Difference between revisions of "Category:Holocaust Children Studies"

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* '''[[Internment Camps]]''' : [[Ferramonti]] (Italy) -- [[Gurs]] (France) -- [[Rivesaltes]] (France) -- [[Theresienstadt]] (Czechia)  
* '''[[Internment Camps]]''' : [[Ferramonti]] (Italy) -- [[Gurs]] (France) -- [[Rivesaltes]] (France) -- [[Theresienstadt]] (Czechia)  


* '''[[Transit Camps]]''' : [[Drancy]] (France) -- [[Fossoli]] (Italy) -- [[Malines]] (Belgium) -- [[Westerbork]] (Netherlands)
* '''[[Transit Camps]]''' : [[Drancy]] (France) -- [[Fossoli]] (Italy) -- [[Malines]] (Belgium) -- [[Risiera di San Sabba]] (Italy) -- [[Westerbork]] (Netherlands)  


* '''[[Concentration Camps]]''' : [[Auschwitz]] -- [[Bergen-Belsen]] -- [[Buchenwald]] -- [[Dachau]] -- [[Flossenburg]] -- [[Gross-Rosen]] -- [[Gunskirchen]] -- [[Mauthausen]] -- [[Majdanek]] -- [[Mittelbau-Dora]] -- [[Plaszow]] -- [[Ravensbruck]] -- [[Sachsenhausen]] -- [[Stutthof]]  
* '''[[Concentration Camps]]''' : [[Auschwitz]] -- [[Bergen-Belsen]] -- [[Buchenwald]] -- [[Dachau]] -- [[Flossenburg]] -- [[Gross-Rosen]] -- [[Gunskirchen]] -- [[Mauthausen]] -- [[Majdanek]] -- [[Mittelbau-Dora]] -- [[Plaszow]] -- [[Ravensbruck]] -- [[Sachsenhausen]] -- [[Stutthof]]  
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* See [http://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/children-of-the-holocaust/ Museum of Tolerance]
* See [http://www.museumoftolerance.com/education/teacher-resources/holocaust-resources/children-of-the-holocaust/ Museum of Tolerance]


* See [https://www.fold3.com/page/285875537-child-victims-of-the-nazis/stories Holocaust Children]
* See [[Holocaust Children]]


When World War II began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, more than 1.2 million and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis’ calculated program of genocide. As Warsaw ghetto historian Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in 1942, “Even in the most barbaric times, a human spark glowed in the rudest heart, and children were spared. But the Hitlerian beast is quite different. It would devour the dearest of us, those who arouse the greatest compassion—our innocent children.”
When World War II began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, more than 1.2 million and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis’ calculated program of genocide. As Warsaw ghetto historian Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in 1942, “Even in the most barbaric times, a human spark glowed in the rudest heart, and children were spared. But the Hitlerian beast is quite different. It would devour the dearest of us, those who arouse the greatest compassion—our innocent children.”
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Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...
Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...


== Bibliography ==
== The Uniqueness of the Holocaust Experience ==


== 2020s ==
Why are we devoting so much time to children during the Holocaust?


<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
Children have rarely a life of their own. Their lives depend on the adults who take care of them. There are very little opportunities for children to be known apart from their families. The Jewish child is no exception (we know the names of only a few children who have distinguished themselves as children in Jewish history).
File:2021 Armano.jpg|Armano (2021)  
</gallery>


====2021====
In antiquity, most of the stories about children in the Bible present "ordinary" stories of child rivalry, family conflict, ecc. Only a few children are remembered for something really special that happened to them: Joseph (was sold as a slave, became the viceroy of Egypt), [[David]] (killed Goliath in battle), [[Daniel]] (served the Persian administration), etc.


* {it} [[Antonio Armano]]. '''''Il ragazzo nel bunker: storia di Bernard Mayer, sopravvissuto alla liquidazione del ghetto di Drohobycz'''''. Milano [Italy]: Piemme, 2021.
With the creation of schools more opportunities were offered to children to distinguished themselves outside of their own families, first of all for their learning as "exceptional students" (child prodigies). [[Josephus]], [[Jesus]], etc. The Rabbis had a term to  עילוי‎ or עלוי (i'lui) to denote child prodigies who distinguished themselves in the study of the Torah for their intelligence and memory.  


=== 2010s ===
The Emancipation gave Jewish children (both boys and girls) the opportunity to distinguish themselves in other fields than religion, namely, as child singers, child actors, child musicians, as well as students of science.


<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
The normal situation of children is that adults are taking care of them. The Holocaust marked for an entire generation (around 1.6 millions of Jewish children in Europe) a complete reversal of their "normal" status. Adults became children (i.e. powerless), and children were forced to become adults. in order to survive, they had to take their lives in their own hands and make life-or-death decision for themselves and often also for their own relatives. This makes the Holocaust such a special time for the Jewish child, a time in which children have become protagonists without having asked for it.
File:2019 Serri.jpg|Serri (2019)
File:2019 Kraus.jpg|Kraus (2019) en
File:2019 Dekel.jpg|Dekel (2019)
File:2019 Bell.jpg|Bell (2019)


File:2018 Ouzan.jpg|Ouzan (2018)
== Death and Survival ==
File:2018 Cohen.jpg|Cohen (2018)
File:2018 Berg.jpg|Berg (2018) repr


File:2017 Nelson.jpg|Nelson (2017)
Around 90% of the 1.6 million Jewish children living in Europe under Nazi rule perished during the Holocaust:
File:2017 Duguay.jpg|Duguay (2017) <film>


File:2016 Mazzeo.jpg|Mazzeo (2016)
* At the beginning, after Hitler rose to power in 1933, Jewish children were not targeted for extermination. They suffered discrimination, exclusion and humiliation. They could no longer attend schools, they could not pursue an education, meet with non-Jewish friends, etc. Many tried to escape with or without their families especially after Kristallnacht (Nov 9-10, 1938), when Jewish synagogues and properties were destroyed in a massive pogrom.  
File:2016 Gigliotti Tempian.jpg|Gigliotti Tempian (2016)
File:2016 Gallico.jpg|Gallico (2016) <memoirs>
File:2016 Doillon.jpg|Doillon (2016) <film>


File:2015 Kadelbach.png|Kadelbach (2015) <film>
* After the beginning of the war, in September 1939, Jewish children experienced the ghettos. They began to die in the thousands because of hunger and disease.


File:2014 Pressman.jpg|Pressman (2014)
* Starting from June 1941, with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, for the first time Jewish children in Eastern Europe were shoot with their families in mass executions.  


File:2013 Maida.jpg|Maida (2013)
* In 1942 began the systematic killing of children, They were deported from the ghettos to the death camps. Only some children who lied about their age and could work, were able to survive. Others were able to flee before being captured.  
File:2013 Danquart.jpg|Danquart (2013) <film>


File:2011 Orlev.jpg|Orlev (2011)
Only 10% of children survived the Holocaust (around 150.000):  
File:2011 Heberer.jpg|Heberer (2011)
File:2010 Bailly English.jpg|Bailly (2010) en
</gallery>


==== 2019 ====
* (a) Refugees, with their families or alone ([[Kindertransport]]), who left continental Europe before the war started, or in some cases, even during the war.


* {it} [[Mirella Serri]]. '''''Bambini in fuga: i giovanissimi ebrei braccati da nazisti e fondamentalisti islamici e gli eroi italiani che li salvarono'''''. Milano [Italy]: TEA, 2019. --- <Nonantola> --- "Per sottrarsi alle persecuzioni naziste dopo aver perso i genitori nei campi di concentramento, settantatré giovanissimi ebrei, tra i sei e i diciassette anni, attraversano la Germania e la Slovenia e riescono ad arrivare in Italia, a Nonantola, un paese in provincia di Modena. Qui, a dispetto del fascismo e delle campagne razziali, l'intera popolazione si mobilita per aiutarli, offrendo loro protezione per un anno intero. Ma l'8 settembre del 1943 la situazione precipita: Nonantola viene occupata dai nazisti e i ragazzi devono essere messi in salvo in fretta e tenuti nascosti, con la speranza di farli espatriare in Svizzera. Ripercorrendo la storia rocambolesca dei ragazzini in fuga dal Reich, Mirella Serri riporta alla luce anche il segreto e tenace lavorio di un personaggio poco conosciuto ma centrale nella Shoah: il gran Muftì di Gerusalemme, Amln al-Husaym, esponente dell'islamismo più radicale. Da Berlino, dove si era rifugiato lavorando a fianco di Hitler e di Eichmann, al-Husay-ni cercò in ogni modo di bloccare l'espatrio e la salvezza degli ebrei, inclusi i ragazzi che si rifugiarono a Nonantola, arrivando perfino a costituire una divisione autonoma di SS musulmane nei Balcani per precludere l'ultima via di scampo. Quella dei ragazzi di Nonantola e dei loro salvatori è una storia di eroi dimenticati o trascurati, una storia di ribellione corale alle dittature, una storia tutta italiana e al tempo stesso universale di generosità e di profonda umanità, in una lotta contro il male che si rivela, con altri volti e altri nomi, drammaticamente attuale."
* (b) [[Hidden Children]] (with their families, with non-Jews, with the partisans, in Christian boarding schools, etc.) or on the run [[Street Children]]


* {en} [[Mikhal Dekel]]. '''''Tehran Children: A Holocaust Refugee Odyssey'''''. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2019. -- "Fleeing East from Nazi terror, over a million Polish Jews traversed the Soviet Union, many finding refuge in Muslim lands. Their story―the extraordinary saga of two-thirds of Polish Jewish survivors―has never been fully told ... Author Mikhal Dekel’s father, Hannan Teitel, and her aunt Regina were two of these refugees. After they fled the town in eastern Poland where their family had been successful brewers for centuries, they endured extreme suffering in the Soviet forced labor camps known as “special settlements.” Then came a journey during which tens of thousands died of starvation and disease en route to the Soviet Central Asian Republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. While American organizations negotiated to deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands of Polish Jews who remained there, Dekel’s father and aunt were two of nearly one thousand refugee children who were evacuated to Iran, where they were embraced by an ancient Persian-Jewish community. Months later, their Zionist caregivers escorted them via India to Mandatory Palestine, where, at the endpoint of their thirteen-thousand-mile journey, they joined hundreds of thousands of refugees (including over one hundred thousand Polish Catholics). The arrival of the “Tehran Children” was far from straightforward, as religious and secular parties vied over their futures in what would soon be Israel ... Beginning with the death of the inscrutable Tehran Child who was her father, Dekel fuses memoir with extensive archival research to recover this astonishing story, with the help of travel companions and interlocutors including an Iranian colleague, a Polish PiS politician, a Russian oligarch, and an Uzbek descendent of Korean deportees. The history she uncovers is one of the worst and the best of humanity. The experiences her father and aunt endured, along with so many others, ultimately reshaped and redefined their lives and identities and those of other refugees and rescuers, profoundly and permanently, during and after the war ... With literary grace, Tehran Children presents a unique narrative of the Holocaust, whose focus is not the concentration camp, but the refugee, and whose center is not Europe, but Central Asia and the Middle East. 10 illustrations"
* (c) [[Nazi Ghettoes]] and [[Labor Camps]] (mostly adolescents, and a few younger children who were kept alive to serve as errand boys or for medical experiments).


