Life in the ghettos was particularly hard for children.  Every basic need was systematically and deliberately denied them.  From the very beginning of ghetto life, children suffered from malnutrition.  There was never enough food to go around, and in many cases, they had to survive solely on a portion of their parents’ insufficient food allocations.  The malnourished children were especially vulnerable to disease, and medicine was scarce or nonexistent.  Warm clothes, essential during winter in northern Europe, were gradually traded away for food or confiscated by the German authorities.
 
In most ghettos, children grew up without formal schooling.  Efforts by parents and ghetto leaders to provide children with basic lessons were often severely punished.  As parents were forced into slave labor, the children were left to fend for themselves, and education became a lower priority under such desperate conditions.  Over time, even young children were used as slave laborers for the German war effort, leaving no time at all for learning.

In 1942, the Germans began deporting the ghetto populations to death camps.  The children, who were among the least valuable slave laborers, were often the first to be deported.  This forced many children, like Paula in the Ostrowiec Ghetto, to go into hiding.  While they spent their days and nights eluding ghetto guards or the SS, some of these children became separated from their parents.  If the children were caught, they were deported.  If their parents and other relatives were deported, the children were forced to beg or steal food from other ghetto residents.  These children usually succumbed to hunger, cold, or disease.