Category:Holocaust Children's Earliest Narratives (subject)

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Holocaust Children's Earliest Narratives (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

The Holocaust Children's Earliest Narratives comes from diaries written during the Holocaust, or court depositions and interviews by survivors collected soon after liberation.

  • Tehran Children -- Many of the children refugees from the Soviet Union were interviewed at their arrival in Palestine in 1943.
  • Boden's Interviews -- In 1946, Russian-born American psychologist David P. Boder interviewed 109 survivors in DP camps across Europe. Around 20 of them were children or adolescents.

[https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/08d09459-c4f6-432f-b581-93a7beb016b1/1004335.pdf

In Hiding

Helena Arbeiter Born in 1930 in Baranow, near Lublin Poland. 161-164

Franciska Guter Born 9 April 1932 in Krakow, Poland; daughter of Edward and Maria Grunes. 164-171.

Dawid Wulf Born 23 November 1936 in Krakow, Poland. Son of Jozef and Jenta Dachner. 171-179.

Jerzy Aleksandrowicz Born 7 July 1936 in Krakow, Poland. Sono of Julian and Maria Tislowitz. 179-184.

Jozef Reich Born 2 November 1935 in Krakow, Poland. Sono of marian and Alicja . 184-190.

Boden's Interviews

In addition to the diaries we have around 20 interviews of children made in 1946 by Dr. David P. Boder, a psychology professor from Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology. These interviews are available online at Voices of the Holocaust.

  • Yanusch Deutsch (M / Hungary, 1929?) -- Székesfehérvár Ghetto, Budapest Ghetto, Bergen-Belsen, Linz
  • Alexander Gertner (M / Romania, 1926) - Oradea Ghetto, Birkenau, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Bolkenhain, Hirschberg, Waldheim, Buchenwald [in 1949 he left from Genoa to Australia - USHMM]
  • David Hirsch (M / Germany, 1928?) -- Gurs, Rivesaltes, Les Avants
  • Marko Moskovitz (F / France, 1927?) -- Sighet Ghetto, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Flossenbürg
  • Wolf Nehrich (M / Poland, 1928) -- Będzin Ghetto, Sakrau, Karwin, Gross Masselwitz, Klettendorf, Kamienna Góra, Auschwitz, Blechhammer, Gross-Rosen, Buchenwald
  • Gert Silberbart (M / Germany, 1928) -- Berlin, Auschwitz, Monowitz, Bobrek, Buchenwald [in 1950 he left from Genoa to Australia - USHMM]

Earliest Narratives:

  • Kalman Eisenberg (M / Poland, 1928?) -- Starachowice Ghetto, Starachowice Labor Camp, Auschwitz, Monowitz, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg

Lena's Children:

  • Edith Zierer (F / Poland, 1930) -- Krakow Ghetto, Plaszow, Skarżysko-Kamienna, Częstochowa

Individual narratives

< The testimonies are given according to the order of publication >

1945

1945 Berg.jpg

The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing up in the Warsaw Ghetto (1945) is a diary written by Holocaust survivor Mary Berg (Miriam Wattenberg, 1924-2013) in the years 1939-1944 (age 15-19), when living in the Warsaw Ghetto. Published in New York, NY: Fisher, 1945, under the title Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary.

The diary of Miriam Wattenberg (“Mary Berg”) was one of the first children's journals which revealed to a wider public the horrors of the Holocaust.

