August 10th, 2011
Records show that there were approximately 232 thousand children under the age of 18 deported to Auschwitz. At first, all children were sent to the gas chambers, though some were spared once laborers became limited. If a child managed to avoid the gas chambers, they were put to work doing heaving labor. Boys were chosen to work most often, and first assigned to be masons in the crematories. However in 1943, once the work was completed, the boys were all put to death through phenol injections. The boys that escaped that fate either died from malnutrition or were forced to endure sexual abuse by the German overseers.
Disease was also a common cause of death. Between the contaminated water and rats and desolate living conditions, children succumbing to illness became natural. They lived in barracks similar to the adults, though some were lucky enough to live in the camp hospital where they had access to blankets and medicine some of the time.
The children born in Auschwitz barely got a chance to live. Pregnant women were gassed until 1943, when the women registered in Auschwitz were allowed to bear children. These babies, unless of Aryan origin, were taken to be drowned. The babies who appeared to be of proper German descent were registered in the camp-card index by getting tattooed on their thighs. After two months, if the infants survived, they were taken away to be raised as Germans without any Jewish influence. If mothers refused to give them up, then they were gassed with their children.
Many children underwent experimentation during their time in Auschwitz. Josef Mengele was one of the many who tortured Jewish children by placing them in pressure chambers, drugging them or castrating them. Mengele also conducted violent studies on twins before killing them. Herta Oberhauser was another individual who killed children by injecting them with oils and removing their limbs and organs.
The 700 some odd children that survived until liberation suffered from exhaustion, vitamin deficiency, malnutrition, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Most had only spent a few months in the confines of Auschwitz, but it left its mark.