The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime: Migration, the Holocaust and Postwar Displacement

Description

During the Nazi regime many children and young people in Europe found their lives uprooted by Nazi policies, resulting in their relocation around the globe. The Young Victims of the Nazi Regime represents the diversity of their experiences, covering a range of non-European perspectives on the Second World War and aspects of memory. This book is unique in that it places the experiences of children and youth in a transnational context, shifting the conversation of displacement and refuge to countries that have remained under-examined in a comparative context. Featuring essays from an international range of experts, this book analyses the key themes in three sections: the migration of children to countries including England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya, and Brazil; the experiences of young people who remained in Nazi Europe and became victims of war, displacement and deportation; and finally the challenges of rebuilding lives and representing traumas in the aftermath of war. In its comparisons between Jewish and non-Jewish experiences and how these intersected and diverged, it revisits debates about cultural genocide through the separation of families and communities, as well as contributing new perspectives on forced labour, families and the Holocaust, and Germans as war victims.

Simone Gigliotti is Senior Lecturer in History at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She is the author of The Train Journey: Transit, Captivity, and Witnessing in the Holocaust (2009). Simone is also one of the co-editors of The Holocaust: A Reader (2005) and Ethics, Art and Representations of the Holocaust (2014). Monica Tempian is Senior Lecturer in German at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

The book will occupy an important space in the growing historiography on children as well as the enormous library of studies of the Holocaust and Nazism. By locating and writing about the survivors, the editors created the kind of children's history that skeptics too often believe is not possible. It is also a very good example of the new global history. * EuropeNow * This collection of essays significantly addresses the lacuna of Holocaust scholarship about children and the Holocaust. It provides important in depth scholarly examination of children during the Holocaust through a variety of settings and experiences giving us a nuanced view of the multiple types of Holocaust victimhood. * Helene Sinnreich, Youngstown State University, USA * An ambitious project, this book delivers on its promise and offers us fresh and fascinating perspectives. With its sweeping geographic reach, it weaves the history of child refugee who fled to North and South America, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand into the history of the Holocaust. Focusing on children, this splendid collection follows the many fates of young people trapped in Nazi Europe. And it takes seriously the heartbreaking fact that war's end did not bring redemption. An outstanding volume. * Deborah Dwork, Rose Professor of Holocaust History, Clark University, USA * This volume should be a part of every library collection. In examining the experiences of children whose lives were affected by Nazi racial policy, editors Simone Gigliotti and Nicole Tempian expand their inquiry beyond the narrow confines of ghetto and concentration camp to provide a broad transnational context. Articles in the anthology combine to weave a narrative of refugee children escaping Nazi-occupied Europe for every corner of the globe that offered safe haven. Likewise, they offer fresh perspectives on the lives of youngsters who remained behind, caught in the web of persecution and violence. Most significantly, the collection provides a comparative approach in exploring children's experiences of displacement and relocation in the turbulent postwar period. In sum, this work will prove an essential resource for students, teachers, and scholars of the Holocaust. * Patricia Heberer Rice, author of Children during the Holocaust * The history of childhood is an ever-growing field, and this work on children in the Holocaust adds to that field and Holocaust studies generally ... [T]he essays ... deepen understanding of the experience of children in the Holocaust, especially the experiences of refugees and survivors. Summing Up: Highly recommended. * CHOICE *