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Reviewed by:
  • My Mother's Voice: Children, Literature and the Holocaust
  • Judith Tydor Baumel, Chair
My Mother's Voice: Children, Literature and the Holocaust, by Adrienne Kurtzer. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002, 384p. $24.95.

Among the moral tasks that parents and educators bear is the necessity of teaching children about evil. Not the difference between good and evil, which is an easier and more understandable undertaking, but that of teaching children about the existence of evil in the world. One of the means of doing so is through the use of literature meant for children and young adults, that places evil in the context of worldly historical events from the far and recent past. Adrienne Kurtzer's book about children, literature, and the Holocaust addresses this issue through a discussion and analysis of female Holocaust representation in the narrative of historical fiction.

Kurtzer's book is divided into four sections, each of which deals with a different historical-literary phenomenon. The first section, Maternal Voices, deals with both her personal and family experiences with women's Holocaust narratives, and with those of Isabella Leitner. The second section, The Voices of Children, devotes one chapter to reading Anne Frank today, focusing upon the question of innocence in children's voices from the Holocaust. A second chapter in this section is devoted to the production of the historical novel behind "Daniel's Story", the special exhibition concurrent with the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in April 1993.

The book's third section—The Child in the Picture—deals with two additional issues. The first is Holocaust representation in Roberto Benigni's "Life is Beautiful" and Anita Lobel's memoir, "No Pretty Picture: A Child of War." A second issue deals with the visual aspect of Mothers' and Children's Holocaust photographs and their impact upon the reader. The book's final section—History and Pedagogy—are more theoretical, concentrating upon representation, gender, and choice in Holocaust literature and the genre of young adult fiction as a teaching and moral tool.

Throughout the book Kurtzer weaves a pattern in which she continually refers to a number of fictional Holocaust works, such as Jane Yolen's Briar Rose, which serve as a contrast and backdrop to the stories and books that she describes and analyzes. By returning to them in various places throughout the book, she tries to develop a continuum which is not always apparent in her narrative. Indeed, one of the things that best characterizes this interesting yet often eclectic book is its lack of continuity and the feeling that one is more reading a series of collected essays than a book written as such. And even though five of the essays were written for other forums, the author should [End Page 147] have made more of an effort to bring them together seamlessly, instead of employing some of the techniques which come to light in this effort.

Apart from this point, however, Kurtzer's book fills a lacuna in the study of Holocaust literature and representation, is well written, and will certainly benefit the community of scholars and laypersons interested in furthering their knowledge of a subject which still remains a horrifying enigma to humanity.

Judith Tydor Baumel, Chair
Interdisciplinary Program in Contemporary Jewry
Bar-Ilan University
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