“We spent the whole uprising in the bunker (…). Finally, convinced that they had killed the very last Jew in the ghetto, Germans calmed slightly and stopped tracking and sniffing so much. Under the shadow of the night, we continued our underground life that stopped during the day. I left the bunker after nearly 9 months. There were still four of us: my brother, Rafał, brother’s wife, Anka, the youngest brother 13 year old Yidl and me. All four were living dead. We were carried out, nobody was able to stand. We lived in the cellar of the burned building. Unfortunately, a few days later my little brother died, Rafał was caught and killed by Germans in January 1944. We kept changing the place we stayed because with time each was becoming unsafe…” this is how 7 year old Hena Kuczer remembers the hell of the Holocaust.  

Long months spent underground, fear, humiliation, loneliness, separation with the relatives, hunger and insecure future – this is the daily life of the Jewish children during WW2. Only few of them were able to survive. Selected records of those who survived made up a multimedia presentation prepared by the Shalom Foundation “Holocaust through a Child’s Eyes.” Clashed with the tragic life during the Holocaust time, the memories of the carefree childhood before the war, historic photographs are complemented with the commentary and truthfully render the scale of this huge tragedy. Six million people were murdered during the Holocaust. Men, women and children died only because they were born Jewish…

Educational material about the situation of the Jewish children during German occupation was completed by the Shalom Foundation on the occasion of the 65^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Presentation was prepared for the secondary schools. The fragments that were selected show the truth of the time and at the same time they do not shock with too much cruelty and violence. We welcome the teachers to use the material during the history classes as the introduction to the discussion about the Holocaust during WW2.

„Holocaust through a child’s eyes” – script: Wiesława Młynarczyk, Bogusław Jędruszczak, Robert Szuchta; project originator and creator: Gołda Tencer; historical consultation: Paweł Szapiro, doc. dr hab. Andrzej Żbikowski.

W prezentacji wykorzystano zdjęcia ze zbiorów: Fundacji Shalom, Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu oraz z Tek Edukacyjnych Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej „Auschwitz. Pamięć dla przeszłości” i „Zagłada Żydów polskich w czasie II wojny światowej”.

Przygotowany materiał zawiera fragmenty publikacji „Kinder über den Holocaust. Frühe Zeugnisse 1944-1948.” opr.: Feliks Tych, Alfons Kenkmann, Elizabeth Kohlhaas, Andreas Eberhardt; współpraca: Edyta Kurek, Jürgen Hensel, Dennis Riffel, Michaela Christ; Metropol Verlag, Berlin 2007 oraz relacje z publikacji „Dzieci Holokaustu mówią”.

Specjalne podziękowania dla Edyty Kurek z ŻIH za pomoc w wyborze relacji dzieci.

Readers: Ewa Dąbrowska (Dora Soberman), Wiesława Młynarczyk (Estera Borensztajn), Sylwia Najah (Ola Mandel), Hanna Pałuba (Hena Kuczer), Małgorzata Trybalska (Renia Knoll, Zofia Minc), Monika Zwierzchowska (Erna, Lila Miitler), Marcin Błaszak (narrator, Seweryn Dalecki).