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Reviewed by:
  • Children during the Holocaust
  • Uta Larkey
Children during the Holocaust, Patricia Heberer (Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context) (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2011), xli + 513 pp., hardcover, $55.00, e-book available.

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.

The study makes available in English a vast trove of primary sources, many originally written in German, Russian, Polish, Czech, Yiddish, Hebrew, or Dutch. These sources—in particular letters, diaries, and testimonies—along with photographs and children’s wartime illustrations, support author Patricia Heberer’s narrative and analysis. Heberer goes to great lengths to provide “in situ” sources to heighten the degree of authenticity and immediacy of the experiences of children and youths during (and after) the Holocaust in Germany and in Nazi-occupied Europe. Whenever possible, the author presents personal documents such as diaries and letters written by the children themselves. Given the wartime shortages, the scarcity of writing implements, the children’s lack of writing skills, and many other factors, it proved quite difficult to find such sources. The author therefore includes the “words of [the children’s] parents and caregivers, teachers and rescuers, liberators and persecutors,” providing a multi-faceted collage of perspectives on the children’s experiences (p. xv).

An introduction by Holocaust scholar and child survivor Nechama Tec not only expertly draws the readers immediately into the topic, but also sets the stage for Heberer’s complex study. Tec’s narrative weaves together personal testimonies [End Page 488] and her own recollections in the historical context of the Holocaust in Poland, as well as a brief discussion of relevant scholarly sources. She underscores the value of interviews and postwar testimonies in light of the fact that the “assaults upon Jewish children and their parents varied with time and place” (p. xxxvii). Both Tec and Heberer use carefully selected individual testimonies to illustrate children’s experiences categorized by age group, location, and time period. They also link the experiences of children to parenthood (especially motherhood) to highlight the gendered aspects of Nazi policies.

The volume is organized thematically in ten chapters with a chronological arc that considers persecution and deportation, ghettos, concentration camps, war, and the ordeal of hiding. An excellent glossary provides definitions and reference to further readings. The Chapter One overview of anti-Jewish measures enacted in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1938—including harassment, dismissal of Jewish children from German schools, exclusion from public swimming pools, and the requirement to adopt the middle names “Sara” for females and “Israel” for males— gives a general historical background and addresses the effects of these measures on the younger generation.

Heberer also examines the suffering of both Jewish and non-Jewish children in times of war (Chapter Two). A particularly chilling document is the journal of Tanya Savicheva, a 12-year-old girl, who during the siege of Leningrad chronicled the death of six family members and concludes with the heart-wrenching lines “Everyone is dead. The only one left is Tanya” (p. 54). The author informs us that Tanya eventually succumbed to illness, too. The diary entries, letters, and photographs in this chapter reveal the violence and death to which children were subjected, as well as their despair.

Introducing prewar rescue missions such as the Kindertransport and the ill-fated voyage of the St. Louis, Chapter Three considers both “escape” and “deportations.” These diverse experiences have in common both anticipated rupture and the emotional ambivalence of imminent upheaval. As the sources confirm, the eyewitnesses faced an uncertain future and often had a sense of foreboding. In a heartbreaking farewell letter, Pinchas Eisner of Budapest wrote to his older brother: “I would have liked to know, to live, to see, to do, to love. … But now it is all over. … At seventeen I have to face certain death” (p...

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