Children, World War II and the Holocaust

Children are caught up in wars and conflicts initiated and fought by adults. This is the inherent global practice of politico-social power asymmetries. The pages of human history show how strongly the Holocaust and the Second World War, as well as the wars and conflicts of long duration still being waged, have left their mark on children. This volume focuses on Eastern and Southeastern European discourses and memory policies about the extermination of Jewish (and to some extent non-Jewish) children and connects these phenomena with diverse cultures of remembrance before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. How were forms of memory of child victims of the Holocaust, child courage and resistance shaped in the post-war period in the context of Eastern and Southeastern European discourses and cultures of memory? How are these themes preserved, cultivated and transmitted in education, art and culture in material and virtual spaces? What kind of memorial places and spaces relating to children in the Holocaust, wars and conflicts have been created, commemorated, and what does memory (as sensitive category in research) look like nowadays at the intersection of Eastern, Southeastern and Western discourses in the European context? These are the questions that the book intends to answer in 11 essays.