"Enemies of the State"
© Meg Greene Malvasi
"I think of nothing: not what I am losing, nor what I have just lost, not what is in store for me. I do not see the streets before me, the people passing by. I only feel that I am terribly weary, I feel that an insult, a hurt is burning inside me."
---Yitzhak Rudashevski, 14 years old, Vilna, Poland, died 1943
Yitzhak Rudashevski was one of 1.2 million Jewish children to die at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. (Imagine the entire population of the city of Chicago or of the entire state of Maine disappearing! That is how many Jewish children died in the Holocaust.) From infants to teenagers, few were spared. They died, either in the concentration camps or the Jewish ghettos, succumbing to disease, malnutrition, overwork, horrendous "scientific" and "medical" experiments, torture, or execution.
In 1933, approximately 9 million Jews lived in communities scattered throughout Europe. During the years 1933-1945, however, more than 6 million Jews perished because of Adolf Hitler's desire to make Europe Judenrein, or "Jew Pure." Hitler believed that the Jewish people were evil, and were largely responsible for many of problems of the Aryan, or German people. During the years Hitler ruled Germany, the military wing of the Nazi Party, beginning with the SA and continuing under the SS, carried out the systematic extermination of Jews throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Hitler also sought to exterminate the Gypsies, the infirm, the senile, and the retarded, and to subject the Poles and Slavs, whom he regarded as subhuman, to slavery. By the end of the Second World War in 1945, estimates suggest that approximately 2 out of every 3 Jews (67 percent) had died as the result of Hitler's "final solution." Although Jewish children were not special targets of the Nazi terror, they often met the same fate as their parents and other family members simply because they were Jewish.
Today they came for my bicycle. I threw myself on the ground, [and] held on to the back wheel. . . . One of the policeman was very annoyed and said: 'No Jew kid is entitled to keep a bicycle anymore. The Jews aren't entitled to bread anymore; they shouldn't guzzle everything.' You can imagine dear diary how I felt when they were saying this."
---Eva Heymann, 13 years old, Varad, Romania, died 1944.
---Yitzhak Rudashevski, 14 years old, Vilna, Poland, died 1943
Yitzhak Rudashevski was one of 1.2 million Jewish children to die at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. (Imagine the entire population of the city of Chicago or of the entire state of Maine disappearing! That is how many Jewish children died in the Holocaust.) From infants to teenagers, few were spared. They died, either in the concentration camps or the Jewish ghettos, succumbing to disease, malnutrition, overwork, horrendous "scientific" and "medical" experiments, torture, or execution.
In 1933, approximately 9 million Jews lived in communities scattered throughout Europe. During the years 1933-1945, however, more than 6 million Jews perished because of Adolf Hitler's desire to make Europe Judenrein, or "Jew Pure." Hitler believed that the Jewish people were evil, and were largely responsible for many of problems of the Aryan, or German people. During the years Hitler ruled Germany, the military wing of the Nazi Party, beginning with the SA and continuing under the SS, carried out the systematic extermination of Jews throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Hitler also sought to exterminate the Gypsies, the infirm, the senile, and the retarded, and to subject the Poles and Slavs, whom he regarded as subhuman, to slavery. By the end of the Second World War in 1945, estimates suggest that approximately 2 out of every 3 Jews (67 percent) had died as the result of Hitler's "final solution." Although Jewish children were not special targets of the Nazi terror, they often met the same fate as their parents and other family members simply because they were Jewish.
Today they came for my bicycle. I threw myself on the ground, [and] held on to the back wheel. . . . One of the policeman was very annoyed and said: 'No Jew kid is entitled to keep a bicycle anymore. The Jews aren't entitled to bread anymore; they shouldn't guzzle everything.' You can imagine dear diary how I felt when they were saying this."
---Eva Heymann, 13 years old, Varad, Romania, died 1944.
The copyright of the article "Enemies of the State" in History For Children is owned by Meg Greene Malvasi. Permission to republish "Enemies of the State" in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
