Children Against Hitler: The Young Resistance Heroes of the Second World War

By Monica Porter

“A fitting memorial to the children who risked (and so often lost) their lives in resisting the Nazi war machine . . . extraordinary, unique, informative.” —Midwest Book Review

Readers of all generations have grown up on The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier’s bestselling tale of children under wartime occupation, but few know the real life stories of the children and teenagers who went further and actually stood up to the Nazis. Here, for the first time, Monica Porter gathers together their stories from many corners of occupied Europe, showing how in a variety of audacious and inventive ways children as young as six resisted the Nazi menace, risking and sometimes even sacrificing their brief lives in the process: a heroism that until now has largely gone unsung.

These courageous youngsters came from all classes and backgrounds. There were high school dropouts and social misfits, brainy bookworms, the children of farmers and factory workers. Some lost their entire families to the war, yet fought on alone. Often more adept and fearless at resistance than adults, they exuded an air of guilelessness and could slip more easily under the Nazi radar. But as nets tightened, many were captured, tortured or imprisoned, some paying the highest price—a life cut short by execution before they had even turned eighteen.

These children were motivated by different ideals; patriotism, political conviction, their Christian beliefs, or revulsion at the brutality of the Third Reich. But what united them was their determination to strike back at an enemy which had deprived them of their freedom, their dignity—and their childhood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Apr 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781526764294

Monica Porter

Monica Porter is a London-based journalist who has written for dozens of British newspapers and magazines. For more information about Monica’s work see www.monicaporter.co.uk.

Book preview

Introduction

Fighting Back

In the prelude to and during the six years of the Second World War, 1939 to 1945, Nazi Germany occupied and held within its grasp, for varying periods, eighteen countries of Europe – as far west as France, as far east as the Soviet Union, north to Norway and south to Greece. It also occupied the British Channel Islands. Many millions of civilians lived with the terror of Nazi domination and they had to make a choice. Would they keep their heads down, stay out of trouble and simply hope to survive until the day of liberation? Or would they collaborate with their occupiers, as this offered immediate protection and would stand them in good stead in the event of a Nazi victory?

There was a third option: resistance. Fighting back, by whatever means possible. This was highly risky. If caught the price to pay was very high: torture, imprisonment in a barbarous concentration camp and, most likely, death. And yet, in every occupied country of Europe, clandestine resistance movements were formed and people risked their lives daily in order to oppose their hated oppressors.

Britain’s Special Operations Executive, the legendary SOE, was instrumental from 1941 in organising, supporting and financing this army of the Underground across much of Europe. It trained and parachuted in its own secret agents to work together with local resistance groups, and even developed a special wireless set which resembled an ordinary suitcase, to be used by its operatives for radio communications with SOE headquarters in London. Wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill instructed the SOE to ‘set Europe ablaze!’ and it often did.

Resisting took many forms, from the production and dissemination of anti-Nazi newspapers and leaflets, to armed raids against German military and administrative targets. Some resistance members rescued downed Allied pilots and led them to safety in neutral countries, or sheltered Jews evading deportation, others forged documents allowing escapees from Nazi terror to survive with false identities. There were saboteurs who disrupted the fuel supply lines and communication systems so crucial to the German war machine, and spies who enabled Allied intelligence to know in advance the enemy’s military plans and take steps to counteract them. Partisan groups camped in the wilds of impenetrable forests waged a damaging guerrilla war against the Germans’ traditional armed forces, which were often too slow and unwieldy to react. And there were countless couriers to carry messages, documents, weapons and other prohibited items, and those who smuggled fugitives from one hiding place to another and across borders.

For those with courage and determination, simply standing by and hoping for the war to end was not an option. There was much that could be done meanwhile, and as reward there was the satisfaction of showing the enemy that you could, and would, strike back. But it also meant living in the shadows and being in a constant state of fear, for yourself as well as for your loved ones; the Nazis would make whole families suffer for the actions of a sole member in the resistance. They also retaliated against resistance activities by executing civilians randomly plucked off the streets – and one of the most agonising questions for active fighters of the Underground was whether their bold deeds were worth the sacrifice of others’ lives.

