And Life Is Changed Forever: Holocaust Childhoods Remembered

by Asher J. Matathias (Contribution by), Charles Gelman (Contribution by), Dori Laub (Contribution by), Eva Benda (Contribution by), Eva Metzger Brown (Contribution by)

Overview

Looking at the Holocaust through the eyes of children who lived through it, this collection offers an inspiring assortment of perspectives on survival.

This distinctive volume contains twenty first-person narrative essays from Holocaust survivors who were children at the time of the atrocity. As children aged two to sixteen, these authors had different experiences than their adult counterparts and also had different outlooks in understanding the events that they survived.

While most Holocaust memoirs focus on one individual or one country, And Life Is Changed Forever offers a varied collection of compelling reflections. The survivors come from Germany, Poland, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Italy, Greece, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Latvia, and Czechoslovakia. All of the contributors escaped death, but they did so in myriad ways. Some children posed as Gentiles or were hidden by sympathizers, some went to concentration camps and survived slave labor, some escaped on the Kindertransports, and some were sent to endure hardships in a "safe" location such as Siberia or unoccupied France. While each essay is intensely personal, all speak to the universal horrors and the triumphs of all children who have survived persecution. And Life Is Changed Forever also focuses on what these children became-teachers, engineers, physicians, entrepreneurs, librarians, parents, and grandparents-and explores the impact of the Holocaust on their later lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780814331736
Publisher:	Wayne State University Press
Publication date:	04/05/2006
Series:	Landscapes of Childhood Series
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Martin Ira Glassner is a retired professor of geography and political science and a former foreign service officer. He is currently a lecturer and consultant living in Connecticut.

Robert Krell is professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of British Columbia and a researcher and therapist specializing in child survivors, of which he is one.

What People are Saying About This

Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Author of Theodor Herzl: from Assimilation to Zionism - Jacques Kornberg

Gripping memoirs of lost childhoods spent in hiding. Stories of fear, panic, rage, self-blame, of bonding and loss many times over. Inspiring accounts of the human resiliency that triumphed over denial and grief, and led to productive post-war lives."

Jefferson Medical College, Co-Author of the Last Witness: the Child Survivor of the Holocaust - Ira Brenner

A rare and most important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. This remarkable compilation of autobiographies of those who survived genocidal persecution as children is a living testimony to resilience and generativity under the most unspeakable conditions. Robert Krell, Martin Glassner, and the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut remind us that the legacy of the youngest survivors of the Shoah is the triumph over Hitler's 'final solution.'"

Helen Epstein of Where She Came From: a Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History

The importance of personal testimony has become an established principle across cultures and academic disciplines as well as in the field of mental health. But adult memories of traumatic childhoods continue to constitute a controversial issue. This collection, compiled by Martin Glassner, of memoirs of Holocaust child survivors covers a wide range of countries (including prewar Jewish life in Greece and Italy), and commentary by child psychiatrist and child survivor Robert Krell makes it an unusual addition to both the Holocaust and trauma literature."

Editorial Reviews

In the canon of first-person Holocaust narratives, this is a book that will not soon be forgotten."

Journal of Genocide Research

A rare and most important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. This remarkable compilation of autobiographies of those who survived genocidal persecution as children is a living testimony to resilience and generativity under the most unspeakable conditions. Robert Krell, Martin Glassner, and the Holocaust Child Survivors of Connecticut remind us that the legacy of the youngest survivors of the Shoah is the triumph over Hitler's 'final solution.'"

Jefferson Medical College, co-author of The Last Witness: The Child Survivor of the Holocaust - Ira Brenner

Gripping memoirs of lost childhoods spent in hiding. Stories of fear, panic, rage, self-blame, of bonding and loss many times over. Inspiring accounts of the human resiliency that triumphed over denial and grief, and led to productive post-war lives."

professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, author of Theodor Herzl: From Assimilation to Zionism - Jacques Kornberg

The importance of personal testimony has become an established principle across cultures and academic disciplines as well as in the field of mental health. But adult memories of traumatic childhoods continue to constitute a controversial issue. This collection, compiled by Martin Glassner, of memoirs of Holocaust child survivors covers a wide range of countries (including prewar Jewish life in Greece and Italy), and commentary by child psychiatrist and child survivor Robert Krell makes it an unusual addition to both the Holocaust and trauma literature."

author of Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for her Mother's History - Helen Epstein