A Study On Jewish Children During The Holocaust

This thesis studies the Jewish children during the holocaust,among which the international community's rescue of Jewish children,a special group of Jewish children--hidden Jewish children and the trauma of surviving children after the war are the focus of this thesis.Jewish children are studied because they have always been a special social group,and because their memory of the holocaust makes the history of the holocaust complete.This thesis mainly adopts the method of studying oral history to examine the Jewish children's issue,and therefore,to fill some gaps in the study of the holocaust.However,it is important to be aware that the use of this type of data as research material also creates methodological limitations.Since most of the survivors described in this article are elderly,their memories,especially those of the first years of life,should be analyzed rationally and objectively.At the same time,due to the human memory elusive and selective,it will inevitably lead to the inaccuracy of some descriptions.But we still have to analyze these materials,although memory has its inaccuracy,but memory also has its indelibility.In addition to the important impact of the holocaust on Jewish children,it is more important to explore the significance of children's history in the entire Jewish national holocaust experience.Based on the above considerations,this thesis is structured in the following order:The first part is the introduction.I briefly introduce the significance of this research,the trend of research both in and out of China,my research methods,and innovation of this thesis,as well.The first chapter describes the sufferings of Jewish children who struggled to survive in ghettos and concentration camps under the persecution of the Nazi regime.Many Jewish children died in the ghettos due to poor living conditions and lacking of medications.Some of them were sent directly to gas chambers or used as human subjects in medical experiments if they were too little to do labor work.The notorious Devil Doctor,Joseph Menger,was a nightmare for many Jewish children in the concentration camp.The second chapter explores the lives of surviving Jewish children in the shadow of the Holocaust.A very special group of surviving children,hidden Jewish children,deserves our extra attention.The so-called "hidden children" refers to the children who had to hide or disguise their identity during the wartime.They had to give up their Jewish identity and even abandoned their religion in order to survive.Because of the prominent characteristics of these hidden children,this chapter is divided into three parts.Part I describes the situation of survived hidden children who were not accepted by society and also being ashamed of their very experiences.Part II shows the severe identity crisis the children faced both during and after the war.Part III addresses the psychological trauma of surviving hidden children during and after the war.The third chapter focuses on the international community's assistance to the distressed Jewish children.Countries such as Britain and the United States could not turn a blind eye to the Jewish children,all possible forces tried their best to rescue them.Among the rescue plans,UK proposed "Child Transport Plan" had the biggest scale and successfully rescued the most number of Jewish children.On the other hand,the United States made tremendous efforts to settle refugee children after the war.Through Child care agencies,these children were connected to suitable foster families and well got accepted in the new country.The fourth chapter analyzes the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish children.We will look into children's memories of war and Nazi atrocities,and explore the impact of the Holocaust to the Jewish people from a child's perspective.The history should not be forgotten,let alone every suffering group in one of the most vicious memories of mankind.The last part is the conclusion.Through the research,it is my belief that the Jewish children during the holocaust suffered serious physical and mental injuries,and such injuries followed the surviving children for a long time after the war.In the early postwar period,little attention is being given to the surviving children of holocaust narrative,this is because on the one hand the countries focused more on the home reconstruction,on the other hand,the social environment did not showed high level of acceptance of surviving,while the survivors themselves had a sense of shame,which made them not like to take the initiative to talk on the experience of the holocaust.Although Jewish children suffered unimaginable sufferings during holocaust,we should also see the international community's assistance to Jewish children during and after the war,among which the United States and Britain provided help to the largest number of children.It is not easy for Jewish children to carry the memory of suffering forward.The search and attention for survivors should be deepened.With the passage of time,the number of original survivors has become smaller and smaller,while we have the responsibility not to let their memory fade away.