Holocaust Survivors’ Leader Urges Remembrance of Children Killed

The leader of on organization of survivors of the Holocaust has called upon the International United Nations Year of the Child, 1979, to remember the millions of children who were killed during the Holocaust. Solomon Zynstein, president of the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates and Nazi Victims, an umbrella organization of survivor groups, said, “No international program or celebration can be meaningful or complete without remembering the helpless children murdered during the Holocaust.” Zynstein’s views were presented in a letter to lean Young, chairperson of the UNICEF-sponsored Year of the Child in Washington, D.C.

After commending the Year of the Child for its conferences, especially those in Israel, on the health, education, and development of children, Zynstein asked for an appropriate means of remembering the children who died during the Holocaust. “Some 1.5 million Jewish children were victims of the Holocaust,” he said. “Untold numbers of non-Jewish children were merciless casualties of the catastrophe. And one cannot forget those who were orphaned, those who survived, but with emotional and physical scars.”

To illustrate the decimation as it affected the children, Zynstein pointed to the 15,000 children — all under 15 — who passed through the Terezin concentration camp. Only around 100 came back.

Zynstein suggested that the featuring of the surviving poetry and art of the young victims would be a “most suitable” way of remembering the children. “Those children drew and wrote poetry just as the children of today do. They had the same dreams and aspirations as the young of today. For our young to see these things, to identify with those victims — indeed a powerful lesson for the present and instruction for the future.”