Válečné Dĕtství a Mládí (1939–1945) V Literatuře a Publicistice ed. by Jana Čeňková (review)

In many countries and cultures around the world, World War II and the Holocaust are important literary topics in literature for children and young adults. The stories and narratives about the war often center on a child or adolescent protagonist and look at the lives of children in times of war. The volume, edited by Jana Čeňková (Charles University, Prague), sheds light on childhoods in times of war in Czech children's literature and journalism. It also includes Geman-language (and some Dutch and Slovak) works, which necessarily played a role between 1939 and 1945 because of the German occupation of what was then Czechoslovakia.

The introductory chapters by Milena Šubrtová, Pavel Suk, and Jan Halada trace the measures of the National Socialist education policies and their impact on the Czech publishing industry. The Board of Trustees for the Education of Youth, created by the National Socialists, was the most influential institution in this respect. It stood behind a Czech version of the young adult series War, Adventure, and Colonial Youth Library of the Berlin publisher Steiniger, published in Prague by Orbis beginning in 1939. The board also encouraged the publication of new magazines that promoted the image of virtuous, patriotic boys and girls true to National Socialist ideology. These magazines adapted formats and special columns from popular Czech youth magazines, such as the idea of a book club. Suk's contribution shows how the National Socialist ideology, most apparent in racist and anti-Semitic content, already exerted its influence before the German occupation—such as in the case of the magazine Mladý Hlasatel, founded in 1935, which printed posters of the Hitler Youth or Nazi interpretations of historical events prior to 1939. Ester Nováková, Luisa Nováková, Jaroslav Toman, and Jana Čeňková examine how Czech children's literature responded to the German occupation and World War II by analyzing individual works and their aesthetics. Adopting similar strategies as adult fiction, children's books published during the occupation tend to set their stories in the past or to anchor them in local traditions. They return to key historical events of Czech history and celebrate the importance of local and regional identities for the country, only obliquely commenting the current occupation by a foreign military force.

The early post-war years see the emergence of a long series of children's books that remember life during the war most often from the perspective of child and adolescent protagonists. This raises the question of the intended audience and, hence, the question of what to tell about the horrors of the war, and how. It becomes apparent that many children's books focus on extraordinary situations during the war, such as resistance to the National Socialists or the survival of a Czech woman in a German town. Many also recount traumatic experiences of child protagonists who denounce the actions of the adults.

A few essays explore the authorship of literary representations of childhood in times of war. Tamara Bučková shows how authors of German-language books draw on personal memories and use literary devices to give them shape, or they base their literary storytelling on true events experienced by others. Radek Malý and Jarmila Sulovská present a number of impressive war diaries and childhood memoirs originally not intended for child readers or publication but now published for young readers as relevant, authentic testimonies.

Most contributions observe that the Holocaust and World War II are imperative topics of contemporary children's literature. The Slovak children's magazine Slniečko, analyzed by Zuzana Stanislavová, seems to be an exception—for World War II is no longer touched upon after 1990. Many contributors ask whether and how successfully the memories of the war and the Holocaust...