AltaMira Press / US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Pages: 556
•
Trim: 6½ x 9½
978-0-7591-1984-0 • Hardback • May 2011 • $91.00 • (£70.00)
978-0-7591-1985-7 • Paperback • September 2015 • $47.00 • (£36.00)
978-0-7591-1986-4 • eBook • May 2011 • $44.50 • (£35.00)
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.
Author’s Introduction
Abbreviations
Introduction by Nechama Tec
Chapter One: Children in the Early Years of Anti-Semitic Persecution
–From Assimilation to Marginalization
–In the Schoolroom
–“I Decide Who Is a Jew”
–Training Youth for Jobs Abroad
–Reichskristallnacht
–The Dismissal of Jewish Children from “German” Schools
–What’s in a Name? Israel and Sara
Chapter Two: Children and the War
–The First Taste of Conflict
–Caught in the Crossfire: The War on Civilians
–The War’s Long Shadow: The Last Years of Conflict
Chapter Three: Lives in the Balance: Escape and Deportation
–Strangers in a Strange Land: Emigration
–Victims of Einsatzgruppen Activity
–“We’ve Been Picked Up”: Roundups and Deportations
Chapter Four: Children in the World of the Ghetto
–Into the Ghetto
–“The Garden of Eden”: Education in the Łódź Ghetto
–“Give Me Your Children”: The “Children’s Actions”
–Death and Survival in the Ghetto
Chapter Five: In the Concentration Camp Universe
–At the Edge of the Abyss
–Death at Auschwitz
–In a Living Hell: Survival in the Camps
Chapter Six: Children in the Web of Racial Hygiene Policy
–Compulsory Sterilization
–The Many Faces of Lebensborn
–“Euthanasia”
–The Danger of “Gypsy Blood”: Roma and Sinti
–Children as “Research Material”
Chapter Seven: The Lives of Others: "Aryan" Children and the Nazi Regime
–Youth Organizations in the Third Reich
–Nonconformity and Dissidence: The Edelweiss Pirates
–Hearts and Minds: Nazi Propaganda
–Perpetrators and Victims
–German Children and the War
Chapter Eight: The World of the Child
–Escape into Learning
–At Play during the Holocaust
–Innocence and Knowledge
–In Hopes and Dreams: Coping with the Holocaust
Chapter Nine: Rescue and Resistance
–Youth and Armed Resistance
–Unarmed Resistance: The Children’s War
–In Hiding
–Children and Aid Organizations: The Politics of Rescue
–When Rescue Fails
Chapter Ten: Elsewhere Perhaps? Children and the End of the Holocaust
–“Over This Field of Death, Peace Breaks Out”: Liberation
–The Search for Family Members
–Where Is Home?
–The Process of Remembering
List of Documents
Bibliography
Glossary
Index
About the Author
This substantial volume narrates and contextualizes the complex experiences of the youngest victims of the Holocaust. Of the six million murdered Jews of Europe, 1.1 million were children. The book not only honors their memory, but also gives a voice to the children who were killed and to those who survived the ordeal in hiding, in ghettos, or in concentration camps.
— Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Over one million Jewish children under age 14 were murdered during the Holocaust. Heberer (specialist, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) has compiled and contextualized an impressive array of documentary evidence on the experiences and responses of children during the years before, during, and just after the war, focusing on Jews but with an additional focus on non-Jewish children who were not persecuted. As in the previous series titles (sponsored by the museum), the documents here are interspersed with both historical context about the sources and biographical data about their authors. The brevity of some documents magnifies their power. For example, the diary of Tanya Savicheya of Leningrad contains only nine lines, each chronicling the death of a family member, until she alone remains. In discussing her sources, Heberer reveals some interesting challenges in reconstructing children’s experiences. Young children rarely write reflective documents, and older children’s diaries largely reveal the experiences of teenagers, so an unavoidable bias toward the teen experience results. VERDICT While the collection focuses on Jewish children, it balances nicely with the wider experience of youngsters during World War II across the ethnic divides, making the book a valuable source for teaching the war years.
— Library Journal
As many as one-and-a-half-million children died as a direct result of Nazi racial policies, including more than one-million Jewish children. There are, of course, numerous accounts by survivors who endured the Holocaust as children, and Anne Frank’s diary is a wonderful example of one adolescent’s unique experience. Historian Heberer, a specialist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, provides a wider ranging, comprehensive survey of the experiences of children who endured the Holocaust as well as the years and events that immediately preceded it. Relying primarily on first-person accounts and other primary sources, Heberer examines how children and adolescents reacted to the first stages of anti-Jewish activities, the onset of war, mass deportations, and life in the ghettos and then the camps. There are no punches pulled here, and much of this is tough, even disgusting material, especially as seen through the eyes of confused and often helpless victims. Nevertheless, this is an important contribution to Holocaust studies.
— Booklist
Children during the Holocaust is a most impressive volume. The archival sources incorporate a good range of genres including diaries, memoirs, eyewitness reports, and oral testimonies along with poetry, drawings, photographs, and other material. These source documents are each contextualized. As much of what is included is emotionally moving and sometimes even disturbing, the author’s narrative is well positioned, allowing the reader to come to terms with the implications of the documents and the reader’s own response to them without feeling overwhelmed. I could see the volume being useful both at the graduate and undergraduate level, and even as a resource for high school students.
— Sara Horowitz, The Centre for Jewish Studies, York University
The text of this book fully, deeply, and thoroughly addresses the major issues concerning children during the Holocaust. The author’s narrative is clear, concise, and consistently helpful. Taken as a whole, the illustrative documents reflect a wide-ranging yet meaningful knowledge of children’s lives. All too often our awareness of children during the Holocaust rests upon a few iconic figures, but in this book we see a much more nuanced and appropriately complex understanding of children. Through this sophisticated analysis, we come to understand how important age is to children’s fates and their experiences.
— Judith Gerson, Rutgers University
This excellent volume brings together a wealth of original documentation regarding one of the most important but least understood categories of people who experienced the Holocaust: children. Drawn from numerous countries and multiple languages, most of these documents have either never been published before or appear here in English for the first time. The emphasis on documentation produced during the Holocaust itself helps shed light on the experiences of children who did not survive to write memoirs or to record testimony. The author has masterfully integrated the documents into an incisive and highly readable analytical narrative. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars of the Holocaust, for teachers and students in high schools, and for anyone with a serious interest in the Holocaust.
— Alan E. Steinweis, University of Vermont
Integrated narrative combining historical sources with contextual information
Never-before-published personal documents, such as letters, diary entries, school essays, photographs, and children's art
Chronology of selected key events impacting the life of Jews in Germany and German-dominated Europe
Extensive Glossary (terms highlighted in the text) with recommended reading for further understanding of the key events, organizations, people, institutions, and more
Bibliography of major publications for further research
List of abbreviations used throughout the text