Lasting Embrace: The Bond Between Mothers and Children During the Holocaust
These photos from the Museum’s collection illustrate the unyielding bond between mothers and their children in both harsh and happier times from the start of World War II and the Holocaust, and in the years after. Facing heartbreaking decisions and an uncertain future, these mothers did everything they could to survive and to ensure the safety of their own children, and in some cases, to protect other children in danger.
1939
A Polish mother and child amid the rubble on a street in Warsaw, Poland. It had been bombed during the German invasion, marking the start of World War II.
1940
The Jewish girl in this portrait, Catherine Gotteszmann (later Salomon), is pictured with her mother, Helene (Honig) Gotteszmann. Catherine was born in 1937 in Paris. In 1940, her father, Eugene, who was from Hungary, was serving as a foreign military volunteer in the French Army and was taken prisoner by the Germans. He spent the remainder of the war as a POW in Germany. Helene and Catherine fled Paris to the south of France. Catherine was placed in the care of a French peasant family, the Gomezes, until the end of the war. Helene lived elsewhere under false papers and occasionally visited her daughter. Soon after liberation, all three Gotteszmanns were reunited, and in 1955 the family immigrated to Venezuela.
1940
Jadwiga Wanda Wlodek, a Polish mother pictured with her sons, Krystyn and Janusz, rescued a Jewish baby, Jurek Kaiser (later known as Gerald), who was born in 1940 in Kielce, Poland. The family, including Jadwiga’s husband, Stanislaw, cared for Jurek while his parents were at a forced labor camp. Jurek’s father was killed in 1942 or 1943. His mother was transferred to two other camps but survived the Holocaust.
Stanislaw became active in the Polish underground. Germans arrested Jadwiga during an anti-partisan action and deported her to Auschwitz, where she was killed in 1943 or 1944. While Stanislaw hid in the forest, his teenage sons cared for Jurek. When word got out that Jurek was Jewish, he went to live with Stanislaw’s sister in another village until he could be reunited with his mother, Cesia.
1947
Jurek and Cesia (pictured above kneeling next to her son) spent four years in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp before immigrating to Israel in 1950. In 1957 they moved to the United States.
1942
A Jewish refugee mother and child at the Hotel Bompard internment camp in Marseilles, France. Bompard was one of three hotels used as transit camps for foreign-born women and children beginning in 1940. Many of the women’s husbands were incarcerated at Les Milles, another transit camp. Those interned in the hotels and at Les Milles were primarily Jewish refugees who had made arrangements to emigrate, but had not yet received the required funds and/or documentation to do so.
Conditions in the hotel internment camps were never comfortable and deteriorated dramatically as the war progressed. At Bompard, 250 inmates lived in 25 rooms of a two-story building. The internees suffered from malnutrition, poor hygiene, vermin, insufficient clothing, lack of heat, and limited electricity. Though life was difficult, they could leave the hotels on a daily basis and received assistance from several relief organizations. The Jewish internees who were unable to emigrate or make other arrangements were rounded up in August 1942 and taken to Les Milles. A few weeks later, the first deportation convoys left for Auschwitz.
Circa 1946–47
This photo of a mother and her child was taken at a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration camp for Jewish displaced persons in Grugliasco, Italy. UNRRA provided economic assistance to European nations after World War II and repatriated refugees who came under Allied control.
Circa 1947–1952
A mother and child, who were displaced persons, on the ship bringing them to the United States from Europe.
Children were especially vulnerable to Nazi persecution, according to the Museum’s Holocaust Encyclopedia. Some were targeted on supposed racial grounds, such as Jewish youngsters. Others were targeted for biological reasons, such as patients with physical or mental disabilities, or because of their alleged resistance or political activities. As many as 1.5 million Jewish children alone were murdered or died at the hands of Nazi officials or their collaborators. Continue reading
Read more:
A Boy with a Piercing Gaze: What Was His Fate during the Holocaust?
When Disabled Children Can’t Get Visas, Parents Face a Heartbreaking Decision
Rohingya mothers and fathers will try everything to protect their children from harm, which has now included a genocide and a global pandemic
