Where Some Children Go, According to Ellie Wiesel

“By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow told me about the crimes committed by the Turks and Circassiansin all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They nail their prisoners to the fences by the ears, leave them so till morning. And in the morning they hang them. These Turks took pleasure in torturing the children, too; Cutting the unborn child from the mother womb. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They’ve planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby’s face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby’s face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn’t it?”

To avoid compassion fatigue, there are a few issues I can ignore in life, and some others I am able to glace away from or simply shrug at. Child abuse is not one of them. For as long as humans have been surrounding earth, children have been in pain, suffering. 

All the dead kids' parents are wondering: Why did Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 and injured 25 students when they decided to bring their guns to school one day? 

In the past it was thought that children suffered because the parents had sinned, and if the child was born blind, then the parents’ sin was very big. Others think it’s simply the way life operates, no good can ever come from all good, there must be some bad in order generate the good in this world. The human brain has no capacity for gaps in the light of missing answers, some theory must exist for the reason behind suffering. There is no comfort is not knowing.

“Poor devils, you’re going to crematory. He seemed to be telling the truth. Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load – little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it – Saw it with my own eyes… Those children in the flames… I pinched my face, was I still alive?

“It’s a shame, a shame you couldn’t have gone with your mother, I saw several boys of your age go with their mothers…” His voice was terribly sad. I realized that he did not want to see what they were going to do to me. He did not want to see the burning of his only son.”

If we lived by the belief that children suffer due to their parents sins, we would think about what the father had done so bad to deserve to see his son be burned right in front of him? What has his father done that’s so bad to allow his child to watch other children suffer? Why couldn’t the father have a punishment involving himself only? This idea still somewhat exists in most societies, that the bad things you do will come back to you through your children. 

Certainly many don’t think like this anymore, bad things happen and it's not related to one's commitment to sin. Was evil the primal reason that drove Nazis to throw kids in a ditch of fire? How far can evil go? Like that man who stripped a young boy naked and set his hounds of dogs chasing after him as punishment. That boy was no longer alive after his punishment. He met death by being torn apart by dogs, literally. 

“Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams into dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am considered to live as long as God himself. Never.”

These stories are mere examples of the many ways Nazis consumed torturous methods to eradicate Jews in WII. Nowhere near ethical or morally acceptable. Children were killed because of a religion they did not choose, because of a race they had no control to be a part of, because they were put in a life they did not want to be in. millions died because of what their parents were labeled as, and millions more suffered. More than 70,000,000 people died throughout the war, nearly 20,000,000 Chinese, and about seven million Jews. Nearly two million British children were forced to be evacuated from the cities that were being bombed by the Germans, away from their families’, children as young as eight. They were taught at young ages how to use a gas mask, hide, and how to live with strangers. Suffering infects children’s minds and imagination. It is a powerful force. We see the same happening today with children living in Middle Eastern war-torn areas and elsewhere. 

As the Nazis, one by one, tortured and murdered anyone that wasn’t like one of their own including Romani, people with disabilities, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish, Soviet civilians, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, Slavic people and other political and religious opponents; Aka: nearly everyone. And before long they’ve conquered Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and France in 1940, and Yugoslavia and Greece, think of all the children affected in those countries alone. All the pain and suffering life and the decisions of free willed adults have put them through.

“Total silence throughout the camp. On the horizon, the sun was setting. “Bare your heads!” Yelled the head of the camp. His voice was raucous. We were weeping. “Cover your heads!” Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. Their tongues hung swollen, blue-tinged. But the third rope was still moving; being so light, the child was still alive… for more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look at him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red; his eyes were not yet glazed.”

Note that the author was a child himself witnessing these events in the war. And he could have been killed at any moment just as those other children. Who would tell his story?

It has become common to see a dying child in the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto. Soldiers would bang on doors of European Jews, scare the crap out of them, and shoot someone before they leave, perhaps even throw a disabled elderly out of the 5th floor balcony just because they can. Many children would arrive to extermination camps (or death camps), taken off from the train and forced into gas chambers to be eliminated, like bugs. Some chambers held up to 1,200 people, so they would all die at the same time, making the process of death easier, and faster, causing thousands more children to suffer in agony for their dead families.

The children who suffered during WWII, and the children who continue to suffer today, are eye opening ways we see how adults are destroying the world's butterflies, our children. In their purest form, they are being ruined. How could children see the world's potential for a better place when abuse and assault is the earliest form of treatment they are subject to? After being kicked out of her own home? After being forced to walk for endless kilometres, in the cold, waiting for hours and nights, with no water or shelter, in the freezing winter, forced to work, and ultimately, collapse and die either from starvation, disease, or a fire ditch where all the other children are being thrown away?

Children deserve better.

We allow evil to endure itself in our world until consumes us entirely. It first started with forcing Jews to wear David’s star around the upper arms to tell them apart from the rest; Discrimination before anybody had time to spell it out. Then things progressed and locked Jewish people into there own world, surrounded by walls, shunned from their homes, with no money and barely any food. 

Many Jewish writers, story tellers and historians gifted us with their writing to walk us through their experiences during that time period, walking in the filthy streets, trying to make their way to what was to be called home. Stepping and moving away from the dead adults and children just lying on the street to rot, and guiltily ignoring the child that just begged for a piece of your tiny bread you’re supposed to feed a family of eight with. Arriving to a “home” that’s so dirty even rats would refuse to live in it. Watch, watch as your son is being taken away, as you daughter starves to death, watch your father being tortured. Your house is burnt; your family is torn apart, perhaps dead for all you know. But the worst part might be feeling yourself break, feeling useless, worthless, and empty. There’s nothing you can do but watch, watch what is happening around you, and pray? Pray hard, because you might not be alive tomorrow, you might not be alive in a few hours.

Being “able” in the absence of good, is the alcohol that heals the germ of suffering, the song that erases the pain. Selfish human beings with the free will to do, but how free are we truly when it's an order we have to follow, a norm we must adhere by? Set by others before us in a decision we were not part of. With one decision that can create complete destruction, there's another decision that could have saved those children being burnt in ditches.

It’s up to us to change old decisions and clean disasters that were left behind for us. Through policy and compassion, a lot is possible.