"Inspiring and fascinating tale of the strength of human spirit during one of humanity’s darkest hours; • Reminiscent of both The Diary of Anne Frank, A Woman in Berlin and Suite Francaise; • Beautifully packaged in an attractive hardback, gift format for the Christmas market and containing original photographs and maps; • A unique insight from one of the few survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto, offering the only contemporary eye-witness account. After 60 years of silence, The Diary of Mary Berg is poised at last to gain the appreciation and widespread attention that it so richly deserves, and is certain to take it’s place alongside The Diary of Anne Frank as one of the most significant memoirs of the twentieth century. From love to tragedy, seamlessly combining the everyday concerns of a growing teenager with a unique commentary on life in one of the darkest contexts of history. This is a work remarkable for its authenticity, detail, and poignancy. But it is not only as a factual report on the life and death of a people that The Diary of Mary Berg ranks with the most noteworthy documents of the Second World War. This is the personal story of a life-loving girl’s encounter with unparalleled human suffering, a uniquely illuminating insight into one of the darkest chapters of history. Mary Berg was imprisoned in the ghetto from 1940 to 1943. Unlike so many others, she survived the war, rescued in a prisoner-of-war exchange due to her mother’s dual Polish-American nationality. Her diary was published in 1945 when she was still only 19, in an attempt to alert the world to the Nazi atrocities in Poland, when it was described as "one of the most heartbreaking documents yet to come out of the war" by the /New Yorker/. After the war, Berg remained in America in quiet anonimity."--Publisher description.

"Diary of a young girl documenting the period between October 1939 and March 1944. Recounts daily life in the Warsaw ghetto, describing interactions with other residents and the struggle to keep friends and families together, life in an internment camp in France, and Berg’s eventual journey to the United States. Includes photographs, endnotes, a bibliography, and an index."--Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM).

Mary Berg (Miriam Wattenberg, 1924-2013) was born Oct 10, 1924 to a Polish-Jewish father and and American-Jewish mother. They lived in Lódz but fled to Warsaw after the beginning of the war in November 1940. They were soon confined in the Warsaw ghetto. The Wattenbergs survived only because Miriam's mother was a US citizen. In the Summer of 1942 they were detained in the Pawiak prison, shortly before the first large deportation of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka. In January 1943 (three months before the Jewish revolt of the Ghetto) the Wattenbergs were sent to the Vittel internment camp in France, and allowed to emigrate to the United States in March 1944. After the publication of her diary, for a while Mary became a very vocal and popular figure in the anti-Nazi movement. When the war was over, however, Mary decided to live a private live, refusing to participate publicly in any Holocaust-related events, untile her death in April 2013.

Anthologies

1947

File:1947 Hochberg-Marianskwa.jpg
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  • Benjamin Tennebaum, ed., Ehad me-ir u shenayim mi-mishpahah: Mivhar m’elef autobigrafiot shel yaldei Yisrael b’Polin [One of a City and Two of a Family: A Selection from a Thousand Autobiographies of Jewish Children in Poland] (Merhavyah, Israel: Sifriat Poalim, 1947) <Hebrew>.
  • Maria Hochberg-Marianskwa and Noe Grüss, eds. Dzieci Oskarzaja (Cracow-Łódź-Warsaw: Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, 1947) <Polish>. English tr. The Children Accuse (London: Vallentine-Mitchell, 1996)

This most unusual book contains evidence collected by the author in 1945 in Poland from children and teenagers who surfaced from hiding in forests and bunkers and told the story of their survival as it happened. The interviews, expertly translated from the original Polish, document life in the ghettos, the camps, in hiding, in the resistance and in prison. There is also a series of interviews with adults who lived and worked alongside children in wartime Poland.--Publisher description.

  • Noe Grüss (Noah Gris), ed. Kinder-martirologye: zamlung fun dokumentn [Children’s Martyrdom: A Document Collection] (Buenos Aires [Argentina]: Tsentral-farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1947) <Yiddish>

"The future of surviving children was a major issue in post-Holocaust Jewish society ... Less known is the fact that correspondingly, much effort was put into listening to the child survivors, recording their stories, and publishing them. By 1947 three anthologies of children’s testimonies were published [in Israel, Poland, and Argentina] bringing to the public the stories of child survivors as they told them." Some children's testimonies were also collected and published in the Yiddish journal Fun Lezten Hurban, the first-ever Holocaust research journal, published in Munich during 1946– 48. The journal was published by the Central Historical Commission in Munich, which was established in December 1945 by the Central Committee for the Liberated Jews in Germany. The commission collected thousands of testimonies from Holocaust survivors in the DP camps, among them hundreds from child survivors of the Holocaust. The drive to collect testimonies from children was initiated by Israel Kaplan (1902–2003), a teacher from Kovno who together with Moshe Feigenboim led the commission. The child survivors and their stories held a strong fascination with Kaplan, whose own child survived the Holocaust in hiding and on the run. Out of hundreds of testimonies collected from child survivors by the staff of the Central Historical Commission during its more than three years of existence, eight were selected for publication in the journal issues."--See Boaz Cohen, Representing Children's Holocaust

