Targeting the Most Vulnerable: Klaus Barbie and the Izieu Children's Home

Targeting the Most Vulnerable: Klaus Barbie and the Izieu Children's Home

How heartbreaking! In 1944 the Nazis decided to exterminate the children of the orphanage La Maison d'Izieu. 44 little children were deported to Auschwitz and murdered immediately upon arrival. Eleven-year-old Liliane Gerenstein was sent to her death a few days after she wrote a letter to God: "God? How good You are, how kind and if one had to count the number of goodnesses and kindnesses You have done, one would never finish. God? It is You who command. It is You who are justice, it is You who reward the good and punish the evil. God? It is thanks to You that I had a beautiful life before, that I was spoiled, that I had lovely things that others do not have. God? After that, I ask You one thing only: Make my parents come back, my poor parents protect them (even more than You protect me) so that I can see them again as soon as possible. Make them come back again. Ah! I had such a good mother and such a good father! I have such faith in You and I thank You in advance." Soon after she wrote the letter, she and the other children at Izieu were taken to Auschwitz and gassed...... Read letter and the story

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Here is what you should know through a fence at the ghetto's central prison where children, the sick, and the elderly were held before deportation to Chelmno during the "Gehsperre" action. Lodz, Poland, September 1942. CHILDREN DURING THE HOLOCAUST Children were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution. Some were targeted on supposed racial grounds, such as Jewish youngsters. Others were targeted for biological reasons, such as patients with physical or mental disabilities, or because of their alleged resistance or political activities. As many as 1.5 million Jewish children alone were murdered or died at the hands of Nazi officials or their collaborators. The Nazis did not single out children specifically because they were children, but because of their alleged membership in dangerous racial, biological, or political groups. Along with elderly people, children had the lowest rate of survival in concentration camps and killing centers. People over fifty years of age, pregnant women, and young children were immediately sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other killing centers. Thousands of Jewish children survived, however, many because they were hidden. With identities disguised, and often physically concealed from the outside world, these youngsters faced constant fear, dilemmas, and danger.

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