Focus on Children in the Holocaust and explain the Causes of death.
German forces established ghettos early in the war in many Polish towns and cities such as Warsaw and Łódź. In them, Jewish children died from starvation and exposure as well as lack of adequate clothing and shelter. The German authorities were indifferent to this mass death because they considered most of the younger ghetto children to be unproductive and hence "useless eaters". Strict control was enforced over the inhabitants of the ghettos, and the food provided was deliberately limited. From 1942 onwards, the ghetto program ended. Inhabitants of the ghettos were murdered at various death camps. Because children were generally too young to be deployed as forced labor, they were particularly vulnerable to being killed: they were one of the main groups in the first deportations to killing centers or in mass shootings near mass graves along with the elderly, the ill, and the disabled. Children who were healthy enough for labor were often worked to death doing jobs to benefit the camp; other times, children were forced to do unnecessary jobs like digging ditches.
Non-Jewish children from certain other targeted groups were not spared. In the Auschwitz concentration camp, Romani children were killed. Meanwhile, five to seven thousand children died as victims of a "euthanasia" program. Others were murdered in reprisals, including most of the children of Lidice; many children in villages in the occupied parts of the Soviet Union were killed with their parents.
Auschwitz Warsaw Łódź Auschwitz concentration camp Lidice concentration camp Romani Polish killing centers death camp ghetto Soviet Union Jewish