Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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any organisation……I still managed to roam all over Magdeburg on foot. We
didn’t have any bicycles. Once we lived in the ‘Judenhaus’ next to the
burnt-out synagogue, there was a bit of a community thing there. I mean
people didn’t go out unless they had to and they stayed within that little
complex. It had a garden and we sort of interacted with our neighbours.
Everybody had the same problems. 158
With the continued reduction in community numbers up until the last mass
deportation in February 1943, Jewish children continued to live as they had
previously done. The majority of these children had only known a life under
Nazism.
The lives of Jewish children in the community continued to be fully enriched
educationally and in terms of their Jewish identities, even once deportations
commenced and the ‘Judenschule’ was dissolved. In spite of the pervading
sadness, which occurred when friends and/or relatives were deported, children
continued to attempt to live as normally as possible. Simultaneously, parents
attempted to buffer the reality. As the situation in the public domain increased in
danger, Jewish children were constantly forced to adapt and ultimately, not
dissimilar to their adult counterparts, avoid being in public altogether. For the
majority of the children who remained in the community from October 1939, their
limited experience of life had only been one of love and protection afforded by
family and community in the private domain and one of hate and ostracism and
ultimately dehumanisation in the public domain. Sadly, the children had adapted
to these abnormal conditions. They had known no other life.
158 Name withheld, op. cit., 13 July 2004.