Children in the Holocaust and its Aftermath: Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive

Published by Berghahn Books 2017

Children in the Holocaust and its Aftermath

Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive

Edited by: Sharon Kangisser Cohen , Eva Fogelman and Dalia Ofer

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781785334399

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author / Editor information

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).

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.

Reviews

“An index of persons, places and institutions round off a solidly edited volume that gives many ideas of how the Kestenberg Archive can be used for research about the consequences of the national-socialist murder of Jews.” • Zeitschrift für Genozidforschung

“Identifying and evaluating sources is fundamental in the history of child- hood, especially since children so rarely leave their own records. This book is about one such source, remarkable in its conception and with some serious potential for understanding a very challenging subject—the experience of the surviving children of the Holocaust.” • The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth

“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.” • Françoise Ouzan, Tel Aviv University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Sharon Kangisser Cohen, Eva Fogelman and Dalia Ofer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART ONE Methodology
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 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
PART TWO Immediate Postwar Period
2 A Child’s View: Children’s Depositions of the Central Jewish Historical Commission (Poland) Sharon Kangisser Cohen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3 Starting Over Reconstituted Families after the Holocaust Beth B. Cohen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
4 “Both Valuable and Difficult” A Meeting Point between Historical and Psychological Interviews Rita Horváth and Katalin Zana Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
PART THREE Postwar Memory, Coping Mechanisms, and Adjustment
5 Performative Memory-Making and the Future of the Kestenberg Archive Stephenie Young Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
6 Shadows of Memory and Intergenerational Legacies in Child Survivors’ Testimonies from the Kestenberg Archive Dana Mihăilescu Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	122
7 Symbolic Revenge in Holocaust Child Survivors Nancy Isserman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
8 Resilience in Child Survivors: History and Application of Coding of the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children Helene Bass-Wichelhaus Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
PART FOUR Non-Jewish Victims of War and Nazism
9 “They Were Jews, but They Were Very Kind People” Polish Language Testimonies in the Kestenberg Archive Katarzyna Person Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	187
10 War Children in Nazi Germany and World War II Ilka Quindeau, Katrin Einert and Nadine Teuber Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	200
11 Insights into the German Interviews of the Kestenberg Archive: Children of Perpetrators and How They Dealt with Their Parents’ Actions Christina Isabel Brüning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	224
PART FIVE Personal Reflections
12 Always Moving Forward Andrew Griffel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 276
Keywords: Genocide History; Jewish Studies

eBook

Published: April 1, 2017
ISBN: 9781785334399