So who resisted? Those who believed in a cause greater than themselves. Some were proud patriots who abhorred their country’s sub-jugation by the Nazis. Others held strong Christian beliefs and couldn’t stand by and watch the suffering of the persecuted. Communists were of course sworn enemies of the Nazis (although their Soviet-sponsored organisations operated chiefly after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR ended the Russo-German non-aggression pact). Still others were Jewish and spurred into action after witnessing the murder of their families and friends. But in truth, anyone who felt a personal compulsion to combat evil was liable to ‘go underground’.

They came from all classes and all educational backgrounds – from high school dropouts to scholarly intellectuals – and belonged to virtually all age groups, including children, defined in this book as anyone aged 18 or younger, i.e. of school age, although by the end of the six-year war, if indeed they survived, they would have reached young adulthood. And it’s notable how often these youngest of resisters – adolescents with such limited life experience – acted entirely on their own initiative. They weren’t ignorant of the risks they were taking. From the very beginning, the administrators of the Third Reich made it abundantly clear to the public how dire were the penalties for opposing them.

Intriguingly, children had a vital advantage over adults in the perilous world of anti-Nazi resistance. Being less cynical, they were more likely to feel invulnerable and to be fearless, to believe they could ‘get away with things’ no matter how risky their exploits. And that exuded a natural air of self-confidence – often the best defence against detection. Another advantage was the deceptive look of youthful innocence which so often fooled the enemy. They could put on an act, they were streetwise. Of course they might misjudge a person or situation, or fall into a trap. But adults in the Resistance were no less susceptible to such hazards.

Sometimes the parents of adolescent resisters were also involved in their clandestine activities, sometimes they had no knowledge – or only a vague idea – of what their offspring were doing. Often, they didn’t want to know the particulars. Loving parents today probably wouldn’t countenance the notion of their young children unnecessarily risking their lives for a belief, a principle. But wartime can bring about a great commingling of both personal and communal loyalties, priorities and duties.

Gathered together here are the stories of some of the youngest members of Europe’s resistance. All were of school age; the youngest, astonishingly, only 6. They are French, Dutch, Belgian, German, Danish, Polish, Lithuanian, Belorussian, and one is half-French, half-English. They all underwent, in their tender early years, the sorts of horrors which children fortunate enough to be growing up in a time of peace would find difficult to grasp. Through a mixture of resourcefulness, self-belief and good luck, most of these remarkable youngsters outlasted the war and lived to recount their experiences. Some tragically paid for their resistance with their lives. Their tales are a valuable reminder to all generations, and all epochs, that freedom is a precious commodity and not to be taken for granted. It must be cherished and protected and yes, sometimes even fought for.

One wonders what these adolescents from the dark days of the 1930s and 1940s, had they a crystal ball, would have made of their twenty-first century counterparts. Despite the absence of any existential threat – such as that posed for them by Nazi occupation and total war – today’s children in a free, democratic Europe, where human rights are respected, seem beset by an epidemic of trauma, unable to cope with the everyday realities of life. According to the World Health Organisation’s regional office for Europe, depression and anxiety disorders fall into the top five causes of disease among children and adolescents. More shockingly still, suicide is the leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 19 in the region’s low and middle-income countries, and the second-leading cause in high-income countries. What’s been going on?

Without doubt much of it can be put down to the malign effects of the age of internet and smartphone addiction: cyberbullying and trolling, the tyranny of social media and especially peer-pressure apps such as Instagram, and sites which openly encourage life-threatening eating disorders, self-harm and suicide. It all adds up to a population of over-digitised children who are largely focused on the self, as epitomised by the ubiquitous ‘selfie’. Tech experts themselves have at last begun to recognise the damage inflicted by the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In the spring of 2019, former Google engineer Tristan Harris told an audience of Silicon Valley leaders that technology had ‘downgraded humanity’ by encouraging obsessive and vain behaviour.

