Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath - Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive

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.

List of contents

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

About the author

Sharon Kangisser Cohen is the Director of the Director of the Diane and Eli Zborowski Centre for the Study of the Holocaust and Its Aftermath and the Deportation Project at the The International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem. She is, in addition, a lecturer at Haifa University and the Rothberg School for international students at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her most recent book, Testimony and Time: Survivors of the Holocaust Remember, was published in 2015 by Yad Vashem.

Eva Fogelman is the co-director of the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children and the founding co-director of Generations of the Holocaust and Related Traumas. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–nominated Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust and writer and co-producer of the award-winning documentary Breaking the Silence: The Generation after the Holocaust.

Dalia Ofer is the Max and Rita Haber Professor Emerita of Holocaust and East European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her book Escaping the Holocaust: Illegal Immigration to the Land of Israel (Oxford, 1992) received the Ben Zvi award and the National Jewish Book Award. She is the co-editor of Holocaust Survivors: Resettlement, Memories, Identities (Berghahn, 2012) and the editor of Israel in the Eyes of the Survivors (Yad Vashem, 2014). Her most recent work is The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police (Yad Vahsem, 2016).

Summary

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.

Additional text

"This volume is not only timely and welcome, but it will help define a field of inquiry. For scholars and students looking to explore the considerable resources of Holocaust testimonies, this is a valuable resource." � Fran�oise Ouzan, Tel Aviv University

Product details

• Authors: Sharon Kangisser (EDT)/ Fogelman Cohen, Sharon Kangisser Fogelman Cohen
• Assisted by: Sharon Kangisser Cohen (Editor), Eva Fogelman (Editor), Dalia Ofer (Editor)
• Publisher: BERGHAHN BOOKS, INC
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.11.2018
• EAN: 9781789200805
• ISBN: 978-1-78920-080-5
• No. of pages: 276
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > 20th century (up to 1945); Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Genocide History, Jewish Studies