Kinder KZ

Kinder KZ

Kinder KZ

Roll-call for boys at the main children's concentration camp in Łódź, to which KZ Dzierżązna for Polish girls as young as eight, belonged to as a sub-camp

Ghetto plan

Kinder-KZ inside Litzmannstadt Ghetto; map, KZ marked with number 15 (red)

Kinder-KZ Litzmannstadt (German: Polen-Jugendverwahrlager der Sicherheitspolizei in Litzmannstadt, Polish: Prewencyjny Obóz Policji Bezpieczeństwa dla Młodzieży Polskiej w Łodzi) was a Nazi German concentration camp for Polish Christian children in occupied Łodź during World War II, established in December 1942 adjacent to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto where Polish Jews were imprisoned before the Holocaust.[1]

History

Separated from one another only by a high fence made of planks, the children's camp was located within the Ghetto section of the city bordering roughly today's streets of Bracka, Emilii Plater, Gornicza, and Zagajnikowa. The main gate of the camp was located on Przemyslowa Street (Gewerbestrasse).[2] Kinder KZ was run from 1941 to 1945. The prisoners were Polish children of deported Poles from all Polish provinces. The Nazis kept an eye out for Polish children with Nordic racial characteristics, those among them found to be classified as "racially valuable" were sent from here to the German Reich for adoption and Germanisation to be raised as Germans. About 3,000 (between 12,000 and 13,000 according to International Tracing Service) children were forced into passing through the camp .[3] The 1,600 child labourers performed work closely connected with the industrial output of the ghetto, with Jewish instructors.[2] The youngest ones on record were merely two years old, while most of them were aged between 8 and 14.[3][4]

The Broken Heart Monument commemorating martyrdom of children in Łódź.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Joanna Podolska, Dorota Dekiert, Traces of the Litzmannstadt Getto. A guide to the past, Piatek Trzynastego, 2004, ISBN 83-7415-001-7.
  2. 1 2 The camp for Polish children Przemystowa Street (Gewerbestrasse) Lodz-Ghetto.com homepage.
  3. 1 2 ITS, Erecting the Lodz Ghetto February 1940 International Tracing Service. Internet Archive. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
  4. ↑ Michael Hepp, Denn ihrer ward die Hölle. Kinder und Jugendliche im "Jugendverwahrlager Litzmannstadt" (For they lived through hell. Children and Adolescents in the “Litzmannstadt Camp taking custody of children and adolescents”), in: Mitteilungen der Dokumentationsstelle zur NS-Sozialpolitik (Announcements of the Documentation Agency on Nazi social policy), April 1986, copy 11/12, pp. 49-71

Bibliography

Coordinates: 51°47′36″N 19°28′32″E / 51.79333°N 19.47556°E / 51.79333; 19.47556

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