History of Sorts

“A child is born with no state of mind, blind to the ways of mankind.”(From the song “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, written by Melle Mel and Duke Bootee.)

During World War II, as in any other war, all the children were victims, without exception. Of course, the degree and severity of how they were victims had a significant difference. Some lost their lives, while others lost their innocence. Many of those who lost their innocence had to live with the emotional scars for the rest of their lives, for they had been forced to do things no child should ever have to do.

The only “crime” they committed was being born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and sometimes to the wrong parents.

Many of the photos below are pictures of children from the war years. Some of these images may be distressing, but I feel it is important to show them.

These children are eating carrots on sticks instead of ice cream.

Children from East London hold up pieces of anti-aircraft shell fragments they have collected.

A young child leaning next to her dead Mother in a camp for civilians somewhere in the Soviet Union.

Adolescent German prisoners of war—almost children—in an American prison camp shortly after the end of World War II.

Children being evacuated by train out of Berlin, Germany.

Two young brothers, seated for a family photograph in the Kovno ghetto. One month later, they were deported to the Majdanek camp.

A photograph of orphaned children within the Lodz ghetto.

Lodz, Poland, 1941, Nachman Zonabend distributing sweets to children at Hanukkah.

Ravensbrück, Germany

Family members say goodbye to a child through a fence at the ghetto’s central prison where children, the sick, and the elderly were held before deportation.

Children practising first aid with dolls. They are playing in a bomb-damaged house during the Blitz.

The child soldiers

Jewish babies

Nursery school children at play wearing their gas masks.