Children in the Holocaust and World War II: Their Secret Diaries

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, this is an extraordinary, unprecedented anthology of diaries written by children all across Nazi-occupied Europe and in England. Twenty-three young people, ages ten through eighteen, recount in vivid detail the horrors they lived through, day after day. As powerful as The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary, here are children's experiences - all written with an unguarded eloquence that belies their years.

The diarists include a Hungarian girl, selected by Mengele to be put in a line of prisoners who were tortured and murdered; a Danish Christian boy executed by the Nazis for his partisan work; and a twelve-year-old Dutch boy who lived through the Blitzkrieg in Rotterdam.

In the Janowska death camp, eleven-year-old Pole Janina Heshele so inspired her fellow prisoners with the power of her poetry that they found a way to save her from the Nazi ovens. Mary Berg was imprisoned at sixteen in the Warsaw ghetto even though her mother was American and Christian. She left an eyewitness record of ghetto atrocities, a diary she was able to smuggle out of captivity. Moshe Flinker, a sixteen-year-old Netherlander, was betrayed by an informer who led the Gestapo to his family's door; Moshe and his parents died in Auschwitz in 1944. They come from Czechoslovakia, Austria, Israel, Poland, Holland, Belgium, Hungary, Lithuania, Russia, England, and Denmark.

They write in spare, searing prose of life in ghettos and concentration camps, of bombings and Blitzkriegs, of fear and courage, tragedy and transcendence. Their voices and their vision ennoble us all. As powerful as The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary, with a scope encompassing the entire experience of World War II and the Holocaust, these diaries offer the remembrances of children aged 10 to 18, who lived in Nazi-occupied Europe.

ISBN-13 : 9780671520557
Publisher : Washington Square Press
Publication date : 01/06/1996
Author : Laurel Holliday

Editorial Reviews

School Library Journal

YA-Diary entries written by young people in ghettos, concentration camps, cities, and a Copenhagen prison camp offer insightful comments and glimpses of life during World War II. Each selection is introduced by a brief biography that includes the author's name, country, age, family circumstances before and during the war, and concludes with circumstances of death or postwar life. Nine girls and 14 boys, Jews and gentiles, aged 10 to 18, are featured. Teens should be interested in reading about the sexploits of Joan Wyndham, a 16-year-old London resident; her suburban neighbor, Colin Perry, 18, and his detailed recording of air raids; resistance fighter Hannah Senesh, 17; and Danish spy Kim Malthe-Brun, 18. A good selection for YAs interested in the experiences of their agemates from other times, the Holocaust, life during war, or those in need of a collective biography.-Barbara Hawkins, Oakton High School, Fairfax, VA