Addendum: Children in Auschwitz Helena Kubica
I
t is very hard to estimate the number of children deported to Auschwitz, the number registered in the camp as prisoners, and the number of children who died or were killed there. The extant records do not provide a reliable basis
for such a calculation. All we can say on the basis of those of the camp’s documents which have survived and general estimates is that there were about 232 thousand children and young people under 18 in the over 1.3 million persons deported to Auschwitz ‑Birkenau. This figure entails about 216 thousand Jewish children and adolescents, 11 thousand Roma, at least 3 thousand Poles, and over one thousand Belarusians, Russians, Ukrainians, and others. The camp’s registers record about 10% of this figure – just over 23.5 thousand children and young people of all nationalities – either as named individuals or entered collectively. Children and young people accounted for about 6% of the total of 400 registered inmates. Most of the children arrived in Auschwitz with their families in a variety of operations against entire national or social groups.
About the author: Helena Kubica is a historian and worked at the research centre of the Auschwitz ‑Birkenau State Museum from 1977 to 2018. She is the author of numerous publications concerning topics such as the youngest prisoners of Auschwitz‑Birkenau concentration camp, Josef Mengele’s pseudo‑medical experiments, the murder of Poles displaced from the Zamość Region and from the insurrectionary Warsaw in Auschwitz, and the sub-camps of Auschwitz‑Birkenau.
This paper was first delivered on 24 January 2018, during the annual meeting held by the Kraków Medical Society, the Jagiellonian University, and the Auschwitz-Brikenau State Museum which marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.