1998

1998 Sliwoska.jpg
  • Wiktoria Śliwowska (ed.), The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998)

"This book provides... [a] new perspective on the lives of Jewish children who survived the Holocaust in Poland and remained there after the war. These testimonies, submitted by individual authors and not originally intended for publication, were assembled as a historical record by the Association of the Children of the Holocaust in Poland. The accounts are personal, unpretentious, and direct. Collectively, they tell far more than can be gotten from the story of one individual. When mean-spiritedness and brutal anti-Semitism are described, the reader also becomes aware of the great risks taken by truly courageous individuals in order to save Jewish children." —Back cover

From Central Poland Marianne Adameczek Jerzy Aleksandrowicz Aleksandra Berlowicz Krystyna Budnickav Krystyna Chudy Emanuel Elbinger Pola Elbinger Maria Feldhorn Jadwiga Fiszbain-Tokarz Jerzy Frydman Henryk Ryszard Gantz Michał Głowiński Barbara Góra Maria Greber Joanna Kaltman Maria Kamińska Robert Kulka Maria Leszczyńska Ejzen Henryk Lewandowski Henoch Rafael Lisak Eugenia Magdziarz Zofia Majewska Katarzyna Meloch Hanna Mesz Krystyna Nowak Ludwik Oppenheim Wiktoria Śliwowska Anna Irena Trojanowska-Kaczmarska Sabina Wylot Maria Teresa Zielińska From Prewar Eastern Poland Leszek Leon Allerhand Helena Choynowska (Alter) Karol Galiński Hanka Grynberg Karolina Heuman Lena Kaniewska Maria Kraft Roman Lewin Regina Loss-Fisior Marek Teichmann Chuwcia Weicher Malwina Wollek From the Camps Jakub Gutenbaum Jan Kac-Kaczyński Zofia Lubińska Bronka Niedźwiecka Mieczysław Rudnicki Marek Sznajderman Stefan Wrocławski The Youngest Marian Bobrzyk Felicia Braun Bryn Jerzy Cyns Jerzy Dołębski Elżbieta Ficowska Henryk Hajwentreger Krystyna Kalata-Olejnik Maria Kosowicz-Bartnik Zenobia Krzyżanowska Maria Ochlewska Hanna Raicher Aleksandra Rozengarten Romuald Jakub Weksler-Waszkinel Zygmunt Wolf Irena Wójcik Wilhelm Zienowicz

See also

  • Tragedy and triumph : early testimonies of Jewish survivors of World War II / compiled and translated by Freda Hodge (

Includes six of The children's narratives in Fun Letzten Khurben: Josef Shuster, Ella Griliches, Fania Olitzki, Arieh Milch, Yaakov Levin, and Genia Shurtz.

In this collection Freda Hodge retrieves early voices of Holocaust survivors. Men, women and children relate experiences of deportation and ghettoisation, forced labour camps and death camps, death marches and liberation. As Feliks Tych points out, such eye-witness accounts collected in the immediate post-war period constitute the most important body of Jewish documents pertaining to the history of the Holocaust. The freshness of memory makes these early voices profoundly different from, and historically more significant than, later recollections gathered in oral history programs. Carefully selected and painstakingly translated, these survivor accounts were first published between 1946 and 1948 in the Yiddish journal Fun Letzten Khurben ('From the Last Destruction') in postwar Germany, by refugees waiting in 'Displaced Person' camps, in the American zone of occupation, for the arrival of travel documents and visas. These accounts have not previously been available in English.

Bibliography

  • Boaz Cohen, "Representing the Experiences of Children in the Holocaust"

Pages in category "Holocaust Children's Earliest Narratives (subject)"

The following 120 pages are in this category, out of 120 total.

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