How to Explain the Holocaust to Kids
Teaching your child about the Holocaust does not require any age limit. Even the youngest of children can understand simply things. It is important to teach children about genocide and racism which were the causes of the Holocaust. The Holocaust involved the death of 6 million Jewish people and at least another million Gypsies and people believed to be gay.
After World War 1, the German economy was hit hard by the reparations that they had to pay to the Allied nations for losing the war. In addition the Great Depression around the world hit Germany hard and unemployment reached new records. Hitler rose to power as he blamed the Jews and used them as scapegoats for starting the Depression. Pograms were initiated in which the German government allowed Germans to murder and steal from Jewish shops, stores and homes. Then the concentration camps like Aushwitz and Berkenow were set up. Once someone entered one of these death camps, they were near seen from again because they were killed within a couple of weeks or months.
During the Holocaust people were rounded up and taken from their homes and sent to ghettos. In these ghettos people were deprived of food and shelter and hundreds of thousands of people died. Then once people were all gathered in one location, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler had his soldiers force the people onto cattle cars which contained no air to breathe and people were stuffed into these train cars inhumanely.
Those trains brought the people to the concentration camps which was the last stop of the people before they were killed. The Germans then killed the Jewish people by using gas chambers and incinerators. Bodies that were not even dead yet were mercilessly thrown into huge fires in which people were killed while they were still alive. Their bodies were burnt up in hte fire and black smoke poured out of the factory chimneys where millions of people were being slaughtered.
In the gas chambers the showers poured out poisonous gas instead of water for a shower. In other situations Jewish people were ordered to stand in a line as German sodliers lined up and shot the people dead on the spot. Then mass graves were dug in which bodies were thrown into the mass graves. Once bullets for killing people became too costly, people were thrown into the insinerators and burnt alive.
The belongings of the millions of people who were murdered were put aside and lined up which is how the Nazis knew how many people they had killed at each concentration camp. At the concentration camps anyone who could work was put to work while anyone who was old or too young to work was sentenced to death. The Nazis split apart families and killed as many people as they could round up and kill.
Before the Holocaust ended with the ending of World War 2, the Nazis had left their mark on Europe as the Jewish population was decimated.
Everyone must tell children about the Holocaust. In the age in which we live in, racism is still very much alive, especially in Europe where blacks are called “monkeys” and taunted by people. Even Jewish people are still being treated poorly and as second class citizens as violence against Jewish people still takes place while the government does nothing.
Tolerance of other people and the Holocaust must be taught to children so that they understand that such a horrific event must never happen ever again.