* {en} [[Samantha Bell]]. '''''Children in the Holocaust '''''. Lake Elmo, MN: Focus Readers, 2019. -- Nonfiction <juvenile audience>. -- "Describes the experiences of children during the Jewish Holocaust, including those that escaped to England or elsewhere, those that went into hiding, and those interned in concentration camps. Personal narratives, informative infographics, and historical photos make this title a compelling and thought-provoking read for young history lovers." -- [[Samantha S. Bell]]  is the author and/or illustrator of more than 100 books for children.
* (d) [[Family Camps]] (Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt)


==== 2018 ====
The rate of survival mostly depended on three factors: (1) Age; (2) Country; (3) Location.
 
* {en} [[Francoise S. Ouzan]], '''''How Young Holocaust Survivors Rebuilt Their Lives: France, the United States, and Israel'''''. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2018. -- "Drawing on testimonies, memoirs, and personal interviews of Holocaust survivors, Françoise S. Ouzan reveals how the experience of Nazi persecution impacted their personal reconstruction, rehabilitation, and reintegration into a free society. She sheds light on the life trajectories of various groups of Jews, including displaced persons, partisan fighters, hidden children, and refugees from Nazism. Ouzan shows that personal success is not only a unifying factor among these survivors but is part of an ethos that unified ideas of homeland, social justice, togetherness, and individual aspirations in the redemptive experience. Exploring how Holocaust survivors rebuilt their lives after World War II, Ouzan tells the story of how they coped with adversity and psychic trauma to contribute to the culture and society of their country of residence." -- [[Francoise S. Ouzan]] is Senior Researcher at the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University. Ouzan has published widely on displaced persons, antisemitism and American Jewry and recently co-edited Holocaust Survivors, Resettlement, Memories, Identities and Postwar Jewish Identity and Rebirth.
 
* {en} [[Beth B. Cohen]]. '''''Child Survivors of the Holocaust: The Youngest Remnant and the American Experience'''''. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. -- "The majority of European Jewish children alive in 1939 were murdered during the Holocaust. Of 1.5 million children, only an estimated 150,000 survived. In the aftermath of the Shoah, efforts by American Jews brought several thousand of these child survivors to the United States. In Child Survivors of the Holocaust, historian Beth B. Cohen weaves together survivor testimonies and archival documents to bring their story to light. She reveals that even as child survivors were resettled and "saved," they struggled to adapt to new lives as members of adoptive families, previously unknown American Jewish kin networks, or their own survivor relatives. Nonetheless, the youngsters moved ahead. As Cohen demonstrates, the experiences both during and after the war shadowed their lives and relationships through adulthood, yet an identity as "survivors" eluded them for decades. Now, as the last living link to the Holocaust, the voices of Child Survivors are finally being heard."
 
==== 2017 ====
 
* {en} [[Anne Nelson]]. '''''Suzanne's Children: A Daring Rescue in Nazi Paris'''''. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2017. --- "This is one of the untold stories of the Holocaust. Suzanne Spaak was born into the Belgian Catholic elite and married into the country's leading political family. Her brother-in-law was the Foreign Minister and her husband Claude was a playwright and patron of the painter Renée Magritte. In Paris in the late 1930s her friendship with a Polish Jewish refugee led her to her life's purpose. When France fell and the Nazis occupied Paris, she joined the Resistance. She used her fortune and social status to enlist allies among wealthy Parisians and church groups. Under the eyes of the Gestapo, Suzanne and women from the Jewish and Christian resistance groups "kidnapped" hundreds of Jewish children to save them from the gas chambers. In the final year of the Occupation Suzanne was caught in the Gestapo dragnet that was pursuing a Soviet agent she had aided. She was executed shortly before the liberation of Paris. Suzanne Spaak is honored in Israel as one of the Righteous Among Nations"
 
==== 2016 ====
 
* {en} [[Tilar J. Mazzeo]]. '''''Irena's Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto'''''. New York, NY: Gallery Books, 2016. --- "From the New York Times bestselling author of The Widow Clicquot comes an extraordinary and gripping account of Irena Sendler—the “female Oskar Schindler”—who took staggering risks to save 2,500 children from death and deportation in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II ... In 1942, one young social worker, Irena Sendler, was granted access to the Warsaw ghetto as a public health specialist. While she was there, she began to understand the fate that awaited the Jewish families who were unable to leave. Soon she reached out to the trapped families, going from door to door and asking them to trust her with their young children. Driven to extreme measures and with the help of a network of local tradesmen, ghetto residents, and her star-crossed lover in the Jewish resistance, Irena ultimately smuggled thousands of children past the Nazis. She made dangerous trips through the city’s sewers, hid children in coffins, snuck them under overcoats at checkpoints, and slipped them through secret passages in abandoned buildings ... But Irena did something even more astonishing at immense personal risk: she kept a secret list buried in bottles under an old apple tree in a friend’s back garden. On it were the names and true identities of these Jewish children, recorded so their families could find them after the war. She could not know that more than ninety percent of their families would perish ... Irena’s Children, “a fascinating narrative of…the extraordinary moral and physical courage of those who chose to fight inhumanity with compassion” (Chaya Deitsch author of Here and There: Leaving Hasidism, Keeping My Family), is a truly heroic tale of survival, resilience, and redemption."
 
* {en} [[Simone Gigliotti]] - [[Monica Tempian]], eds. '''''The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime: Migration, the Holocaust and Postwar Displacement'''''. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. --- "During the Nazi regime many children and young people in Europe found their lives uprooted by Nazi policies, resulting in their relocation around the globe. The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime represents the diversity of their experiences, covering a range of non-European perspectives on the Second World War and aspects of memory. This book is unique in that it places the experiences of children and youth in a transnational context, shifting the conversation of displacement and refuge to countries that have remained under-examined in a comparative context ... Featuring essays from an international range of experts, this book analyses the key themes in three sections: the migration of children to countries including England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and Brazil; the experiences of young people who remained in Nazi Europe and became victims of war, displacement and deportation; and finally the challenges of rebuilding lives and representing traumas in the aftermath of war. In its comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish experiences and how these intersected and diverged, it revisits debates about cultural genocide through the separation of families and communities, as well as contributing new perspectives on forced labour, families and the Holocaust, and Germans as war victims." --- [[Simone Gigliotti]] is Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies. [[Monica Tempian]] is a Senior Lecturer in German.
 
* {it} [[Lidia Gallico]]. '''''Una bambina in fuga: diari e lettere di un'ebrea mantovana al tempo della Shoah'''''. Introd. Maria Bacchi. Asola [Italy]: Gilgamesh, 2016. --- <Italy> <Memoirs> --- "Una bambina in fugaraccoglie la memoria adulta di un’infanzia vissuta durante la Shoah e le scritture prodotte dalla stessa persona allora e subito dopo la fine della seconda guerra mondiale; sono materiali che costituiscono uno straordinario corpo di fonti per comprendere le forme della resistenza e della resilienza di una bambina di fronte al dolore della persecuzione razziale e dell’esilio ... In uno scritto della fine degli anni Ottanta, Lidia Gallico ripercorre la sua infanzia di bambina ebrea negli anni delle leggi razziali: la fuga in Svizzera, il campo profughi, l’accoglienza in un collegio di suore, la separazione dai genitori e il rientro a casa ... A tale scritto si aggiungono qui il “diarietto comune”, tenuto durante il soggiorno nel collegio svizzero e subito dopo il ritorno a casa, e le lettere scritte da lì ai genitori, pubblicate in questo volume per la prima volta ... L’introduzione di Maria Bacchi ricostruisce il contesto storico della persecuzione razziale in Italia e le spesso contraddittorie politiche di accoglienza e respingimento dei profughi ebrei che chiedevano asilo in Svizzera. Evidenzia anche come questo raro e insolito materiale sia una fonte preziosa per conoscere la vita e l’interiorità dei bambini rifugiati." --- Lidia Gallico è nata a Mantova nel 1932 da una famiglia ebraica. A soli sei anni subisce la durezza delle leggi razziali. Fuggita da Mantova con i genitori durante l’occupazione nazista, dopo un peregrinare in rifugi “sicuri”, nel gennaio 1944 ripara in Svizzera, dove resterà sino all’estate del 1945.Tornata nella sua città natale, compie gli studi classici e si laurea in lingue straniere all’Università Bocconi di Milano. Insegna per molti anni nelle scuole medie. Da anni contribuisce, con la sua testimonianza, alla riflessione sulla Shoah nel territorio mantovano e non solo, rivolgendo particolare cura al dialogo con le giovani generazioni. --- Maria Bacchi si occupa di storia e narrazioni dell’infanzia nelle guerre del Novecento. È autrice di Cercando Luisa. Storie di bambini in guerra 1938-1945 (Milano, Sansoni, 2000) e, con Fabio Levi, di Auschwitz, il presente e il possibile. Dialoghi sulla storia tra infanzia e adolescenza (Firenze, Giuntina, 2004). Fa parte del Comitato scientifico della Fondazione Villa Emma-Ragazzi ebrei salvati di Nonantola. Ha conosciuto Lidia Gallico durante i suoi lavori di ricerca e ne è nata una sincera e profonda amicizia che perdura negli anni.
 
==== 2014 ====
 
* {en} [[Steven Pressman]]. '''''50 Children: One Ordinary American Couple's Extraordinary Rescue Mission into the Heart of Nazi Germany'''''. New York, NY: Harper, 2014. --- "This is the astonishing true story of how one American couple transported fifty Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Austria to America - the single largest group of unaccompanied refugee children allowed into the United States. In early 1939, America's rigid immigration laws made it virtually impossible for European Jews to seek safe haven in the United States. As deep-seated anti-Semitism and isolationism gripped much of the country, neither President Roosevelt nor Congress rallied to their aid. Yet one brave Jewish couple from Philadelphia refused to silently stand by. Risking their own safety, Gilbert Kraus, a successful lawyer, and his stylish wife, Eleanor, traveled to Nazi-controlled Vienna and Berlin to save fifty Jewish children. Steven Pressman brought the Kraus's rescue mission to life in his 2013 HBO documentary, 50 Children. In this book, he expands upon the story, offering additional historical detail and context to a portrait of this ordinary couple and their extraordinary actions. Drawing from Eleanor Kraus's unpublished memoir, rare historical documents, and interviews with more than a dozen of the surviving children, and illustrated with period photographs, archival materials, and memorabilia, 50 Children is a tale of personal courage and triumphant heroism that offers a unique insight into a critical period of history."
 
