Children in the Warsaw Ghetto

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how many worked with the Jewish underground resistance to organize soup kitchens, hospitals, orphanages, press, cultural opportunities, and, for a brief period, four elementary schools for the Jewish Warsaw ghetto children. The paper specifically refers to the orphanage led by Janusz Korczak and discusses how the Nazis would administer capital punishment to those children caught smuggling food or ammunition into the ghetto. The paper also looks at how Polish nurse Irena Sendler smuggled children out of the ghetto until the ghetto was emptied. The paper shows how the suffering of humanity's smallest, most innocent victims brings into sharp focus the calamity of WWII.

From the Paper:

"While works like The Diary of Anne Frank, John Boorman's film Hope and Glory, and Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun have treated war as something of a fantasy playground for children, it seems of particular interest to address the toll of WWII on the children in the largest of the Nazi-established Jewish ghettos in a walled-in section of occupied Warsaw. When the Ghetto was first established, the Nazis ordered a cessation to education for all children past elementary age, leading to roughly sixty thousand children of school age suddenly left without occupation. The idea was to allow workers, not thinkers, but there was a dedicated call by the inhabitants that their provisional leadership establish clandestine schools - even colleges - for their young."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Arahovites, Christian. "He Stayed with His Children". An End to Intolerance, Volume 5, June 1997.
• Lifton, Betty Jean, The King of Children: The Life and Death of Janusz Korczak, St. Martin's Griffin, New York 0-3112-15560.
• Ringelblum, Emmanuel. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.
• Milken, Lowell. "Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Story". Milken Family Foundation. September 12, 2001.
• Mierzejewski, Marcin. "Sendler's Children". Warsaw Voice, September 25, 2003.

More papers on Children in the Warsaw Ghetto:

• Analytical Essay # 140641 : "The Warsaw Ghetto: Resistance To Genocide"
• Cause and Effect Essay # 7568 : "Deaf Children in the Classroom"
• Analytical Essay # 140734 : "African-American Children in the Foster Care System"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: