LEV894 Possibly the greatest torture the Nazis inflicted was forcing a child to watch his or her parents being killed. This is one of the most horrible and painful experiences a person could go through. In a similar manner, the Torah forbids the slaughter of an animal and its offspring on the same day [this verse]. Since animals that were to be slaughtered on a particular day were all taken together at the same time, the Torah effectively prevented either the child seeing the parent killed or vice versa by prohibiting the slaughtering of parents and offspring on the same day.