Jewish Child Survivors in the Aftermath of the Holocaust

The last two decades have been marked by a steadily increasing interest in the history of children during and in the aftermath of the Second World War; this might be described as the children's turn in Holocaust studies. Today, we have a wide range of case studies of Jewish children under Nazi occupation in both western and eastern Europe, studies of children in concentration camps, and child survivors' early post-war lives. Other important areas which have been the subject of research are the resettlement of Europe's unaccompanied and displaced children in the aftermath of the Second World War, the (transnational) reconstruction of Jewish families, mental and medical problems among young survivors in the aftermath the Holocaust, and the memories and self-representation of child survivors. Over the past two decades, scholars and wider audiences have also paid more attention to the wartime diaries of older Jewish children and teenagers. One currently growing area is the history of hidden children during the Holocaust, whose wartime and post-war experiences and memories were barely known to historians in the early 1990s.