==== 2013 ====
 
* {it} [[Bruno Maida]]. '''La Shoah dei bambini: La persecuzione dell'infanzia ebraica in Italia''' (Turin: Einaudi, 2013). --- <Italy> <Intro> --- "La storia della persecuzione degli ebrei attuata dal fascismo tra il 1938 e il 1945 ci è ormai ben nota, ma raramente ci si è soffermati a riflettere su cosa abbiano significato quei tragici sette anni per i bambini italiani. Per i bambini «ariani», cresciuti nell'educazione al razzismo e alla guerra, e, soprattutto, per i bambini ebrei, allontanati da scuola, testimoni impotenti della progressiva emarginazione sociale e lavorativa dei genitori, e in moltissimi casi della distruzione e dell'eliminazione fisica della propria famiglia. Da questa prospettiva la storia che abbiamo alle spalle assume nuovi significati e stratificazioni. Il regime fascista iniziò ad attuare la discriminazione proprio dal mondo della scuola, e i bambini ebrei - prima espulsi, poi separati, esclusi e infine internati - furono vittime tra le vittime. Una parte di essi fu poi deportata, gli altri dovettero fuggire e nascondersi per molti mesi. Bruno Maida ne ripercorre la storia attraverso i progressivi stadi della persecuzione, attento a cogliere non solo lo sguardo che l'infanzia ebbe di fronte al turbinio dei fatti, ma la portata politica di una ferita impossibile da sanare."
 
==== 2011 ====
 
* {en} [[Patricia Heberer]]. '''''Children during the Holocaust'''''. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011. --- "This compelling book, from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, tells the story of the Holocaust through the eyes, and fates, of its youngest victims. Following the arc of the persecutory policies of the Nazis and their sympathizers and the impact these measures had on Jewish children and adolescents, the chapters begin with the years leading to the war, to the roundups, deportations, and emigrations, to hidden life and death in the ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping in the wake of war. This volume examines the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood in Jewish homes, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens and explores the ways in which children's experiences paralleled and diverged from their adult counterparts. The author also reflects upon the role of non-Jewish children as victims, perpetrators, and bystanders ... The ten chapters follow the arc of the persecutory policies of the Nazis and their sympathizers and the impact these measures had on Jewish children and adolescents--from the years leading to the war, to the roundups, deportations, and emigrations, to hidden life and death in the ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping in the wake of war. This volume examines the reactions of children to discrimination, the loss of livelihood in Jewish homes, and the public humiliation at the hands of fellow citizens and explores the ways in which children's experiences paralleled and diverged from their adult counterparts." --- [[Patricia Heberer]], PhD, museum historian, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, is a specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany.
 
=== 2000s ===
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:2009 Bogner.jpg|Bogner (2009)
File:2008 Vromen.jpg|Vromen (2008)
File:2007 Berg.jpg|Berg (2007) <reprint>
File:2005 Nicholas.jpg|Nicholas (2005)
File:Fateless 2005.jpg|Koltai (2005) <film>
File:2004 Brenner.jpg|Brenner (2004)
File:2004 Bailly.jpg|Bailly (2004)
File:2001 Brostoff.jpg|Brostoff (2001)
File:2000 Harris.jpg|Harris (2000)
</gallery>
 
==== 2009 ====
 
* {en} [[Nahum Bogner]]. '''At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland''' (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009). --- "Hidden under false identities in cities, on farms and in convents and monasteries, young Jewish children survived the war by the grace of kindhearted strangers. Their story is told by an historian who survived the war as a child. He describes how the emotional closeness so essential for survival made it so hard for the children to leave their host families after the war ... The book was awarded the Buchman Prize of Yad Vashem for Holocaust Literature."
 
==== 2008 ====
 
* {en} [[Suzanne Vromen]]. '''Hidden Children of the Holocaust: Belgian Nuns and their Daring Rescue of Young Jews from the Nazis''' (Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press,2008). --- "In the terrifying summer of 1942 in Belgium, when the Nazis began the brutal roundup of Jewish families, parents searched desperately for safe haven for their children. As Suzanne Vromen reveals in Hidden Children of the Holocaust, these children found sanctuary with other families and schools--but especially in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages ... Vromen has interviewed not only those who were hidden as children, but also the Christian women who rescued them, and the nuns who gave the children shelter, all of whose voices are heard in this powerfully moving book. Indeed, here are numerous first-hand memoirs of life in a wartime convent--the secrecy, the humor, the admiration, the anger, the deprivation, the cruelty, and the kindness--all with the backdrop of the terror of the Nazi occupation. We read the stories of the women of the Resistance who risked their lives in placing Jewish children in the care of the Church, and of the Mothers Superior and nuns who sheltered these children and hid their identity from the authorities. Perhaps most riveting are the stories told by the children themselves--abruptly separated from distraught parents and given new names, the children were brought to the convents with a sense of urgency, sometimes under the cover of darkness. They were plunged into a new life, different from anything they had ever known, and expected to adapt seamlessly. Vromen shows that some adapted so well that they converted to Catholicism, at times to fit in amid the daily prayers and rituals, but often because the Church appealed to them. Vromen also examines their lives after the war, how they faced the devastating loss of parents to the Holocaust, struggled to regain their identities and sought to memorialize those who saved them ... This remarkable book offers an inspiring chronicle of the brave individuals who risked everything to protect innocent young strangers, as well as a riveting account of the "hidden children" who lived to tell their stories."
 
==== 2005 ====
 
* {en} [[Lynn H. Nicholas]]. '''Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web''' (New York: Knopf, 2005). --- A general introduction to the lives of children in Europe under Nazi rule (Jews and non-Jews). --- "In this riveting, powerful narrative, Lynn Nicholas shows how children under the Nazis became mere objects available for use in the service of the totalitarian state. Nicholas recounts the euthanasia and eugenic selection, racist indoctrination, kidnapping and “Germanization,” mass executions, and slave labor to which the Nazis subjected Europe’s children. She also captures the uprooted children’s search for their families in the aftermath of the war. A disturbing and absolutely necessary work, Cruel World opens a new chapter in World War II studies."
 
==== 2004 ====
 
* {de} [[Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick]], ed. '''''Die Mädchen von Zimmer 28: Freundschaft, Hoffnung und Uberleben in Theresienstadt''''' (München: Droemer Knaur 2004) --- Collection of memoirs of Holocaust survivors from <Theresienstadt>. --- '''The girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt''', English ed. by [[John E. Woods]] and [[Shelley Frisch]] (New York : Schocken Books, 2009). ---- Also translated into Polish, Czech, and Portuguese. --- "From 1942 to 1944, 15,000 children passed through the internment camp on their way to Auschwitz. Only 100 of them survived the war. In this book, 12 of these children--mothers and grandmothers today in their 70s--tell how they did it ... German journalist Hannelore Brenner met these child survivors."
 
==== 2001 ====
 
* {en} [[Anita Brostoff]], ed. '''Flares of Memory: Stories of Childhood during the Holocaust''' (New York : Oxford University Press, 2001). --- "A collection of "over one hundred brief stories written by survivors from Germany, Poland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and the Balkan countries ... along with "poignant recollections of American liberators who were devastated by the horrors they discovered after the fall of the Nazis ... In a series of writing workshops at the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, survivors who were children or teens during World War II assembled to remember the pivotal moments in which their lives were irreparably changed by the Nazis. These "flares of memory" preserve the voices of over forty Jews from throughout Europe who experienced a history that cannot be forgotten ... Ninety-two brief vignettes arranged both chronologically and thematically recreate the disbelief and chaos that ensued as families were separated, political rights were abolished, and synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed. Survivors remember the daily humiliation, the quiet heroes among their friends, and the painful abandonment by neighbors as Jews were restricted to ghettos, forced to don yellow stars, and loaded like cattle into trains. Vivid memories of hunger, disease, and a daily existence dependent on cruel luck provide penetrating testimonies to the ruthlessness of the Nazi killing machine, yet they also bear witness to the resilience and fortitude of individual souls bombarded by evil."
 
==== 2000 ====
 
* {en} [[Mark Jonathan Harris]] - [[Deborah Oppenheimer]]. '''Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport''' (New York, NY, and London: Bloomsbury, 2000). --- "Chronicles the events and people involved in the rescue of 10,000 children from Nazi territories, and what happened after the war. Official tie-in to the Warner Brothers documentary. First hand account of the extraordinary rescue mission of 10,000 children before the outbreak of World War II. For nine months before the outbreak of World War II, Britain conducted an extraordinary rescue mission. It opened its doors to over 10,000 endangered children, 90 percent of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. These children were taken into foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents. Most of the children never saw their families again. Into the Arms of Strangers recounts the remarkable story of this rescue operation, known as the Kindertransport, and its dramatic impact on the lives of the children who were saved. The book is the companion to the feature-length documentary which was released in the theatres by Warner Bros. in Fall 2000. It contains stories in their own words from the child survivors, rescuers, parents, and foster parents. They recount, in harrowing detail, the effects of the Nazi's reign of terror, the horror of Kristallnacht, the agonizing decision by the parents to send their children away, the journey, the difficulties of adjustment in Britain, the outbreak of war, and the children's tragic discovery afterward that most of their parents had perished in concentration camps. The stories are heartbreaking, but also inspiring. These are the stories of those who survived with the help of others; they are stories about the strength and resolve of children; and most astonishing, these are stories not yet heard about the Holocaust."
 
=== 1990s ===
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1999 Fox.jpg|Fox (1999)
File:1998 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1998)
File:1997 Benigni.jpg|Benigni (1997) <film>
File:1996 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1996)
File:1996 Hochberg-Marianskwa.jpg|Hochberg-Marianskwa (1996) en
 
FIle:1995 Zargani.jpg|Zargani (1995) <memoirs>
 
File:1994 Rosenberg.jpg|Fox (1994)
File:1994 Lukas.jpg|Lukas (1994)
File:1994 Levi.jpg|Levi (1994) <memoirs>
File:1994 Kraus.jpg|Kraus (1994)
File:1994 Kestenberg.jpg|Kestenberg (1994)
 
File:1993 Valent.jpg|Valent (1993)
File:1993 Pacifici.jpg|Pacifici (1993) <memoirs>
File:1993 Marks.jpg|Marks (1993)
 
File:1991 Dwork.jpg|Dwork (1991)
File:1991 Gilbert.jpg|Gilbert (1991)
File:1991 Durlacher.jpg|Durlacher (1991)
 
File:1990 Lagnado.jpg|Lagnado (1990)
File:1990 Holland.jpg|Holland (1990) <film>
</gallery>
 
==== 1999 ====
 
* {en} [[Anne L. Fox]] and [[Eva Abraham-Podietz]], '''''Ten Thousand Children: True Stories Told by Children Who Escaped the Holocaust on the Kindertransport''''' (West Orange, NJ : Behrman House, 1999). --- Nonfiction <elementary and junior high school>. --- "Tells the true stories of children who escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport, a rescue mission led by concerned British to save Jewish children from the Holocaust."--Publisher description. --- [[Anne L. Fox]] has written about her childhood in Nazi Germany and her subsequent departure to England with the Kindertransport when she was 12 years old. [[Eva Abraham-Podietz]] is also a Holocaust survivor. She now lives in the U.S., and speaks primarily to school youngsters.
 
