their child would die, but also that the child would be picked up and sent to Germany. Germanized that they would never see them again. Also, this emotional atmosphere around camp motherhood was extremely difficult. Indeed, many of these children have never been found.

Today the visitors who come to the memorial site enter the museum from Stanisława Leszczyńska street who is a very important figure when we are talking again about the maternity ward in the camp hospital. The use of such a name doesn’t reflect the tragedy of this place at all. But also speaking of the history of Stanisława Leszczyńska, how she delivered births, how she helped mothers, it must be emphasized here that it was almost impossible to save an infant in the world of Auschwitz. We speak of exceptional cases here, all the efforts of Stanisława Leszczyńska and other women who worked in this primitive maternity ward. All their efforts were focused on the fact that in such poor hygienic conditions in the camp hospital, which de facto was not a hospital, saving the mother is also something worth remembering.

Yes, if we are talking about the maternity ward it is really worth explaining what it was, but as Leszczyńska herself and other prisoners recollect, the maternity ward had about 30 bunks separated by a curtain made of a blanket or some sheets at the end of the hospital barrack. In the first period when the infants were still murdered, the maternity ward was organized in block 24. It was a block in which female prisoners with contagious diseases were kept. Therefore, it is easy to imagine the poor hygienic conditions. How great the mortality must have been also among women giving birth. Later, when Stanisława Leszczyńska came to the camp, many prisoners remember her as the person who took care of pregnant women, who really had their fate at heart and who was not afraid to fight for their rights. So, this maternity ward was moved to block 17. The conditions there were still very difficult. Women were not entitled to any special bedding, special nutrition, or special medications. The tools that doctors and midwives had at their disposal were very primitive. Stanisława Leszczyńska simply had to rely, above all, on her enormous knowledge, on her experience, on her intuition and on her dedication. And it was the weapon she wielded in the fight for the lives of women and children.

We already know where the children were brought from. We know and we can see how diverse this group was, what was the diversity and different age of the children, their different categorization by the Germans, because we are talking Jewish children, non-Jewish children, Polish, Romani. How is it translated into their fate in the camp?

As I mentioned, Jewish children, their fate was the most difficult, the most terrible, and their chances of survival were the lowest. Firstly, because at the time of entering the camp, only a few percent had a chance of getting into the camp, and these were slightly older children, not the youngest. Almost until the end of the camp’s existence, selections of people unable to work were carried out in the camp. These selections in 1943 were ceased in relation to non-Jewish prisoners, while in relation to Jewish prisoners they were conducted almost to the very end. So here again, Jewish children were much more at risk. The third issue is that if Jewish children were sent to the camp, for them there were no separate children’s blocks. They ended up in blocks together with adult prisoners and were treated like adults. They had to work hard, they were starved, they were beaten, they lived under these traumatic conditions. So, they chances were much smaller than, for example, the chances of children who ended up in the children’s block. Because, for example, children from the Warsaw uprising, they did not go out for heavy outdoor work, construction work, and field work. They also worked, but in the block and in this respect, their chances to survive were slightly better. At the beginning I mentioned the bricklaying school which so existed until almost the end of the camp’s existence. Initially, its students if one could say so, were only Polish prisoners. Later, along with the increase in the number of Jewish prisoners, a change was visible in the bricklaying school and with time, Jewish prisoners constituted an increasing percentage of its students. And despite the fact that they were later sent as graduates to do heavy construction work in the camp, their chances of survival were slightly better. This is because in the camp professionals with specific skills were needed for the expansion of the camp and the existence of the camp. Such people were valued. Their chances of survival were greater than of those prisoners who, having no specialist qualifications, were sent to work outside the camp for hard work in the field is completely unskilled workers. This bricklaying school, as many of those boys graduated, may have saved their lives. It was thanks to the fact that they could actually acquire a specific profession needed in the camp. As for those children who stayed in the barracks together with adult prisoners, here from their memories we can see various works that they had to do in the camp. For example, Maurice Cling mentions that the worst job he had to do was work related to carrying, well, Maurice Cling writes directly that he had to carry shit in buckets. Sorry for the use of such a word, but as Morris himself recalls, these were not excrements, it was nothing else but shit and that’s the word to use here. This work was not only physically tiring for him because carrying these excrements as physically exhausting, but it was work that made him lonely in the prisoner community. Because he was returning from work, dirty, stinking, other prisoners laugh at him. He was a teenage boy at the time, and other prisoners not only made fun of him, but also rejected him and he felt completely lonely. So, this work caused not only physical exhaustion, not only exposed him to infection with diseases, and not only reduced his chances of survival, but also made him an alienated person out of the prisoner community.