The vast majority of children deported to concentration camps did not survive: if they were too young to be utilized for work, they were usually killed soon after their arrival. However, some children did survive the camps. Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence. Most of these children were sets of twins selected by Dr. Josef Mengele for medical experiments. Many of them died as a result of painful and cruel surgical procedures, radiation experiments, harmful injections or other chemical treatments.

Other children survived because they were hidden by camp prisoners or because they were old enough to work. Many claimed to be older than they really were so that they escaped immediate execution and became slave labourers instead. When American troops liberated Buchenwald, they found about 1,000 Jewish child survivors in the camp, some of whom had been hidden and protected by other prisoners.