==== 1998 ====
 
* {en} [[Judith S. Kestenberg]] - [[Charlotte Kahn]], eds. '''''Children Surviving Persecution: An International Study of Trauma and Healing'''''. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998. --- "This international study of children's experiences of organized persecution, explores the Holocaust and its aftermath as prototypical social trauma. The essays in this collection focus on long-term effects of trauma caused by organized persecution - children's experiences of the horror and terror of war, and on the coping mechanisms and reparative experiences, which mitigate and sometimes surmount the trauma ... Traumatized persons' feelings of shame and guilt as well as a sense of being different may prevail, and they may attribute great power to others, seek safety in isolation, or search for a rescuer. Nevertheless, as a group, the child survivors of the Holocaust have achieved remarkable success as adults." --- Contents: Preliminaries; Contents; Preface; Introduction; 1 The Background of Persecution and Its Aftermath; 2 Historical Trauma Psychohistorical Reflections on the Holocaust; 3 Adult Survivors Child Survivors and Children of Survivors; 4 Man Behind Walls; 5 Interviewing for Indemnification; 6 Impact on the Second and Third Generations; 7 Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in Hungary Between 1989 and 1994; 8 Child Survivors A Review; 9 Nazi Fathers; 10 The Persecution of Polish Children; 11 Yugoslavian Child Survivors; 12 German Jewish Identity; 13 Kindertransport A Case Study --- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Kestenberg Judith Ida Kestenberg] (née Silberpfennig; 1910-1999) was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, she studied in Vienna. In 1937 she moved to the United States, where she spent her entire career.
 
==== 1996 ====
 
* {en} [[Judith S. Kestenberg]] - [[Ira Brenner]]. '''''The Last Witness: The Child Survivor of the Holocaust'''''. American Psychiatric Press, 1996). --- "The Last Witness: The Child Survivor of the Holocaust looks in depth at the traumatic effects of genocidal persecution on the child's psychic structure and on development through the life cycle. It offers valuable information to clinicians working with Holocaust survivors and their families and serves as an indispensable guide for therapists and interested readers who want to learn more about the short- and long-term effects of genocidal persecution ... The authors have combined their findings, based on more than 1,500 interviews with Holocaust survivors from all over the world, to create this volume. Through case vignettes and life histories, the book offers historical information on the Holocaust itself, the overall plight of children superego development, and the role often played by transitional phenomena in mastering the attendant trauma and object loss. Special attention is paid to the effects of the Holocaust on children who were in hiding and the experience of adolescent children, as described in the diary of an adolescent girl ... Anyone who reads this book will have a greater understanding of how the developing child can be affected by trauma associated with persecution. It is one of very few books written about the psyches of survivors and their children. As a forum for survivors' voices, it will endure as a somber reminder that the future of humankind hangs in the balance between the forces of creation and the forces of destruction." --- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Kestenberg Judith Ida Kestenberg] (née Silberpfennig; 1910-1999) was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, she studied in Vienna. In 1937 she moved to the United States, where she spent her entire career.
 
==== 1995 ====
 
* {it} [[Aldo Zargani]]. '''''Per violino solo: La mia infanzia nell'Aldiqua, 1938-1945'''''. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995. --- <Holocaust> <Memoirs> --- "In an extraordinary literary debut, Aldo Zargani reconstructs the lost world of his Jewish childhood during the perilous years 1938–45 when he and his family fled from Fascists and Nazis in northern Italy. His haunting memoir acquires a cinematic intensity as he crosscuts from the blood-red stone spires of Basel, where his father failed to find refuge for his family in 1939, to fiery scenes of the Allied bombing of Turin in 1942, to the freezing winter of 1943–44, which Zargani and his brother spent hidden in a Catholic boarding school deep in the countryside."
 
* {fr} Le mémorial des enfants juifs déportés de France (French children of the Holocaust / 1995, 1996.
 
==== 1994 ====
 
* {it} [[Lia Levi]]. '''''Una bambina e basta'''''. Roma [Italy]: E/O, [1994] --- <Holocaust> <Memoirs> --- "Lia ha appena finito la prima elementare, quando la mamma le dice che a settembre non potrà più tornare in classe. Mussolini, che comanda su tutti, non vuole più i bambini ebrei nelle scuole. In realtà non vuole gli ebrei a Torino, dove Lia abita con la famiglia, né a Milano e nemmeno a Roma. Non li vuole da nessuna parte. Con le valigie sempre in mano, i perché nella testa di Lia crescono ogni giorno. Perché il papà ha perso il lavoro? Cosa importa a Mussolini se alcuni bambini vanno a scuola e altri no? Perché la tata Maria non può più stare con loro? Perché non può essere solo una bambina, una bambina e basta? Età di lettura: da 6 anni."
 
* {en} [[Maxine B. Rosenberg]]. '''''Hiding to Survive: Stories of Jewish Children Rescued from the Holocaust'''''. New York, NY: Clarion Books, 1994. --- Nonfiction <juvenile audience>. --- "The first-person stories of fourteen Jewish children who were hidden, during World War II, from the Nazis by non-Jewish friends--in monasteries, convents, secret closets, chicken coops, and elsewhere--are accompanied by information on what those children are doing today." --- Contents: Paulette Pomerantz -- Kurt Dattner -- Rose Silberberg-Skier -- Manny Stern -- Cécile Rojer Jeruchim -- Jacques van Dam -- Sylvia Richter -- Andy Sterling -- Hirsch Grunstein -- Aviva Blumberg -- Ruth Bachner -- Debora Biron -- Simon Jeruchim -- Judith Steel. --- [[Maxine B. Rosenberg]] is a published author of children's books and young adult books.
 
* {en} [[Judith S. Kestenberg]] - [[Eva Fogelman]], eds. '''''Children During the Nazi Reign: Psychological Perspective on the Interview Process'''''. Greenwood, 1994. --- "This work shows how interviews help child survivors of the Jewish experience during World War II. It is unique in that it features different aspects of the interviewer-interviewee relationship. The contributions are personal as well as analytical in nature, and the narrative is an informed psychological analysis. The work should be of interest to Holocaust centers, researchers, oral historians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, and trauma researchers as well as survivors." ---  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Kestenberg Judith Ida Kestenberg] (née Silberpfennig; 1910-1999) was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. Born in Poland to a Jewish family, she studied in Vienna. In 1937 she moved to the United States, where she spent her entire career. --- [[Eva Fogelman]] was born in a displaced persons camp in Kassel, Germany after World War II. She lived in Israel for a brief period before coming to the United States in 1959, where she pursued her career as a psychologist.
 
* {en} [[Richard C. Lukas]]. '''''Did the Children Cry?: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children''''' (New York, NY: Hippocrene Books, 1994). --- "An unprecedented aspect of Nazi genocide in World War II was the cold and deliberate decision not to spare the children. Jewish children, first driven into the ghettos, were marked for total destruction as part of the "Final Solution" once it was put into effect, in 1942. Gentile children were starved, killed, or Germanized in order to reduce the Polish nation to a small complement of semi-literate slaves tending the Herrenvolk in their thousand-year Reich. This record also includes accounts of how they fought back by working for the underground, smuggling food into the ghettos, attending secret classes to continue their forbidden education. Included are stories of villains like Mengele who selected children for execution during Jewish religious holidays; Rudolph Hoess, Auschwitz's commandant who admitted his own discomfort when he witnessed the gassing of prisoners with the excuse: "I was a soldier and an officer"; a heroic Dr. Janusz Korczak who was in charge of an orphanage in the ghetto, but refused to leave his orphans, and at the head of a contingent of 192 children and 8 staff members, erect, his eyes looking into the distance, held the hands of two children as he led them to the railroad platform where trains took them to certain death. Based on vast research in the United States, Great Britain, and Poland, many interviews, theses and other papers, documents and official histories, memoirs, autobiographies, articles, periodicals and newspapers, Did the Children Cry? stands as a monument to millions of children who were bombed, wounded, deported, raped, starved, maimed, subjected to "medical" experimentation, and killed in German-occupied Poland."--Publisher description. --- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_C._Lukas Richard C. Lukas] (b.1937) is an American historian and author of books and articles on military, diplomatic, Polish, and Polish-American history. He specializes in the history of Poland during World War II.
 
* {en} [[Ota B. Kraus]]. '''''The Painted Wall''''' / '''''The Children's Block''''' (Tel-Aviv : Yaron Golan Publ., 1994). Repr. London: Ebury Press, 2019. Also translated into German (2002). --- A semi-fictional account, based on his own personal experience. --- "In the novel The Painted Wall, Otto (Ota) B. Kraus writes about his own experience in Auschwitz during WWII. Otto was one of the instructors in the children's block and his (future) wife Dita, was the librarian for the children, of whom only a handfull survived. The book, which was originally named "The Diary", was written after the war. The story of a diary is but a literary introduction, yet the events described in the book are real. The Painted Wall tells the true story of 500 Jewish children who lived in the Czech Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau between September 1943 and June 1944. The children were kept on a Children's Block supervised by the notorious Dr. Mengele, where their instructors organized clandestine lessons, singalongs and even staged little plays and charades. The Children's Block was intended to provide the Nazis with an alibi to refute the rumors of the Final Solution. As long as the Children's Block existed, it was a shelter and haven for the hundreds of children, who soon afterwards perished in the gas chambers." --- [[Ota "Otto" B. Kraus]] (1921-2000) was born and raised in Prague to a Jewish family. In May 1942 he was confined with his family to Ghetto Terezin . In December 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz, where at the time the Nazis had established a special family camps for those arriving from Terezin. Otto became one of the children’s counselors on the Kinderblock, a special barracks where the children were kept during the day. After a few months the camp was liquidated and the inmates were almost all sent to the gas chambers. Otto was one of the few selected to survive as labor force. A fervent Zionist, after the war he settled to Israel, where he was a teacher and writer.
 
==== 1993 ====
 
* {en} [[Paul Valent]]. '''''Child Survivors of the Holocaust''''' (Port Melbourne : William Heinemann Australia, 1993). Repr. New York, NY: Brunner-Routledge, 2002. --- "How can the abused child remember the events of childhood? What help does our society offer our traumatised children? With an unreliable memory inhibited by frightening feelings and a society keen to repress its own responsibility, the traumatised child is left alone and unsupported. At the end of the Second World War it was estimated that 1.5 million Jewish childred had been killed by the Nazis. In this book ten child survivors tell their stories. Their experiences range from living in hiding to physical and sexual abuse. Safe from neither the supposed protector nor the obvious enemy, these children's stories are remarkable. From these unchildlike childhoods we learn about courage and fortitude, and we respond with admiration and compassion. The testimonies in Child Survivors offer insights into our own pasts and give us all greater courage ... In this book, ten child survivors tell their stories. Paul Valent, himself a child survivor and psychiatrist, explores with profound analytical insight the deepest memories of those survivors he interviewed. Their experiences range from living in hiding to physical and sexual abuse. Child Survivors of the Holocaust preserves and integrates the personal narratives and the therapist's perspective in an amazing chronicle. The stories in this book contribute to questions concerning the roots of morality, memory, resilience, and specifc scientific queries of the origins of psychosomatic symptoms, psychiatric illness, and trans-generational transmission of trauma. Child Survivors of the Holocaust speaks to the trauma facing contemporary child victims of abuse worldwide through past narratives of the Holocaust ... The survivors are: Eva Slonim, who was subject to experiments by Mengele in Auschwitz; Bernadette Szkop Gore and her sister Frankie Paper, who were hidden in Paris; Richard Rozen (born Rozencwajg), who was in the Lublin ghetto; Juliette Zeelander, who survived in Amsterdam; Eva Steiner Grant, who was in Theresienstadt, as was George Hammerschmidt, after living in Zwickau and Berlin; Eva Marks, who fled from Vienna to Riga, and then to the USSR; Danial Kogan, whose father and siblings were deported from France to Auschwitz; and an anonymous woman who was abused, including sexually, by members of several families that hid her in France during the Holocaust." --- [[Paul Valent]] is a child survivor of the Holocaust who spent the war in open hiding in Budapest, Hungary. He migrated with his parents to Melbourne, Australia in 1949. After studying medicine he received a postgraduate psychiatric degree in London, and then worked in Israel for three years. Back in Australia he specialized in liaison psychiatry (mainly in emergency departments), in psychotherapy and in traumatology. He co-founded and is ex-president of the Australasian Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and he founded and is ex-president of the Melbourne Child Survivors of the Holocaust group.
 
