Children's Literature and the Holocaust

Children's Literature and the Holocaust

During the 1940's Jewish Europeans experienced an unthinkable and atrocious collective trauma. In her work "Survivor-Parents and Their Children" taken from the anthology Generations of the Holocaust, Judith S. Kestenberg has argued that regardless of location, the effects of the Holocaust are felt on survivors parenting. The children of survivors receive a secondary traumatic impact by being forced to deal with the impact the Holocaust had directly on their parents. The novel Briar Rose by Jane Yolen is an example of a Holocaust survivor sharing her experiences through a fictionalized tale made for young adults. Some may believe that a traditional, educationally focused history source or a first hand account from a survivor is the best way to inform children about the Holocaust. It has been discovered through research of survivors and their families that first hand accounts passed down from parent to child are traumatizing. However, history books are ineffective because people are turned into statistics, thereby trivializing the terror of the Holocaust. This essay argues that a fictional style of storytelling or literature is the best way to inform children and adolescents about the Holocaust. Witnessing is important, however, there is no educational value in traumatizing children; it is better to use literature that explains the Holocaust at a level children and young adults can handle.

Milton Meltzer, author of Never forget: The Jews of the Holocaust discusses the importance of witnessing: "To forget what we know would not be human. To remember (it) is to think of what being human means. . . Indifference is the greatest sin. . . . It can be as powerful as an action. Not to do something against evil is to participate in the evil" (Sherman 173). Meltzer gives the straightforward conclusion that people must be educated about the Holocaust because to remain silent about it is just as bad as playing a role in persecuting Jews. This conclusion also gives the rationale for teaching children about the Holocaust. But more specifically, why else may witnessing be important and what are the drawbacks of witnessing?

Despite the logic and seemingly usefulness of witnessing, it can be a traumatic experience for the witness. The trauma experienced through first hand accounts can be further explained through the use of Marianne Hirsch's article "Projected Memory: Holocaust photographs in Personal and Public Fantasy," which discusses ways people can perceive traumatic information of the past. People can either have "the ability to say 'it could have been me, it was me, also' and at the same time 'that it was not me'" or the line between the witness and the listener can be blurred and the historical trauma interiorized. Hirsch identifies a negative identification with trauma as idiopathic or "self-sameness" (408). An over-identification with trauma causes the witness to act out and become a victim. As Hirsch writes, "Acting out is based on tragic identification and the continuation of one's self as a surrogate victim. It is based on over identification and repetition. Keeping the wounds open, it results in retraumatization" (414).

It is because of these reasons that painful histories must be carefully passed on with the witness's welfare in mind. Anyone who hears a first hand account about the Holocaust may experience trauma. According to Judith S. Kestenberg, author of "Survivor-Parents and Their Children," first hand witnessing of the Holocaust has long-term traumatic effects that are passed down through generation. As shown through out the studies and cases discussed in the anthology Generations of The Holocaust, the "psychological task" children of survivors have to face is dealing with the trauma handed down from their parents as a result of their experiences with the Holocaust. Children of survivors are traumatized because "survivor-parents introduce into their parenthood the usual identification and counter identifications not only with their own living or deceased parents and siblings, but also with various people-some well known to them, some anonymous-who were part of their persecution experience" (Kestenberg 96). The knowledge of their parents trauma causes the child to over-identify with their parents.

But not only children of survivors are traumatized by information of the Holocaust. Even gentiles maybe traumatized by hearing first hand accounts from Holocaust survivors. "The Holocaust In Fiction; Naming The Unnamable; Morality In Literature" describes how author Joyce Hackett was negatively affected by the year she spent researching about the Holocaust: "In the months she spent conducting interviews with survivors of Theresienstadt- -a Nazi camp...Hackett found herself casually buying rope with which to fashion her own noose, and 'idly wondering whether it would hurt to drop a blow-dryer in my bath water'" (B6). Hackett had an idiopathic reaction to witnessing. She over-identified with the survivors she interviewed and showed evidence of acting out, the interviews with survivors sparked her preoccupation with suicide.

Since it has been shown that first hand witnessing causes trauma to children and also carries the risk of traumatizing more remote witnesses, history books may be seen as the next alternative to informing children of the Holocaust. However, history books are ineffective in teaching children about the Holocaust. The article "Historian's WWII Book Sanitizes History for Youth" discusses a history book that fails to convey more than mundane facts. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose wrote a book or "an introduction to the war for young readers" (Eskenazi 1). "The book fails resoundingly. Instead it presents a prettified version of the war and the role of the United States: Ambrose does mention such figures as 4,600 U.S. military personnel killed at Pearl Harbor, 85,000 Japanese incinerated at Hiroshima, and 11 million dead via Hitler's Final Solution, including 6 million Jews" (Eskanzi 1). The facts in the history books are ineffective. Whereas witnessing causes a problem of over identification, history books cause the problem of too little identification. The information the reader of a history book receives is not enough to create a significant impact or understanding. Because of this, no heteropathic identification is formed. The reader has no emotional connection with the work and the reader child gains nothing from reading the book.

After eliminating the use of first hand witnessing and history books, the next alternative for teaching children about the Holocaust is through fictional literature. Some