A Traumatic Past in the Far Distance: Narrating Children's Survival in the Immediate Aftermath of the Holocaust

This article explores the history of a group of approximately 1,000 young Holocaust survivors who resettled in Canada in the late 1940s as part of a project sponsored by the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC). Through closely reading and questioning the main research sources—the documentation that was filed by humanitarian workers in Europe to assist the young survivors in their Canadian visa application—this article examines the discourses and practices of the adults—in other words, it "observes the observer," highlighting how they wrote about the Holocaust as well as the individual and collective experiences of its survivors. The article also interrogates whether one can grasp the voices of the children themselves and calls attention to the specificity of their experience of persecution.