* {it} [[Emanuele Pacifici]]. '''''«Non ti voltare». Autobiografia di un ebreo'''''. Firenze [Italy]: Giuntina, 1993). --- "Le memorie di Emanuele appartengono alle testimonianze rese da quanti, come anche [[Aldo Zargani]], dichiarano esplicitamente di scrivere a distanza di tempo e manifestano la volontà di parlare per onorare la memoria sia dei loro morti sia di tutte le vittime della Shoah, e soprattutto perché i giovani e le generazioni future facciano tesoro delle vicende narrate e ne tramandino il ricordo ... Emanuele, nato nel 1931, viene nascosto in un convento e sopravvive alla guerra. Nel suo racconto si intrecciano drammi personali – l’allontanamento da casa dopo la morte di una sorellina in un incidente domestico e la nascita del fratellino Raffaele – e il dramma storico della Shoah, che il bambino vive in un istituto religioso dove è nascosto con il fratello, sotto falsa identità. La fede lo aiuta sia a mantenere segreta la sua origine ebraica, sia a non lasciarsi attrarre dal cattolicesimo per riconoscenza o desiderio di appartenenza ... La liberazione, dopo l’emozionante incontro con un soldato della Brigata Ebraica, assume nel suo racconto toni particolarmente dolorosi da un lato con l’arrivo a Roma e la scoperta che tanti parenti, compresi i genitori, non ci sono più, dall’altro con gravi problemi di salute che gli impediscono di partire alla volta di Eretz Israel, il futuro Stato ebraico."
 
* {en} [[Jane Marks]]. '''''The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust''''' (New York : Ballantine Books, 1993). --- "They hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war--Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, even years, they faced the constant danger of discovery, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. These secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories for decades. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences -- some for the first time ... There is Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who lived in a closet with his family for thirteen months. Their personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life-affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled document of witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage." --- [[Jane Marks]] is an American author and journalist whose article in ''New York'' magazine became the basis for her book on children who survived the Holocaust in hiding.
 
==== 1991 ====
 
* {en} [[Deborah Dwork]]. '''Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe''' (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991). --- Translated into German (1994), Italian (1994), Dutch (1998), and Japanese (1999). --- "Based on many oral histories taken from child survivors of the Holocaust, the author focuses on the experiences of young Jewish children from their earliest encounters with anti-Semitism to their enslavement in labor camps ... Many books have been written about the experiences of Jews in Nazi Europe. None, however, has focused on the persecution of the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community―its children. This powerful and moving book by Deborah Dwork relates the history of these children for the first time ... The book is based on hundreds of oral histories conducted with survivors who were children in the Holocaust, in Europe and North America, an extraordinary range of primary documentation uncovered by the author (including diaries, letters, photographs and family albums), and archival records. Drawing on these sources, Dwork reveals the feelings, daily activities, and perceptions of Jewish children who lived and died in the shadow of the Holocaust. She reconstructs and analyzes the many different experiences the children faced. In the early years of Nazi domination they lived at home, increasingly opposed by rising anti-Semitism. Later some went into hiding while others attempted to live openly on gentile papers. As time passed, increasing numbers were forced into transit camps, ghettos, and death and slave labor camps. Although nearly ninety percent of the Jewish children in Nazi Europe were murdered, we learn in this history not of their deaths but of the circumstances of their lives ... Children with a Star is a major new contribution to the history of Europe during the Nazi era. It explains from a different perspective how European society functioned during the wary years, how the German noose tightened, and how the Jewish victims and their gentile neighbors responded. It expands the definition of resistance by examining the history of the people―primarily women―who helped Jewish children during the war. By focusing on children, it strips away rationalizations that the victims of Nazism somehow “allowed or “deserved” their punishment. And by examining the experience of children and thereby laying bare how society functions at its most fundamental level, it not only provides a unique understanding of the Holocaust but a new theoretical approach to the study of history." --- [[Deborah Dwork]] is Senior Research Scholar, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Department of History, Clark University, Worcester, MA. Dwork moved from the history of childhood as a social construct to the history of children as subjects and actors. Her historical analysis used children’s experiences as a lens through which to view all of society.
 
* [[Gerhard Durlacher]]. '''De zoektocht''' <Dutch> (Amsterdam : Meulenhoff, 1991). --- English ed. '''The Search: The Birkenau Boys''', trans. Susan Massotty (London ; New York : Serpent's Tail, 1998). --- Also translated into German (''Die Suche : Bericht über den Tod und das Uberleben'', Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1995). --- "Gerhard Durlacher was stunned to discover that he was not the only survivor who was assigned to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. The Search follows his quest to find his fellow survivors and ends with a reunion of the Birkenau boys in Israel in 1990 ... A child survivor of the Holocaust, Durlacher long believed that he was the only person still alive from a group of 89 boys assigned to the Birkenau extermination camp in 1944. After he learned that he was wrong, he set himself the task of confronting his past by locating some of the others. As in many other Holocaust memoirs, the prose here is spare, and the lack of detail can be a little confusing. For example, the reader is thrown into the author's search without a description of the process that led him to take his journey. But some psychological truisms emerge in this gray travelogue that, while not fresh, are worth ruminating over. What the author, a professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam who died in 1996, finds is that even though the survivors shared a common experience, how they have coped with their wartime suffering differs. Some, in particular those who have moved to Israel, meet regularly with other survivors; others keep their harrowing past buried deep in their psyches. Equally diverse are survivors' personal outlooks--despite what they have gone through, some of the "Birkenau Boys" still call themselves optimists, while others possess the bitterness one would expect. Not surprisingly, Durlacher, who wrote two previous books on the Holocaust, enjoyed the company of the former much more than the latter."--Publisher description. --- [[Gerhard Durlacher]] (1928-1996) was a Holocaust child survivor and writer.
 
* {en} [[Martin Gilbert]]. '''''The Boys: Triumph over Adversity''''' (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991). --- "The story of 732 young concentration camp survivors ... In August 1945, Britain offered to take in 1,000 young survivors [of the Holocaust]. Only 732 could be found. Flown to England, they first settled in the Lake District. They formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion ... After sharing their annual reunions for twenty years with historian Martin Gilbert, the men and women of "The Boys" asked him to share their recollections and experiences ... The Boys bears witness to the human spirit, enduring the depths, and bearing hopefully the burden and challenge of survival." --- [[Martin Gilbert]] (1936-2015) was a British historian and honorary Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He was the author of eighty-eight books, including works on Winston Churchill, the 20th century, and Jewish history including the Holocaust.
 
==== 1990 ====
 
* {en} [[Lucette Lagnado]] - [[Sheila Cohn Dekel]]. '''''Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz'''''. New York, NY: Morrow, 1990). --- "During World War II, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele subjected some 3,000 twins to medical experiments of unspeakable horror; only 160 survived. In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz's Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivor twins, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals and are themselves now inching into middle or old age. In stories that abound with ambiguity, anger, and redemptive hope, we encounter them first as children beginning their descent into Auschwitz by witnessing their entire families being led away to be killed. Later, we see the twins grateful for the soup and bread Mengele procured for them and reassured by his moments of seemingly genuine affection, yet terrified, always, by what he forced them to endure." ---- [[Lucette Matalon Lagnado]] (USA, 1956-2019) was an Egyptian-born American Jewish journalist and memoirist. Born in Cairo to a Jewish family, she lived in the United States. She was a reporter for ''The Wall Street Journal''.
 
-----
 
== 1980s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1989 Nir.jpg|Nir (1989)
File:1988 Schloss.jpg|Schloss (1988)
File:1988 Lifton.jpg|Lifton (1988)
File:1988 Freiberg.jpg|Freiberg (1988)
File:1988 Eisen.jpg|Eisen (1988)
File:1988 Appleman.jpg|Appleman (1988)
File:1987 Sherin.jpg|Sherin (1987) <film>
File:1987 Malle.jpg|Malle (1987) <film>
File:1986 Minsky.jpg|Minsky (1986)
File:1986 Bauman.jpg|Bauman (1986)
File:1986 Auerbacher.jpg|Auerbacher (1986)
File:1985 Klarsfeld English.jpg|Klarsfeld.en (1985) [1984]
File:1984 Schwarberg English.jpg|Schwarberg.en (1984) <1979>
File:1984 Orlev.jpg|Orlev.en (1984) <1981>
File:1984 Klarsfeld.jpg|Klarsfeld (1984)
File:1984 Hemmendinger.jpg|Hemmendinger (1984)
File:1982 Eisenberg.jpg|Eisenberg (1982)
File:1981 Siegal.jpg|Siegal (1981)
File:1981 Rubinowicz.jpg|Rubinowicz.en (1981) <1960>
File:1980 Wiesel it.jpg|Wiesel.it (1980) <1958>
File:1980 Edelbaum.jpg|Edelbaum (1980)
File:1980 Bitton-Jackson.jpg|Bitton-Jackson (1980)
</gallery>
 
==== 1988 ====
 
* [[George Eisen]]. '''''Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games among the Shadows''''' (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). --- "Studies the importance of "playing" to the survival of children in Nazi organized ghettos and concentration camps. illustrates how the feeling of normalcy created through play, provided not only a means of control by adults ... But a psychological Force which allowed for spiritual survival. examines the nature of games played, emphasizing how games such as "blockade" and "gas Chamber" reflected the environment in which they were created and played."--Publisher description. --- [[George Eisen]] (b.1943) was born in German-occupied Hungary. As a little child he spent a year in hiding with his Jewish mother while his father was held prisoner in a concentration camp. He attended high school in Hungary, college in Israel and received a doctorate from the University of Maryland. He has taught in Cal Poly Pomona’s physical education department since 1979. He got the idea for his book while researching organized Jewish sports in pre-World War II Europe for his doctorate.
 
* [[Betty Jean Lifton]]. '''''The King of Children: A Biography of Janusz Korczak''''' (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988). --- "A detailed biography of Janusz Korczak (1878-1942) - doctor, teacher, writer and educational theorist - who was deported along with the children of his orphanage in August 1942 from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, where they perished ... This is the tragic story of Janusz Korczak (as featured in the major motion picture The Zookeeper's Wife) who chose to perish in Treblinka rather than abandon the Jewish orphans in his care. Korczak comes alive in this acclaimed biography by Betty Jean Lifton as the first known advocate of children's rights in Poland, and the man known as a savior of hundreds of orphans in the Warsaw ghetto. A pediatrician, educator, and Polish Jew, Janusz Korczak introduced progressive orphanages, serving both Jewish and Catholic children, in Warsaw. Determined to shield children from the injustices of the adult world, he built orphanages into 'just communities' complete with parliaments and courts. Korczak also founded the first national children's newspaper, testified on behalf of children in juvenile courts, and, through his writings, provided teachers and parents with a moral education. Known throughout Europe as a Pied Piper of destitute children prior to the onslaught of World War II, he assumed legendary status when on August 6, 1942, after refusing offers for his own safety, he defiantly led the orphans under his care in the Warsaw Ghetto to the trains that would take them to Treblinka." --- [[Betty Jean Lifton]] (USA, 1926-2010) was an adopted child. For entire career as a psychologist, she kept a clear and present focus on children, on children’s issues, and on children’s literature. She authored several books on adoption.
 
