In this thorough and well-documented account, Dwork (Religious
Studies/Yale) moves away front the usual bias of Holocaust studies
toward the treatment of adults and focuses instead on the harrowing
experiences of Jewish children under Nazi rule. Foremost among the
conditions encountered by children at that time, Dwork says, was an
essential powerlessness, with most of their decisions made for them
by their parents, families, or caring strangers. Under the first
Nazi edicts, before the deportations, Jewish schools and youth
groups sprang up in many countries, and the feeling of being a race
apart was offset to a degree by the high quality of education and a
strengthened sense of community. As the noose tightened, however,
such small advantages were quickly lost, and children were either
placed in hiding and temporarily protected (as in the famous case
of Anne Frank), caught up in Nazi sweeps and deported to transit
camps, or locked into urban ghettos to suffer a grim fate. For
those surviving the last two situations, the final destination was
nearly always either a death camp, where those too young to do
adult work were immediately sent "to the right," or a labor camp,
where inhumane treatment quickly ended whatever vestiges of
childhood remained. Relying largely on a wide range of oral
histories from those who experienced the Holocaust as children, a
comprehensive view of these situations throughout Europe emerges,
from France and the Netherlands to Hungary and Yugoslavia, as
horrors that have been often noted are seen again, wrenchingly,
through the eyes of a generation too young to comprehend them.
Solidly researched and sensitively arranged - a useful addition to
the Holocaust canon, and a frightening record of innocence
betrayed. (Kirkus Reviews)
"The little children had little parents in the [twins'] block [in
Auschwitz]. For example, I was a little mama for twins, two girls
named Evichka and Hanka...My sister was the mother for Hanka and I
was the mother for Evichka...Evichka told me that she got a mother
and a father, but that they had gone away on transport. The twins
were four years old. I said to her, 'I will be your mother.' She
said, 'But you are only sixteen years old; it doesn't matter?' I
said, 'No, it doesn't matter because it is more important that we
are together and that we are not alone. You have a mother and I
have a daughter.'" -Magda Magda Somogyi Many books have been
written about the experiences of Jews in Nazi Europe. None,
however, has focused on the persecution of the most vulnerable
members of the Jewish community-its children. This powerful and
moving book by Deborah Dwork relates the history of these children
for the first time. The book is based on hundreds of oral histories
conducted with survivors who were children in the Holocaust, in
Europe and North America, an extraordinary range of primary
documentation uncovered by the author (including diaries, letters,
photographs and family albums), and archival records. Drawing on
these sources, Dwork reveals the feelings, daily activities, and
perceptions of Jewish children who lived and died in the shadow of
the Holocaust. She reconstructs and analyzes the many different
experiences the children faced. In the early years of Nazi
domination they lived at home, increasingly opposed by rising
anti-Semitism. Later some went into hiding while others attempted
to live openly on gentile papers. As time passed, increasing
numbers were forced into transit camps, ghettos, and death and
slave labor camps. Although nearly ninety percent of the Jewish
children in Nazi Europe were murdered, we learn in this history not
of their deaths but of the circumstances of their lives. Children
with a Star is a major new contribution to the history of Europe
during the Nazi era. It explains from a different perspective how
European society functioned during the wary years, how the German
noose tightened, and how the Jewish victims and their gentile
neighbors responded. It expands the definition of resistance by
examining the history of the people-primarily women-who helped
Jewish children during the war. By focusing on children, it strips
away rationalizations that the victims of Nazism somehow "allowed
or "deserved" their punishment. And by examining the experience of
children and thereby laying bare how society functions at its most
fundamental level, it not only provides a unique understanding of
the Holocaust but a new theoretical approach to the study of
history.
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