The Children of WWII -part 5

A child is born with no state of mind,blind to the ways of mankind.

During WWII,as in any other war, all the children were victims,without exception.Of course the degree and severity on 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.

The picture above is of three young evacuees sit on their suitcases ready for their journey away from the danger of the city. England. 1940.

An elderly woman and several children walk to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland. 1944.

A horde of children wearing gas masks carry out a practice evacuation of a school in Kingston, Greater London, after a canister of tear gas was discharged. 1941.

Jewish children, survivors of Auschwitz, stand with a nurse behind a barbed wire fence. Poland. February 1945.

Two little girls read a board advertising carrots instead of ice pops. Wartime shortages of chocolate and ice cream made such substitutions a necessity. Location unspecified. 1941.

A group of London children inspect bomb damage outside their front door. 1944.

American Supply Sergeant Ralph Gordon kneels in a street to give a piece of gum to a barefoot German girl during the Allied occupation after the war. Scheinfeld, Germany. October 1945.

A young “Sergeant Major” inspects some British schoolboys who have been evacuated to Kent at the start of the war. The “soldiers” are carrying carry wooden guns. 1939.

Pre-school children on the way to their barrack homes from morning class at a Japanese-American intern camp.

London children wear their gas masks as they skip in the park at their temporary homes on the south coast of England. 1940.

A young child named Freddie Somer cries upon arriving at King’s Cross Station in London for wartime relocation. 1939.

Mothers and their children step out of the train at Auschwitz concentration camp. Poland.