==== 1984 ====
 
* [[Serge Klarsfeld]]. '''''Les enfants d'Izieu''''' (Paris [France]: B. Klarsfeld Foundation, 1984) <French>. --- English tr. '''''The Children of Izieu''''' (New York, NY: H. Abrams, 1985). --- "Presents the story of an orphanage in Izieu, France that sheltered Jewish children from all over Europe who had escaped Nazi persecution. In 1944, one month before World War II ended, the Gestapo sent soldiers to the orphanage to arrest all the children and caretakers. Those arrested were taken to Auschwitz for immediate execution. The events are recounted through the stories of those who escaped the Nazi raid." --- [[Serge Klarsfeld]] (b.1935) is a Holocaust child survivor, a Romanian-born French activist and Nazi hunter known for documenting the Holocaust in order to establish the record and to enable the prosecution of war criminals. Born in Bucharest into a family of Romanian Jews, they migrated to France before the Second World War began. Serge's father was deported and killed during the Holocaust. Serge was cared for in a home for Jewish children operated by the OSE (''Œuvre de secours aux enfants''). His mother and sister also survived the war in hiding in France. In 1979 Serge helped found and has ever since led the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France (Association des fils et filles des déportés juifs de France).
 
* [[Judith Hemmendinger]]. '''''Les enfants de Buchenwald: que sont devenus les 1000 enfants juifs sauvés en 1945?''''' (Lausanne, Suisse : P.-M. Favre, 1984). --- '''The Children of Buchenwald : Child Survivors and Their Post-War Lives''', English rev. ed. by Judith Hemmendinger and Robert Krell (Jerusalem ; Hewlett, NY. : Gefen House, 2000). --- Also translated into German. ---  Some of the 426 child survivors of Buchenwald tell their stories, from their lives in the camp, their liberation, and their struggle for normalcy and emotional well-being. --- Contents: From Auschwitz to Liberation - Arrival in France - The children at Ambloy - Lulek's story -- Romek's story - Taverny -- Destinations: leaving Taverny - Life journeys: 20 years later in New York - Life journeys: France - Life journeys: Israel - Elie Wiesel - Observations and conclusions.
 
==== 1982 ====
 
* [[Azriel Eisenberg]]. '''''The Lost Generation: Children in the Holocaust''''' (New York : Pilgrim Press, 1982). [[User:Gabriele Boccaccini|Gabriele Boccaccini]] ([[User talk:Gabriele Boccaccini|talk]]) "Collects firsthand accounts of the Nazi persecution of Jewish children during World War II and the efforts of the members of the organization, Youth Aliyah, to rescue these children ... Explores the wide range of experiences suffered by children during the Holocaust, including their lives in the Nazi ghettos and concentration camps, as well as years spent hiding in the forests ... Passing as Aryans, or living under the protection of righteous gentiles. chapters 6 and 7 explore children's diaries, including Anne Frank's, and written testimonies by children." [[User:Gabriele Boccaccini|Gabriele Boccaccini]] ([[User talk:Gabriele Boccaccini|talk]]) [[Azriel Eisenberg]] (USA, 1903-1985). The child of Jewish immigrants, Eisenberg devoted his entire life to the cause of Jewish education. His interests led him to revisit the experience of children during the Holocaust. After the anthologies of the 1940s, his book was the first collection of children's accounts of the Holocaust.
 
==== 1981 ====
 
* '''The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz''' ([[Edinburgh, Scotland]]: [[Blackwood]], 1981) is the first English edition of a diary written in Polish by Holocaust victim [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (1927-1942) in 1940-42 (age 12-15), while living in Poland under Nazi rule. First published in Poland (Warszawa : Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960). Also published in German, Hungarian, Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Japanese, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Yiddish. --- "Dawid Rubinowicz began his diary in March 1940, after the Nazi invasion, and continued until at least June 1942. He left his diary, written in at least five copybooks, with his Polish neighbor and friend, Tadeusz Waciński. Later, the notebooks were passed on to Antoni Waciński, who kept them in his house for 15 years. A family that rented the house in the 1950s found the diary and read it aloud on the local radio. A few years later, journalist Maria Jarochowska arranged for it to be published for the first time. Excerpts from Dawid's diary also appear in several anthologies, including Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, edited by Alexandra Zapruder and We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust, edited by Jacob Boas." ---"Presents the diaries of a twelve-year-old Polish boy written between 1940 and 1942. Describes the Nazi occupation of Poland and the increasingly harsh decrees targeting Jews. Contains photographs" (USHMM). --- [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (1927-1942) was born and raised in Krajno, Poland, the son of a poor Jewish diary farmer. Dawid and his entire family perished in the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka. Dawid was only 15 when he died.
 
-----
 
=== 1970s ===
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1979 Schwarberg.jpg|Schwarberg (1979)
File:1979 Pisar.jpg|Pisar (1979)
File:1978 Stoessinger.jpg|Stoessinger (1978)
File:Oberski Dutch.jpg|Oberski (1978)
File:1974 Heyman.jpg|Heyman (1974) en
File:1973 Rudashevski.jpg|Rudashevski (1973 @1968) en]]
File:1972 Reiss.jpg|Reiss (1972)
File:1970 Ziemian.jpg|Ziemian (1970)
</gallery>
 
==== 1979 ====
 
* [[Günther Schwarberg]]. '''''Der SS-Arzt und die Kinder: Bericht über den Mord vom Bullenhuser Damm''''' <German> (Hamburg [Germany]: Gruner und Jahr, 1979). -- English tr. by  [[Henri Nannen]]. ''The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm: The SS Doctor and the Children'' (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). --- "On the night of April 20, 1945, 20 Jewish children who had been used in medical experiments at Neuengamme, their four adult caretakers and six Soviet prisoners were murdered in the basement of the school ... The twenty Jewish children (10 boys and 10 girls, age 5 to 12, from Poland, France, Italy and Slovenia) came from Auschwitz concentration camp. They were chosen by Josef Mengele and sent to Neuengamme as a "gift" to his colleague Kurt Heissmeyer, to be used as guinea pigs for experiments on tuberculosis". --- [[Günther Schwarberg]] (1926-2008) was a German journalist and author whose 1979 series of articles in German news magazine ''Der Stern'' and subsequent book "The SS Doctor and the Children" brought the World War II era war crimes committed in Neuengamme concentration camp and Bullenhuser Damm School in Hamburg to the public's conscience in Germany, and the rest of the world.
 
==== 1974 ====
 
* '''The Diary of Éva Heyman''' (1974) is the first English edition of a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Éva Heyman]] (1931-1944) in 1944 (age 13), while living in Hungary under Nazi rule. Published in Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1974. Originally published in Budapest: Uj Idok Irodalmi Intézet R.T. (Singer és Wolfner), 1948. Also published in Hebrew, Catalan, French and Italian. --- "The diary of Éva Heyman, born in 1931 in Nagyvárad, northern Transylvania (now Oradea, Romania), presented by her mother, Ágnes Zsolt. Her diary covers the period from 13 February (her 13th birthday) to 30 May 1944. At the time of the German occupation in March 1944, Éva was a student at the Jewish school. Her great-grandfather and a great-uncle had been Chief Rabbis of the Neolog Jewish community in the town in the 19th-20th centuries. Éva's parents had divorced, and her mother married the Hungarian Jewish writer Béla Zsolt, who lived in Budapest; Éva remained in Nagyvárad and was raised by her maternal grandparents, the Rácz family. In her diary, she gives a graphic description of the harsh events of the time, both in her home environment and in the city at large. When the ghetto was established in Nagyvárad, Éva's parents, who had been visiting in Nagyvárad, were also interned. They managed to escape from the ghetto to Budapest, where they were rescued on the Kasztner train. Éva, her grandparents, her biological father (Béla Heyman), his mother, as well as other family members were all deported to Auschwitz. Éva arrived in Auschwitz on 6 June, and was gassed on 17 October. Her mother presents here a very brief but heartrending description of Éva's experiences in Auschwitz. At the end, it was Mengele himself who sought her out and put her on the truck to be taken to the gas chamber. Her diary survived because she gave it to the family's cook who came to visit them in the ghetto on 30 May." --- "Presents diary entries from the last few months of a young girl’s life, from her thirteenth birthday on February 13, 1944 to May 30, 1944, just before she was deported to Auschwitz. Conveys her fears and describes daily life in a ghetto in Nagyvarad, Romania. Includes endnotes and an appendix of letters written to her mother about Eva from people close to the family" (USHMM).
 
==== 1973 ====
 
* '''The Diary of the Vilna Ghetto''' (1973) is a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Yitskhok Rudashevski]] (1927-1943) in the years 1941-43 (age 14-16), when living in the Vilma Ghetto. Originally published in Hebrew in 1968. --- Published in Tel Aviv [Israel]: Ghetto Fighters' House, 1973. Originally published in Hebrew (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibuts ha-meuhad, 1968). Also published in French (2016), and Lithuanian/Yiddish (2018). --- Yitskhok Rudashevski wrote a diary from June 1941 to April 1943 which detailed his life and struggles living in the Vilna ghetto. His diary was discovered by his cousin Sore Voloshin, in 1944. His cousin Voloshin fought the German army and the Soviet Union, later returning to the hideout, and found Yitskhok's diary. The diary was published in 1973 in English translation by the Ghetto Fighters' House publisher in Israel. --- "This is the diary of one of the "other Anne Franks," teen diarists of the Holocaust who are not nearly as famous as she. Yitskhok Rudashevski was fourteen when he began his diary in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania during the Nazi occupation. He was a gifted writer and wrote movingly of how his family and all the other Vilna Jews were confined to a ghetto and the ghetto kept shrinking and shrinking as the Nazis conducted "Aktions" and killed vast numbers of people, usually by machine-gunning them en masse at nearby Ponar. Rudashevski did not survive; he and his family went into hiding, but they were caught and almost all of them were executed. He was fifteen years old when he died. His account of the suffering of the Vilna Jews, and his own struggle to remain human amid the disaster, is well worth reading." --- "Diary of a boy who died during the liquidation of the Vilna ghetto. Records events occurring in the ghetto and his activities with Rudashevski’s school and youth club. Contains endnotes and appendixes including a testimony by the author’s cousin describing her discovery of the diary."--Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM). --- [[Yitskhok Rudashevski]] (1927-1943) was a young Jewish teenager who lived in the Vilna Ghetto in Lithuania during the 1940s. He was shot to death in the Ponary massacre on Oct 1, 1943 during the liquidation of September–October 1943.
 
