The Children of Izieu: A Human Tragedy

by Serge Klarsfeld

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810923076
• ISBN13: 9780810923072
• Release Date: January 1985
• Publisher: ABRAMS
• Length: 134 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Children Of Izieu - may we never forget them

The Holocaust is one of the greatest tragedies the world has ever known, and I have read so much about the subject, taught it in secondary school, and still continue to expand my knowledge on this most harrowing of events. Though there are are so many stories about the Holocaust, the ones that resonate the most with me are accounts of how the Jewish children were treated by the Nazis. This is one such harrowing account - the story of the children of Izieu. The village of Izieu was an idyllic hamlet located between Lyon and Chamberry in central France. The children's home at Izieu was named Settlement for Refugee Children from Herault, set up under the auspices of the OSE (a preventive health care organization founded in Russia by Jewish physicians in 1912). Initially the Jewish identities of these children, aged 3-18 was kept a secret. Here, refugee Jewish children led a relatively peaceful and idyllic life surrounded by friends and though bereft of their parents, some were fortunate to have the company of their siblings. Their days were spent in many activities such as drawing and painting. The book is truly a testament to these murdered children as author Serge Klarsfeld provides in-depth information (as much as he could gather through painstaking research) on the children who were taken away by the Nazis (under the command of infamous Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie, i.e. the Butcher of Lyons).This includes photographs as well as the heartbreakingly hopeful letters written by some of the children to their parents, one such letter written by 8-year-old Georges Halpern reads, "Chere Maman, I send you 10000000000 kisses your son who loves you very much..." This is a book that will make readers weep at the injustice and cruelty of it all - who can fathom the way these Nazi monsters thought? To think that innocent children could be deemed a threat, to the point that they are relentlessly hunted down and exterminated like one would pests? Truly unimaginable. The children of Izieu did not have a happy ending - 42 children and 5 adults were gassed in Auschwitz whilst 2 of the oldest children and the superintendent of the home were killed by firing squad. The book also covers the author's efforts to bring the Butcher of Lyons, Klaus Barbie to justice. The book also has many reproductions of historical documents pertaining to the deportation of the children and staff of Izieu. This is a valuable record and testament to the memory of those murdered innocents and is an important read for anyone interested in the Holocaust.