Dramatizing Childhood Survivor Trauma

The Nazis murdered approximately 1.5 million children during the Holocaust. ¹ Children who entered the extermination camps were gassed immediately; adolescents who were old enough to work were spared. Teenagers who were interned in concentration camps, labor camps, or extermination camps suffered the same traumata as adults, but the separation from parents and family members exacerbated their psychiatric problems. J. Tas, a psychiatrist who was interned at Bergen-Belsen in 1944, describes the children there as behaving “psychopathically” because of the desocializing nature of the camp. ² Even children who had parents interned in the camp found that because parents were engaged in work all day, the lack of supervision led to children wandering aimlessly, eventually becoming wanton. Tas noted that children interned in concentration camps displayed unusual symptoms of irritability, fits of rage and aggression, phobias and nocturnal anxieties, and frequent bouts of enuresis. ³