==== 1970 ====
 
* [[Joseph Ziemian]]. '''''The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square'''''. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1970). --- "The Cigarette Sellers of Three Crosses Square is the true account of a band of Jewish children, ages seven to sixteen, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto during the last three years of World War II (1943-1945). The author, Joseph Ziemien, finds two of the children by accident at a soup kitchen in Central Warsaw ... The astonishing, true story of a group of Jewish children who managed to escape from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 and survive in the Aryan section of the Nazi-occupied city. Sentenced to death, hounded at every step, they kept themselves alive by peddling cigarettes in Warsaw's Three Crosses Square - where the author, a member of the Jewish Underground in Poland, met and helped them and recorded their story. Several of the children were finally caught and killed, but most survived and are alive today. The story of the cigarette sellers has been published in Polish, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish, and a dramatised version has been broadcast in Israel. The book was awarded a literary prize by the World Jewish Congress in New York."
 
------
 
== 1960s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1967 Kuper.jpg|Kuper (1967)
File:1967 Berri.jpg|Berri (1967) <film>
File:1965b Kosinski.jpg| Kosinski (1965)
File:1965 Flinker.jpg|Flinker (1965) en
File:1963 Lowrie.jpg|Lowrie (1963)
File:1963 Beyer.jpg|Film (1963)
File:1948 Lena.jpg|Küchler-Silberman (1961) en]]
File:1960 Leopold.jpg|Leopold (1960) <film>
File:1960 Wiesel.jpg|Wiesel (1960) en
</gallery>
 
==== 1965 ====
 
* '''Young Moshe's Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe''' (1965) is the English ed. of a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Moshe Flinker]] (1926-1944) in the years 1942-1943 (age 15-17), when living in hiding in Brussels, Belgium with his family. --- "Moshe Flinker died in Auschwitz but he left copy books describing his innermost thoughts during the fateful days prior to his deportation. His surviving sisters rescued his writings from the cellar of the house in which they had all hid. In his unnatural underground existence he did not fully realize the methodical extermination being perpetrated by the Nazis, but he came very near in a remarkable portrayal of the Jewish situation, which he recorded in January 1943."--Publisher description. --- "Diary of a Belgian teenage boy who died with his parents in Auschwitz. Focuses on his strong identification with the rest of the Jewish community and his feelings of guilt for living safely with his family."--Holocaust Encyclopedia (USHMM). --- "Moshe Flinker was a sixteen-year-old Jewish boy whose family had fled from Holland to Belgium in an attempt to avoid deportation to the east.  During this period of hiding and flight, Moshe was no longer able to go to school or to engage in the activities of normal life. In an attempt to stave off idleness, he decided to begin a diary. Moshe used his diary to record the experiences that his family faced in their struggle to endure Nazi persecution.  He also wrestled continuously with the question of why this suffering plagued the Jewish people.  On November 30, 1942 he wrote, “Now I return to the question mentioned above and its solution: what can God mean by all that is befalling us and by not preventing it from happening?  This raises a further question, which must be settled before we can proceed further with the main problem.  This second question is whether our distress is part of the anguish that has afflicted the Jewish people since the exile, or whether this is different than all that has occurred in the past.  I incline to the second answer, for I find it very hard to believe that what we are going through today is only a mere link in a long chain of suffering.” Moshe was a deeply religious young man and he sought to understand his present circumstances in the light of biblical history.  He looked for insight from the persecutions of the past and longed for God’s promised redemption of the Jewish people.  He believed that this deliverance would come when the conditions were right, both in the severity of persecution and in the responses of the victims.  Much of his diary was dedicated to this type of analysis.  He concluded his November 30th entry with these words, “I should like to pray to the Lord of Israel that He may fulfill in the near future the prayer: ‘Return us unto thee, O Lord, and we shall return; renew our days as of old.’’--Holocaust Center of Florida. --- Published in Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1965. Originally published in Hebrew (Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1958). --- Also published in Russian, Dutch, German, French, Italian, and Yiddish. --- [[Moshe Flinker]] (1926-1944) was born in The Hague on October 9, 1926, and was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home. After being subjected to increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish measures following the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940, the Flinker family fled to Belgium in 1942. In Belgium, Moshe and his family were able to pass as non-Jews with the help of false identity papers and relative anonymity ... Moshe was a deeply religious young boy who grappled with the theological problems posed by the unprecedented persecution of the Jews. He was also a gifted linguist who knew and studied eight languages, including Arabic, which he saw as fundamental to his future life in Palestine ... In April 1944, after being betrayed by a known Belgian Jewish collaborator, Moshe, his mother, and his sisters Esther Malka and Leah, were arrested at their home and deported to Malines. His father, tipped off by a neighbor, prevented Moshe’s four other siblings from going home and arranged for them to find refuge in the Tieffenbrunner orphanage near Antwerp ... Two weeks later, Moshe’s father was caught and sent to Malines, where he found his family. They were all deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in May 1944. Moshe’s mother, Mindel, was murdered on arrival. Esther Malka and Leah remained in the women’s camp ... Moshe and his father spent several months in Auschwitz-Birkenau before they were transferred to Echterdingen labor camp, where they both contracted typhus. From there, they were sent to Bergen Belsen, where they both succumbed to typhus in January 1945 ... Esther Malka and Leah survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and were reunited with their four siblings in Brussels after the liberation. They all emigrated to Israel.
 
==== 1963 ====
 
* [[Donald A. Lowrie]]. '''The Hunted Children''' (New York, NY: Atheneum, 1963). --- "Of all the stories to emerge from the wretchedness that was World War Two, the most ghastly and the least believable is the record of conditions in European internment camps for refugees, political prisoners, and other ""undesirable elements,"" men, women, and children ... As chairman of the ""Nimes Committee"" for the coordination of relief work among national and international organizations both Christian and Jewish, Donald Lowrie knew as much about camp conditions as anyone who survived the war. He was in close touch with the methods of financing legal and extralegal operations, and personally fought many rounds in the battle for visas, travel permits, and special concessions that had to be wrung from a treacherous Vichy. One chapter title, ""Hiding Six Thousand Children,"" expresses the staggering task of gathering up the fragments of refugee youth (preponderantly, of course, Jewish youth), concealing them, and sustaining them until they could be spirited away or liberated at the close of hostilities."--Kirkus Review. --- [[Donald Alexander Lowrie]] (USA, 1889-1974) -  As YMCA secretary served in Russian and Eastern Europe (1916-32), with his wife Helen Ogden Lowrie. Lowrie retired from the YMCA in 1932 and became the Director of the United States House at the Cité Université in Paris. The approaching world war and rising wave of refugees convinced Lowrie to return to the YMCA in 1938. He worked with Paul B. Anderson to provide American Association relief to Russian, Czech, and Bulgarian refugees in France. Lowrie remained in France until October 1942, when he relocated to Switzerland to provide YMCA services to refugees there. From 1945 to 1950, Lowrie represented the World's Committee of the World's Alliance of YMCA's in relief work for displaced persons in France.
 
==== 1961 ====
 
* [[Lena Küchler-Silberman]]. '''''My Hundred Children''''', English ed. London: Souvenir Press; and  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961 @1948.
 
====1960====
 
* [[Dawid Rubinowicz]] (M / Poland, 1927-1942). First published in Polish (Warszawa : Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1960). English ed. '''The Diary of Dawid Rubinowicz''' ([[Edinburgh, Scotland]]: [[Blackwood]], 1981).
 
== 1950s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1959 Frank.jpg|Stevens (1959) <film>
File:1959 Edith Bruck.jpg|Bruck (1959) <memoirs>
File:1958 Wiesel.jpg|Wiesel (1958) <memoirs>
File:1958 Geve.jpg|Geve (1958) <memoirs>
File:1958 Apitz.jpg|Apitz (1958) <novel>
File:1955 Goodrich Hackett.jpg|Goodrich - Hackett (1955) <play>
File:1952 Frank.jpg|Frank.en (1952) <1947> <memoirs>
</gallery>
 
====1959====
 
* [[Edith Bruck]] / Edith Steinschreiber (F / Hungary, 1932). '''Chi ti ama così''' <Italian> (Milan: Lerici, 1959). English ed.: '''Who Loves You Like This''', trans. Thomas Kelso (Philadelphia, Pa. : Paul Dry Books, 2001).
 
====1958====
 
* [[Elie Wiesel]]. '''''La nuit'''''. Paris: 1958.
 
* First edition (in Hebrew) of the Diary of [[Moshe Flinker]] (M / Belgium, 1926-1944): Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1958. Then published in English in 1965: '''Young Moshe's Diary: The Spiritual Torment of a Jewish Boy in Nazi Europe''' (Jerusalem [Israel]: Yad Vashem, 1965).
 
* [[Thomas Geve]] / Stefan Cohn (M / Germany, 1929). '''Youth in Chains''' (Jerusalem : R. Mass, 1958).
 
* Bruno Apitz, '''Naked Among Wolves''' (1958), inspired by the story of [[Stefan Jerzy Zweig]] (M / Poland, 1941).
 
==== 1956 ====
 
* [[Elie Wiesel]] (M / Romania, 1928-2016).  '''און די וועלט האָט געשוויגן''' / ''Un di Velt Hot Geshvign'' ["And the World Remained Silent"] <Yiddish> (Buenos Aires: Central Union of Polish Jews in Argentina, 1956). Revised French ed. '''La Nuit''' (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1960). English ed. '''The Night''', trans. Stella Rodway (New York: Hill & Wang; and London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1960). International bestseller. Translated in more than 20 languages.
 
==== 1952 ====
 
* [[Anna Frank]]. '''The Diary of a Young Girl''' (1952) is the first English edition of a diary written by Holocaust victim [[Anne Frank]] (1929-1945) in 1942-44 (age 13-15), while living in hiding in Amsterdam, Netherlands. First published in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, 1947). --- KEYWORDS : <[[Netherlands]]> <[[Westerbork]]> <[[Auschwitz]]> <[[Bergen-Belsen]]> --- Published in more than 70 languages. Adapted several times to the stage and to the screen. --- The Diary of Anne Frank is by far the most famous among the children's diaries of the Holocaust and one of the world's best known books of the twentieth century. It was written in 1942-44, while Anne and her family were in hiding in Amsterdam. --- Anne's father, Otto was the only survivor of the Franks. He returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947. It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl, and has since been translated into over 70 languages. --- "Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank’s remarkable diary has become a world classic—a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit ... In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the “Secret Annexe” of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short." --- [[Anne Frank]] (1929-1945) was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 12, 1929. She lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. In May 1940 Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands and the persecution began. The Franks lost their German citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless. As persecutions increased  in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked. They lived there until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944. Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps. In October or November 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) a few months later, probably in February 1945.
 
-----
 
== 1940s / 1930s ==
 
<gallery mode=packed align=left heights=200>
File:1948 Zinnemann.jpg|Zinnemann (1948) <film>
File:1948 Gross.jpg|Gross (1948) <film>
File:1948 Ford.jpg|Ford (1948) <film>
File:1947 Frank.jpg|Frank (1947) <memoirs>
File:1945 Mary Berg.jpg|Berg (1945) <memoirs>
File:1942 Pichel.jpg|Pichel (1942) <film>
File:1947 Bonham Carter.jpg|Bonham Carter (1934)
</gallery>
 
==== 1948 ====
 
* First edition (in Hungarian) of the Diary of [[Éva Heyman]]: '''''Uj Idok Irodalmi Intézet R.T.''''' Then published in English in 1974.
 
