Category:Holocaust Children (subject)

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 6 to 11% of Europe’s prewar Jewish population of children survived as compared with 33% of the adults. The young 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.

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.

Lost Childhood

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.

• Mischa Elman (Ukraine, 1891-1967), violinist <picture (1905c)>

• Norbert Wiener (US, 1894-1964), mathematician <picture>

• William James Sidis (US, 1898-1944), mathematician (entered Harvard at 11) <picture>

• Wolfgang Zilzer (Germany, 1901-1991), child actor, Holocaust refugee

• Jascha Heifetz, violinist (Lithuania, 1901-1987), violinist <picture>

• Hilda Bor (UK, 1910-1993), pianist <video>

• Roman Totenberg (Poland-Russia, 1911-2012), violinist <picture>

• Robert Gordon (US, 1913-1990), child actor (then filmmaker) <picture 1> <picture2>

• Yehudi Menuhin (US-UK, 1916-1999) <picture>

• Robert Rietti (UK, 1923-2015), child actor

• János Starker (Hungary, 1924-2013), cellist, Holocaust survivor

• Mel Tormé (US, 1925-1999), child singer

• Jerry Tucker (US, 1925-2016), child actor

• Bobby Breen (Isadore Borsuk) (Canada, 1927-2016), one the most famous child actors and singers of the time <picture> <film (see 00 and 50:30)> <Ombra mai fu (Handel)> <Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child (45:06)>

• Lea Deutsch (Croatia, 1927-1943), child actress, Holocaust victim <picture>

The normal situation of children is that adults are taking care of them. Only exceptional situations force some children to become adults before time. Sister Raises Five Siblings Alone After Parents’ Death (2:30) (The View, Woody Goldberg).

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.

• Everyday Life in the Warsaw Ghetto Warsaw

• Brundibar - 60 MINUTES Theresienstadt (Terezin)

After the Holocaust, the "return to normality" meant the reestablishment of the parent-child relation:

• Daniel Beremboim (b.1942), pianist

• Edith Stern (b.1952), mathematician

• Ruth Lawrence (UK, 1971), mathematician, youngest person to attend Oxford University at 12.

Biographies

• Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Foundation

Death and Survival

(90% of the 1.5 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. 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.

• (b) Hidden Children (with their families, with non-Jews, with the partisans, in Christian boarding schools, etc.)

• (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).

• (d) Family Camps (Bergen-Belsen, Theresienstadt)

Earliest testimonies

1930s

1934

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.

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.

1940s

1947

• Benjamin Tennebaum, ed., Ehad me-ir u shenayim mi-mishpahah: Mivhar m’elef autobigrafiot shel yaldei Yisrael b’Polin [One of a City and Two of a Family: A Selection from a Thousand Autobiographies of Jewish Children in Poland] (Merhavyah, Israel: Sifriat Poalim, 1947) <Hebrew>.

• Maria Hochberg-Marianskwa and Noe Grüss, eds. Dzieci Oskarzaja (Cracow-Łódź-Warsaw: Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, 1947) <Polish>. English tr. The Children Accuse (London: Vallentine-Mitchell, 1996)

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

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

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

General Studies

1982

Azriel Eisenberg. The Lost Generation: Children in the Holocaust (New York : Pilgrim Press,1982)

"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."--Publisher description.

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.

1988a

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.

1991

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1993 (a)

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1993

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1994 (b)

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.

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.

1994 (c)

Judith S. Kestenberg, and 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."--Publisher description.

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.

1994 (d)

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1996

Judith S. Kestenberg, and 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."--Publisher description.

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.

1998

Judith S. Kestenberg, and 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."--Publisher description.

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.

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.

2001

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."--Publisher description.

2005

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."--Publisher description.

2011

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."--Publisher description.

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.

2016 (a)

Simone Gigliotti and 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."--Publisher description.

Simone Gigliotti is Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies.

Monica Tempian is a Senior Lecturer in German.

2018

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."--Publisher description.

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.

2019

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."--Publisher description.

Samantha S. Bell is the author and/or illustrator of more than 100 books for children.

Studies about particular groups of children

1948

Lena Küchler-Silberman. Mayne Kinder (Paris: Aroysgegebn durkhn Yidishn folksfarband in Frankraykh, 1948) <Yiddish>.

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"--Publisher description.

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.

1960s

1963 (a)

• 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.

1970s

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."--Publisher description

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"--Publisher description.

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.

1980s

1984

Les enfants de Buchenwald: que sont devenus les 1000 enfants juifs sauvés en 1945? (Lausanne, Suisse : P.-M. Favre, 1984) is a book by Judith Hemmendinger.

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.

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.

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."--Publisher description.

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).

1988b

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1990s

1990

Lucette Lagnado and 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."--Publisher description.

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.

1991

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.

1991

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1994 (a)

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."--Publisher description.

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.

1995

• Le mémorial des enfants juifs déportés de France (French children of the Holocaust / 1995, 1996

1999

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.

2000s

2000

Mark Jonathan Harris, and 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."--Publisher description.

2004

Danielle Bailly, ed. Traqués, cachés, vivants: des enfants juifs en France (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004).

English tr. by Betty Becker-Theye. The Hidden Children of France: Stories of Survival (Albany, NY: Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press, 2010).

"The history of France's 'hidden children' and of the French citizens who saved six out of seven Jewish children and three-fourths of the Jewish adult population from deportation during the Nazi occupation is little known to American readers. In The Hidden Children of France, 1940-1945, Danielle Bailly (a hidden child herself whose family travelled all over rural France before sending her to live with strangers who could protect her) reveals the stories behind the statistics of those who were saved by the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. Eighteen former 'hidden children' describe their lives before, during, and after the war, recounting their incredible journeys and expressing their deepest gratitude to those who put themselves at risk to save others."--Publisher description.

"C'était entre 1939 et 1945. Ils étaient des enfants, âgés de un à dix ans lorsqu'ils furent marqués comme juifs et traqués du seul fait de leur naissance. Cachés, souvent séparés de leurs parents dont certains disparurent à jamais, ils survécurent. Soixante ans après, ils sont ici dix-huit à témoigner et à tenter de tirer de leur expérience des enseignements pour l'avenir. Ils ont, en effet, connu chacun le meilleur et le pire de l'humain autour d'eux. Ils nous disent et ce qu'on leur a fait, et ce qu'ils en ont fait."--Publisher description <French>.

2004

Die Mädchen von Zimmer 28: Freundschaft, Hoffnung und Uberleben in Theresienstadt (München: Droemer Knaur 2004) is a collection of memoirs of Holocaust survivors from Theresienstadt, edited by Hannelore Brenner-Wonschick.

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.

KEYWORDS: <Theresienstadt>

"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."--Publisher description.

2008

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."--Publisher description.

2009

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."--Publisher description.

2010s

2013

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."--Publisher description.

2014

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."--Publisher description.

2016 (b)

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."--Publisher description.

2017

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"--Publisher description.

2018

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."--Publisher description.

2019

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"--Publisher description.