My Mother's Voice: Children, Literature, and the Holocaust, and: Sparing the Child: Grief and the Unspeakable in Youth Literature about Nazism and the Holocaust (review)

When a child reads a book about the Holocaust—particularly in a pedagogical setting—the adults around that child may assume certain purposes are at play. The child reads in order to understand the nature and extent of the historical event. The child reads to gain empathy and understanding, so as to understand the potential effects of prejudice and racial hatred—particularly when unbridled. The child reads in order to learn the meaning of the deaths of the victims, or in order to learn the necessity of choosing wisely and responsibly.

And since this is a work of children's literature, the adults may assume that good things are happening in this reading. There may be, if only on the literal level of the work, the thrill and suspense of watching characters thwart and outwit one of the greatest evils the world has ever seen. More deeply, there may be the courageous and heroic action—or at least gesture—against evil. There is the context of a hopeful ending, even if not a conventionally happy ending—the narrator or protagonist may experience hell, but will survive, and may emerge triumphant, or even still naively innocent. And there is the lesson that is taught, and the reminder that is given: Remember, so that this can never, ever, happen again.

But what if, in the end, little of this really pertains—either in the purposes of the Holocaust book for a child audience, or in the actual effects of a pedagogical use of the book?

Is the reduction of the Holocaust to a mere site of suspenseful adventures appropriate, or is it troubling? (Why no outcry at the opening scene of the film X-Men?) Is the protagonist's heroic gesture meaningful, or only diverting in the face of the real atrocity? Is a hopeful ending appropriate, even given the audience, or does such an ending almost mock the choicelessness of the victims? Can there be a child protagonist in a Holocaust book, given the staggering historical odds against a child surviving? Does the call, "Remember!" resonate in any real way with a reader who knows so little, or who is not inclined to remember?

In their work, both Adrienne Kertzer and Hamida Bosmajian take up literary questions of Holocaust representation. They both explore the ways in which children's books dealing with Nazism and the Holocaust explore and expose the horrors of the disaster to a young audience that almost certainly does not have any historical background to contextualize its response. They both examine ways in which children's books have been written and used to shape children's response to Nazism. And they both examine the means by which devastating and inexorable evil is placed uneasily within the boundaries of a literature for children that seems, by its very nature, to demand the hopeful ending. But supporting these literary explorations are the even deeper and perhaps even more vital and powerful questions of how we confront the Holocaust, and more particularly, how children confront the Holocaust. And the first and most powerful of these questions is this: Can any good at all come out of Auschwitz?

Both Kertzer and Bosmajian would answer, "No." But they come to this answer in rather different ways—though at times with strikingly similar language. Bosmajian suggests that accounts of the disaster should not only inform, but should stun in their horror—but such accounts cannot be expected in a work of children's literature. Such a work, she poses, must necessarily be limited by its audience—it may inform, but it may not shock. The result is that at its most powerful, a work...