There is only one cure for this affliction, as the young heroes in this book would doubtless affirm if they could call out across the great expanse of time: to escape the digital quagmire and find a real cause to believe in. Some of today’s children are already achieving this. Perhaps they, along with their intrepid wartime peers, can show the way.

Chapter One

Stefania and Helena Podgorska – The Secret in the Attic

Young Stefania (nicknamed Fusia) was an ordinary country girl, growing up in a village in south-eastern Poland, the daughter of a farmer. Hers was a large family with eight children and like most rural Poles, they were pious Catholics. There was nothing about Fusia that suggested she would perform acts of astonishing courage before she even left her teens, outwitting the adults who turned her world upside down and threatened to destroy her. But two major events occurred which changed the course of her life and transformed it from ordinary to exceptional. Firstly, in 1938, her father fell ill and died. The following year, with her mother’s blessing, the 14-year-old Fusia moved to the nearby city of Przemysl, where she got a job at a grocery store owned by the Diamants, a Jewish family. They took to the lively, sweet-natured girl right away. She moved in with them – the elderly Mr and Mrs Diamant and their four grown sons – and they treated her as one of the family.

With Fusia serving behind the counter, more young people came into the store and business picked up. Local lads came in for sweets and cakes, flirted with her and sometimes bought chocolates from the store to give her, which she would usually just put back on the shelves. ‘What good business,’ Mrs Diamant joked. ‘We can sell the same chocolates twice.’ Fusia loved the everyday life of the city, much more exciting and fun than being on the farm. So she would sing and dance around the shop. And she enjoyed living in the Diamants’ smart apartment and helping Mrs Diamant with the chores.

But then came the second major event, which was a catastrophe for the people of Poland: the invasion in September 1939 by the German army, and the start of the Second World War. Przemysl was the scene of bloody fighting between the German and Polish armies, but as the Poles didn’t stand a chance against their mightier enemy they were forced to surrender after only a few days. This defeat was followed by the immediate persecution of the city’s Jewish population. Many were killed, while most of the rest were forcibly moved to the eastern half of Przemysl, beyond the River San, which lay in territory now occupied by the Soviet Union as per the Russo-German carve-up of Poland. For a while the Diamants’ store stayed open. But supplying it became more difficult. Fusia had to make daily early-morning trips to the main market square to buy foodstuffs to sell to their customers.

The atmosphere on the streets had changed too. Where once Jews and Christians had existed peacefully together, suddenly there was open hostility towards the Jewish people of Przemysl, and Fusia witnessed disturbing episodes of cruelty which she couldn’t understand. One day she saw a young Christian boy mistreating a Jewish lad of his own age. Why? There was no apparent difference between them. Her devout mother had taught her that whichever religion people followed, they all prayed to the one God, so you should treat everyone the same.

Then in June 1941 the Peace Pact between the Nazis and the Soviets came to an abrupt end with the German army’s attack on the Soviet Union, in the process overrunning and occupying the rest of Poland. The Polish Jews were now doomed. Their businesses were closed down, they were made to wear the humiliating yellow-star badge on their clothes, and before long they were being herded into ghettos.

The Diamants, too, were forced to leave their home and move into the Jewish ghetto in Przemysl, which was sealed off from the rest of the city. Fusia helped them to move in, carrying suitcases and small items of furniture. As a final act of kindness towards their friend and former employee, the Diamants arranged for Fusia to be allowed to remain in one of the rooms of their spacious former apartment. She promised to take care of their home until the family’s return. And she managed to get a menial job in a local machine tool factory, to earn enough money to live on.

