Why did it happen that the Germans were so avid in destroying children? The Nazis conducted their most cruel campaign against children. In every community the first ones to be taken away were the children. A million Jewish children were destroyed! That was a primary objective for the Germans — to capture all the children and to take them to their deaths, before the parents were exterminated.
But if we look back we’ll discover that the parents had already massacred their children long before. You know which school system was the biggest, the most popular of all, in Eastern Europe between World War I and World War II? It was the Tarbus schools. The Tarbus school was spreading like wildfire and had ousted the old time cheder almost completely. Even where the old cheder remained, the melamed had only a handful of children; the Tarbus school had all the children in the towns and the villages. And these Tarbus schools were run by atheists who weren’t ashamed to teach openly the doctrine of G-dlessness. They were kofrim b’kol haTorah kulah and great masses of Jewish children were now handed over to them to be destroyed.
Reb Elchonon Wasserman zichrono l’vracha said, יםƒר¿כָנּ¿כ יםƒכּ¿נַח¿ ̇ƒמ ל≈‡ָרׂ¿ ̆ƒי י≈„¿לַי בֹרו – Most Jewish children are being brought up like gentiles. He meant like atheists; worse than gentiles. Because the Tarbus school was consequent; they didn’t do things halfway. And the parents gladly handed over their children to them — to apikorsim! And therefore, the truth is that very many children had been destroyed even before Hitler came.
