Hidden in Plain Sight: Jewish Children's Survival in the Occupied Serbian Banat

Drawing on interviews recorded by the Shoah Foundation Institute, this article focuses on the survival of Jewish and half-Jewish children in the German-occupied Serbian Banat between 1941 and 1944. Rather than hide their physical presence or their Jewishness, these children spent the war in an environment well-aware of their identity, yet where people turned a blind eye to their Jewishness, even as the children lived in a state of fear and uncertainty. The survivors' recollections highlight the pivotal role of parents and parental figures; the interaction of age, gender, class, and ethnicity to enable survival; the children's own limited yet crucial agency; and the subjects' awareness of the changes in their memory.