About Jewish children and Nazi Concentraion Camps?

Question

When Jewish families were arrested and taken to a camp, at what age were their children not gassed, and instead considered old enough to work? Ten? Fifteen?

I heard that children weren't called up by the Central Office for Jewish Emigration to go to "work" camps before they were fifteen, but what about when they were just arrested? Like, if they'd been in hiding or something?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

There was no age limit. They gassed a lot of kids. If they could use them for work, some were sent to labor camps, but believe me, there were no acceptions based on age. There were 3 year olds put to work and 3 year olds gassed. The Nazi's were not exactly trying to keep Jews alive and comfortable. They wanted to exterminate them.

Answer 2

Chances of survival depended on the age of the children and their ability to work. Well grown boys age 15 and older were far more likely to live than girls of the same age. Younger children and children who LOOKED young were simply gassed.

Anne Frank and her sister survived almost to the end of the war because they were captured fairly late and were still healthy enough to work. If they hadn't caught typhus when they did or if the concentration camp had been liberated a month earlier, they might have survived.

Answer 3

The difference between children and adults was only in terms of their ability to work and therefore older children (late teens) had a better chance to live (for a while).

Full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died during the Holocaust will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.
Although children were seldom the targets of Nazi violence because they were children, they were persecuted along with their families for racial, religious, or political reasons. Children are not a single unified group because of the enormous and complex variations in their situation and ages. It is important to separate the distinct needs of three different age groups: (1) infants and toddlers up to age 6; (2) young children ages 7 to 12; and (3) adolescents from 13 to 18 years old. Their respective chances for survival and their ability to perform physical labor varied enormously by age. Chances of survival were somewhat higher for older children, since they could potentially be assigned to forced labor in concentration camps and ghettos.
Full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died during the Holocaust will never be known. Some estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children who were murdered under Nazi rule in Germany and occupied Europe.
Although children were seldom the targets of Nazi violence because they were children, they were persecuted along with their families for racial, religious, or political reasons. Children are not a single unified group because of the enormous and complex variations in their situation and ages. It is important to separate the distinct needs of three different age groups: (1) infants and toddlers up to age 6; (2) young children ages 7 to 12; and (3) adolescents from 13 to 18 years old. Their respective chances for survival and their ability to perform physical labor varied enormously by age. Chances of survival were somewhat higher for older children, since they could potentially be assigned to forced labor in concentration camps and ghettos.
For a more detailed explanation of Jewish children go to:
http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/children.html