Children in the Holocaust and its Aftermath

The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors’ accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive’s over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors’ accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive’s over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Sharon Kangisser Cohen, Eva Fogelman and Dalia Ofer

PART I: METHODOLOGY

Chapter 1. Age, Circumstance, and Outcome in Child Survivors of the Holocaust: Considerations of the Literature and a Report of a Study Using Narrative Content Analysis
Gila Sandler Saban, K. Mark Sossin, and Anastasia Yasik

PART II: IMMEDIATE POSTWAR PERIOD

Chapter 2. A Child’s View: Children’s Depositions of the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Poland)
Sharon Kangisser Cohen

Chapter 3. Starting Over: Reconstituted Families after the Holocaust
Beth B. Cohen

Chapter 4. “Both Valuable and Difficult”: A Meeting Point between Historical and Psychological Interviews
Rita Horváth and Katalin Zana

PART III: POST WAR MEMORY, COPING MECHANISMS, AND ADJUSTMENT

Chapter 5. Performative Memory-Making and the Future of the Kestenberg Archive
Stephenie Young

Chapter 6. Shadows of Memory and Intergenerational Legacies in Child Survivors’ Testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive
Dana Mihăilescu

Chapter 7. Symbolic Revenge in Holocaust Child Survivors
Nancy Isserman

Chapter 8. Resilience in Child Survivors: History and Application of Coding of the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children
Helene Bass-Wichelhaus

PART IV: NON-JEWISH VICTIMS OF WAR AND NAZISM

Chapter 9. “They Were Jews, but They Were Very Kind People”: Polish Language Testimonies in the Kestenberg Child Survivor Archive
Katarzyna Person

Chapter 10. War Children in Nazi Germany and World War II
Ilka Quindeau, Katrin Einert, and Nadine Teuber

Chapter 11. Insights into the German Interviews of the Kestenberg Archive: Children of Perpetrators and How They Dealt with Their Parents’ Actions
Christina Isabel Brüning

PART V: PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

Chapter 12. Always Moving Forward
Andrew Griffel

Index