and certainly also very tasty food. The temptation was strong, and starvation drove some children to mad and shameful acts, unworthy of a human being, and even more unworthy of a child. Lamentable conditions and misery have affected Jewish children and demoralised them to the point that they started to steal and rob. Several times I witnessed a dirty, shabby, and certainly hungry little boy stand in front of a shop window full of cakes, watching those delicacies greedily, and eventually, apparently unable to control himself anymore, he pushed his fist or a stone into the glass to get a handful of cakes and escape. The hardest part is usually the beginning. Thus children, demoralised by that first deed, followed the bad example of their street companions and repeated such horrifying experiments more often. Similarly, there have been repeated cases of women leaving bakeries, grocery shops, or greengrocers with purchased goods, and children come up to them, grab packets of food out of their hands or their baskets and run away, trying to eat the contents of the grabbed packets as quickly as possible. Crossing Karmelicka or Leszno streets, one could often see a twelve-year-old in rags grab some buns or cheese from an elegant lady and stuff his mouth full, while still running away. The mugged lady would usually scream and the little one would be caught and beaten. The demoralisation of these children progressed at a very fast
pace. They used sophisticated methods, and when they were caught in the act and beaten, they tried to rouse the mercy of passers-by with their fake, desperate
cries or pretended to faint. Witnesses of such incidents responded in various ways: some categorically condemned the act of the child and believed that he or she should be punished on the spot, while others stood up for them and justified the starving child. In any case, such incidents are evidence of the shocking moral decline of children, of the degeneration of their souls and distortion of their character. Even taking into account the circumstances and conditions children have to face, we should be horrified at the prospect of their future and await with fear to find out what moral standing and mature character they will develop.
[7] 4. Working children
Not all children have been equally negatively affected by the war, and not all have been equally demoralised by it. Aside from the Jewish children stretching out their hands for alms, and those with the lowest instincts and
