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

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.

Monica Tempian is Senior Lecturer in German at Victoria University, New Zealand.

Simone Gigliotti is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Victoria, New Zealand.

Part I: Departures to new homelands: Adaptation and belonging in refugee countries
1. Jewish Refugee Children in the USA (1934-1945): Flight, Resettlement, Absorption, Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz (Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel)
2. Detour to Canada: The fate of juvenile Austrian-Jewish refugees after the "Anschluss" 1938, Andrea Strutz (University of Graz, Austria)
3. "The Children are a Triumph": Refugee children and young people from Europe in New Zealand, 1930s and 1940s, Ann Beaglehole (Waitangi Tribunal, Wellington, New Zealand)
4. "No common mother tongue or fatherland": Jewish refugee children in British Kenya, Jennifer Reeve (University of East Anglia, UK)
5. "This gash remains forever..." Aspects of the integration of German-speaking refugee children in Brazil, 1933-1945, Marlen Eckl (University of Sao Paolo, Brazil)
6. A Distant Sanctuary: Australia and Child Holocaust Survivors, Suzanne D. Rutland (University of Sydney, Australia)
Part II: Ghetto and Camp Battlegrounds: Families, Activism and Forced Labour
7. Children and Youth in Ghetto Families in Eastern Europe, Dalia Ofer (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
8. The Legend of the Ghetto Fighters: Youth Movements and Resistance during and after the Holocaust, Avinoam Patt (University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA)
9. Polish and Soviet Child Forced Labourers in NS Germany and German-occupied Eastern Europe, Johannes-Dieter Steinert (University of Wolverhampton, UK)
10. The Fate of Children in Majdanek Concentration Camp, Marta Grudzinska (State Museum at Majdanek, Poland)
11. The Boys of Buchenwald: Underground Rescue of Children and Youths in a Nazi Concentration Camp, Kenneth Waltzer (Michigan State University, USA)
Part III: "War Childhoods" in the Postwar world: traumatic memory, rehabilitation and silence
12. The Kinder?s Children: The Kindertransport to Britain and Intergenerational Memory, Andrea Hammel (Aberystwyth University, UK)
13. Remembering the „Pain of Belonging?: Jewish Children Hidden as Catholics in World War II France, Mary Fraser Kirsh (College of William and Mary, Arlington, USA)
14. Physical and Emotional Problems Among Child Holocaust Survivors: Medical Expectations and Reality, Joanna Michlic (Brandeis University, USA)
15. Unaccompanied Children within the Mandate of the International Tracing Service (ITS), Susanne Urban (International Tracing Service, Germany)
16. Children of Lidice: Searches, Shadows, and Histories, Jennifer E. Smyth (University of Warwick, UK)
17. Europe's Children across the Borders of Memory, Roger Hillman (Australian National University, Australia)
Bibliography
Index