Full
statistics for the tragic fate of children who died during
the Nazi genocide - Holocaust
- will never be known. Estimates
range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure
includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of
thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of
institutionalized handicapped children.
Nazi
persecution, arrests, and deportations were directed against
all members of Jewish families
without concern for age. Plucked from their homes and
stripped of their childhoods, the children had witnessed the
murder of parents, siblings, and relatives. They faced
starvation, illness and brutal labor, until they were consigned to the gas chambers.
In
Auschwitz - in order to cut expenses and save gas -
cost-accountant
considerations led to an order to place living children
directly into the ovens or throw them into open burning
pits. The
children with a yellow star lived and died during the dark years of the Holocaust,
victims of the Nazi regime ...
Like little Georges Halpern, who was being sheltered with
other children in The Children's Home in Izieu in the hope
that the Nazis would not find them. The little boy wrote to
his mother:
"Chere
Maman, I send you 10000000000 kisses. Your son who loves you
very much. There are big mountains and the village is very
pretty. There are a lot of farms and we look for
blackberries and raspberries and white mulberries. I hug you
with all my heart. Georgy."
On
the morning of April 6, 1944, as they all settled down in
the refectory to drink hot chocolate, the Nazis raided the
Home, throwing the crying and terrified children on to the
trucks like sacks of potatoes.
The children were deported to Auschwitz and killed ..