When she learned that her mother and older brother had been deported to Germany for forced labour and her other siblings were scattered, leaving the youngest – her 6-year-old sister Helena – behind, Fusia took the little girl to live with her in Przemysl. She tried to enlighten Helena, who understood little about the war, as to who the Jews were and why they were being brutally hounded, although Fusia herself didn’t really have an answer to that.

For several months, as conditions steadily worsened inside the ghetto – the shortage of food, medicines and fuel, the poor sanitation and increasing incidence of illness – Fusia took many risks in order to help the Diamants, to whom she remained devoted. Non-Jews were not allowed beyond the walls and barbed wire that cut off the ghetto, but by bribing guards and policemen, or simply evading them, she managed to slip in and out, bringing her friends food and clothes and other scarce necessities. Sometimes she crept in by removing the grill on an unguarded basement window.

Being caught would have had grave consequences. She could be imprisoned or deported for slave labour or simply shot there and then. Neither the Nazis nor the Polish policemen who collaborated with them showed much mercy to anyone breaking the rules.

A few times Fusia smuggled out jewellery and other valuables the Diamants had taken into the ghetto, in order to sell them to raise more money for food. She had no idea how to go about this, but eventually tracked down a dodgy ‘middleman’ who bought the items – for much less than they were worth, of course.

Little Helena gamely played her part too. Reckoning that a small child would be less likely to arouse suspicion, Fusia would give Helena vital messages to carry to the Diamants or one of their Jewish friends, at a pre-arranged time and meeting place along the ghetto boundary. On one such occasion, Helena was about to hand a note through a gate to its recipient when she was spotted by a German guard. ‘Hey you!’ he shouted at her. ‘What are you doing, eh? What have you got there?’ Without losing a moment, Helena did what her sister had instructed her to do in case such an event occurred. She crumpled up the note, stuffed it into her mouth, chewed and swallowed it. The angry guard delivered a fierce blow to Helena’s face, which knocked her to the ground. As she got up the guard grabbed her. She kicked him hard in the shin, he cried out and as he momentarily let go she darted away.

There had been rumours for a while about planned deportations from the ghetto to the blandly named ‘resettlement’ camps of Auschwitz, to the west, and Belzec, to the north – fearsome places from which no one ever returned and where, more and more Jews believed, they were being sent to die. The ghetto’s inhabitants were desperate to save themselves. But how?

In June 1942 the Diamants’ youngest son, Isidore, was carted off, along with a thousand other young men and boys, to the brutal Janowska prison camp outside Lwow, where he was killed. Later that summer the expected deportations by train to the concentration camps began: frightened men, women and children were crammed into cattle cars for the harrowing journey. Along with many of their relatives, Mr and Mrs Diamant (already weakened and frail from their hardships in the ghetto) were amongst the earliest groups to be deported. Two of their remaining sons watched helplessly as guards beat them with rifle butts on the way to the train, and they heard the Germans laughing about how those Jews would be ‘made into soap’ for the Third Reich.

When Fusia learned about it she was horrified. Could she have done something to save them? Now all she could do was despair.

The 24,000-strong ghetto was slowly diminishing. Fusia saw groups of Jews being marched to the railway station and sometimes shot for failing to obey orders. There were daily scenes of brutality.

Late one cold November night there was a knock on her door. This was an era when the unexpected night-time knock was rarely a good thing, and it alarmed her. Could she have been betrayed to the Nazis’ notorious secret police, the Gestapo, for giving clandestine help to her friends in the ghetto? Many Poles were betraying others in return for a financial reward or to gain some other benefit for themselves.

When Fusia opened the door, she did not see menacing Gestapo men in their trademark black leather coats and trilby hats, but a sight that shocked her nevertheless. One of the Diamants’ sons, Max, looking dirty, haggard and hounded, with bloodied face and hands, stood there begging to be let inside.

‘What has happened to you?’ Fusia pulled him into the room and he collapsed in a chair. By now Helena was awake and staring at their bloodied visitor, afraid and confused. Fusia brought warm water to clean Max’s face and