* [[Lena Küchler-Silberman]]. '''Mayne Kinder''' (Paris: Aroysgegebn durkhn Yidishn folksfarband in Frankraykh, 1948) <Yiddish>. --- English ed.: '''My Hundred Children''' (London: Souvenir Press; and  Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961). --- Also translated into Hebrew (1959). --- "The author recounts how she led a hundred Jewish orphans out of postwar Poland to safety in Israel". --- [[Lena Küchler-Silberman]] (1910-1987) was a Jewish teacher, educator and psychologist. She was born and grew up in Wieliczka, Poland. After completing her studies in the Hebrew gymnasium in Kraków she went on to study philosophy, psychology and pedagogy. During the Holocaust, she lived as a alias outside the Warsaw ghetto, being able to smuggle several children out of the ghetto. After the war, she travelled to the Jewish council in Krakow where she met young children who had lost their families. She took them in, giving them a home in a house she found in Zakopane. From there they made their way to Czechoslovakia, France, and finally, in 1949, Israel.
 
==== 1947 ====
 
* First edition (in Dutch) of the Diary of [[Anne Frank]]. Then published in English in 1952.
 
* [[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 [https://cwg1945.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/representing-childrens-Holocaust-2010.pdf Boaz Cohen, Representing Children's Holocaust]
 
* [[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]] - [[Noe Grüss]], eds. '''''Dzieci Oskarzaja''''' (Cracow-Łódź-Warsaw: Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, 1947) <Polish> --- English ed. '''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."
 
==== 1945 ====
 
* {en} [[Mary Berg]]. '''''Warsaw Ghetto: A Diary'''''. New York, NY: Fisher, 1945. --- Reprinted 2007 & 2018. --- The diary was written by Holocaust survivor “Mary Berg” (Miriam Wattenberg, 1924-2013) in the years 1939-1944 (age 15-19), when living in the [[Warsaw Ghetto]]. It 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." --- "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." (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, until her death in April 2013.
 
==== 1934 ====
 
* {en} [[Violet Bonham Carter]]. '''''Child Victims of the New Germany: A Protest'''''. London: McCorquodale, 1934. --- "From a speech delivered in London on December 20th, 1933." Includes appendix: Jewish children in Germany: A dossier of cruelties and humilitations --- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Bonham_Carter Violet Bonham Carter] (1887-1969) - The daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908–1916, was a British politician and diarist. Along with Winston Churchill (and others), she very early on saw the dangers of European fascism. In seeking to awaken Britain and the world to the fascist peril, she joined and animated a number of anti-fascist groups (such as The Focus Group), often in concert with Churchill, and spoke at many of their gatherings. On one of these occasions she offered one of the earliest denunciations of the persecution of children in Nazi Germany.


== External links ==
== External links ==

Latest revision as of 10:09, 5 January 2023

Holocaust Children Studies (Home Page)
Holocaust Children Studies (Home Page)

Auschwitz Children.jpg


Holocaust Children Studies is a field of research that specialized on the experience of children during the Holocaust.

4 Enoch includes the biography of over 800 children:

  • Mass Shootings : Babi Yar (Ukraine) -- Bronna Gora (Belarus) -- Gurka Polonka (Ukraine) -- Leipaja (Latvia) -- Odessa (Ukraine) -- Ponary (Lithuania) -- Rumbula (Latvia)

This page is edited by Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan


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Holocaust Children Studies : 2020s -- 2010s -- 2000s -- 1990s -- 1980s -- 1970s -- 1960s -- 1950s -- 1940s -- 1930s

General : 2020s -- 2010s -- 2000s -- 1990s -- 1980s -- 1970s -- 1960s -- 1950s -- 1940s -- 1930s -- 1920s -- 1910s -- 1900s -- 1850s -- 1800s -- 1700s -- 1600s -- 1500s -- 1450s -- Medieval -- Home



Overview

Nazi Ghettos.png


When World War II began in September 1939, there were approximately 1.6 million Jewish children living in the territories that the German armies or their allies would occupy. When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, more than 1.2 million and perhaps as many as 1.5 million Jewish children were dead, targeted victims in the Nazis’ calculated program of genocide. As Warsaw ghetto historian Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in 1942, “Even in the most barbaric times, a human spark glowed in the rudest heart, and children were spared. But the Hitlerian beast is quite different. It would devour the dearest of us, those who arouse the greatest compassion—our innocent children.”

All Jews were targeted for death, but the mortality rate for children was especially high. Only around 150,000, or 6 to 11% of Europe’s prewar Jewish population of children survived as compared with 33% of the adults. The majority of them were teenagers, between 16 and 18 years old. The younger generally were not selected for forced labor, and the Nazis often carried out “children’s actions” to reduce the number of “useless eaters” in the ghettos. In the camps, children, the elderly, and pregnant women routinely were sent to the gas chambers immediately after arrival. The older had a better chance of survival.

Liberation from Nazi tyranny brought no end to the sufferings of the few Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. Many would face the future without parents, grandparents, or siblings. Even when they were half-orphans, frequently surviving parents did not have the means or desire to care for their children.

The largest group of surviving children (60,000) was in Romania. There were 15,000 children alive in France; 12,000 in Hungary as well as in Bulgaria; 7,000 in Poland as well as in Italy; 4,000 in Belgium as well as in the Netherlands; between 2,500 and 4,500 in Czechoslovakia; 2,400 in Greece. A few thousand children survived in Concentration camps: 1,600 in Theresienstadt, 900 at Buchenwald, 500 at Bergen-Belsen, 300 at Auschwitz, etc. As many as 60,000 child survivors emigrated to the United States after the war.

Geography and Chronology of the Holocaust

(1) Racial Laws, Discrimination, Segregation (1933-38)

The first to be affected by the Holocaust were the Jewish children living in Germany. They were subjected to racial laws, discriminated, expelled from schools. Many of them left emigrated with their families.

Second came in 1938 the Jewish children living in Austria and Jewish children living in Czechia. They were subjected to the same restrictive measures as their companions in Germany. Racial laws were enacted in Italy and Hungary as well.

(2) Persecution (1938-1939 & beyond)

Kristallnacht marked the beginning of a new, more violent stage in the persecution. In Germany, Austria and Czechia, synagogues were burned, properties were destroyed. People were arrested, intimidated, some even murdered. Emigration now became a race against time. Nearby countries (and even much far away countries, like China) became places of refuge. It was difficult however to obtain visas since many countries had strict immigration laws. Many children left alone in a Kindertransport in order to reach safety abroad.

(3) Ghettos, Hunger, Disease, Forced Labor (1939-41 & beyond)

In Sept 1939 Germany conquered Eastern Poland. Children living in Poland were immediately subjected to violent persecution, and eventually forced to live in overcrowded ghetto where thousands of them died of hunger and disease.

In May 1940, the Holocaust also hit children living in the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In occupied Western countries, Nazi authorities initially refrained from open violence in order not to provoke reactions from the local population. Racial laws were enacted and Jews were gradually deprived of any right and freedom. In occupied France and Italy, then an ally of the Germans, children of "foreign Jews" (even those born in Italy) were forced to live in internment camps.

(4) Extermination (1941-1945)

The Operation Barbarossa marked the beginning of the most violent stage in the Holocaust. For the first time, children living in Eastern Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were directly targeted for extermination, first by specially appointed firing squads, then by deportation to death camps. By the beginning of 1942 death camps became fully operative. Jews were now deported from the Polish ghettos or from special transit camps in Western Europe directly to the gas chambers in Chelmno, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. Children (especially orphans or the little ones) were the first ones to be murdered. (while only adolescents could have some chances as forced laborers).

After Sept 1943 the extermination was extended to Italy (now under German occupation) and following the German occupation of Hungary on 19 March 1944, also in Hungary.

(5) Liberation (1945)

Germany was losing the war. At the end of 1944-beginning 1945 the first concentration camps were liberated. Only a few children were found alive in Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. More consistent groups of children were liberated at Buchenwald, Berger-Belsen, Theresienstadt, Gunskirchen, ect. The end of the war also meant freedom for the thousands and thousands of children who were in hiding everywhere in Europe.

Many of the child survivors were now orphans or had been separated from their parents and relatives. Special DP camps were established for them in France, Italy (Selvino), Poland, Germany, the Netherlands...

The Uniqueness of the Holocaust Experience

Why are we devoting so much time to children during the Holocaust?

Children have rarely a life of their own. Their lives depend on the adults who take care of them. There are very little opportunities for children to be known apart from their families. The Jewish child is no exception (we know the names of only a few children who have distinguished themselves as children in Jewish history).

In antiquity, most of the stories about children in the Bible present "ordinary" stories of child rivalry, family conflict, ecc. Only a few children are remembered for something really special that happened to them: Joseph (was sold as a slave, became the viceroy of Egypt), David (killed Goliath in battle), Daniel (served the Persian administration), etc.

With the creation of schools more opportunities were offered to children to distinguished themselves outside of their own families, first of all for their learning as "exceptional students" (child prodigies). Josephus, Jesus, etc. The Rabbis had a term to עילוי‎ or עלוי (i'lui) to denote child prodigies who distinguished themselves in the study of the Torah for their intelligence and memory.

The Emancipation gave Jewish children (both boys and girls) the opportunity to distinguish themselves in other fields than religion, namely, as child singers, child actors, child musicians, as well as students of science.

The normal situation of children is that adults are taking care of them. The Holocaust marked for an entire generation (around 1.6 millions of Jewish children in Europe) a complete reversal of their "normal" status. Adults became children (i.e. powerless), and children were forced to become adults. in order to survive, they had to take their lives in their own hands and make life-or-death decision for themselves and often also for their own relatives. This makes the Holocaust such a special time for the Jewish child, a time in which children have become protagonists without having asked for it.

Death and Survival

Around 90% of the 1.6 million Jewish children living in Europe under Nazi rule perished during the Holocaust:

  • At the beginning, after Hitler rose to power in 1933, Jewish children were not targeted for extermination. They suffered discrimination, exclusion and humiliation. They could no longer attend schools, they could not pursue an education, meet with non-Jewish friends, etc. Many tried to escape with or without their families especially after Kristallnacht (Nov 9-10, 1938), when Jewish synagogues and properties were destroyed in a massive pogrom.
  • After the beginning of the war, in September 1939, Jewish children experienced the ghettos. They began to die in the thousands because of hunger and disease.
  • Starting from June 1941, with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, for the first time Jewish children in Eastern Europe were shoot with their families in mass executions.
  • In 1942 began the systematic killing of children, They were deported from the ghettos to the death camps. Only some children who lied about their age and could work, were able to survive. Others were able to flee before being captured.

Only 10% of children survived the Holocaust (around 150.000):

  • (a) Refugees, with their families or alone (Kindertransport), who left continental Europe before the war started, or in some cases, even during the war.
  • (c) Nazi Ghettoes and Labor Camps (mostly adolescents, and a few younger children who were kept alive to serve as errand boys or for medical experiments).

The rate of survival mostly depended on three factors: (1) Age; (2) Country; (3) Location.

External links

Media in category "Holocaust Children Studies"

The following 72 files are in this category, out of 72 total.

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