That Nazi guards used children for target practice during the Holocaust

It pains and is hard to write about such things, but they are true. There are many records during the Holocaust of Nazi soldiers using small children for shooting practice. I have read many history books; sometimes it's not about the orders from the top leaders, but just the cruelty of the guards in the camps or ghettos.

One of these places often referred to is the Janowska camp. During the Nuremberg Trials, survivors shared some stories that were hardly believable. They testified that SS officers would toss babies or little children up in the air trying to shoot them before they hit the ground. For them it was just a horrific game. Other times they would make kids run in a field simply to practice hitting a moving target.

Why did they do this? Well I think it's because of propaganda. For years, the soldiers were being told that Jewish people were not human. Therefore for a guard shooting a child was not much different from hunting a creature in the woods. Older officers used this method to "train" the young soldiers so that they would never feel guilty later in life for killing someone. It was a way for them to make them "tough" and cold-hearted.

While the mass killings occurred in gas chambers, these stories of target practice show how individuals could become monsters. They show what happens when a person is taught to hate another so much that they lose their humanity.

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