DNF.
How can we make sense of our lives when we do not know where we come from? This was a pressing question for the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, whose pre-war memories were vague or non-existent. In this beautifully written account, Rebecca Clifford follows the lives of one hundred Jewish children out of the ruins of conflict through their adulthood and into old age.
I wanted to continue to read this and get it finished so much but I struggled so much!
This book offers a specialised exploration of the post-war experiences of Jewish child survivors of the Holocaust, providing a comprehensive overview of the evolving attitudes and policies that shaped their lives.
The narrative unfolds against the backdrop of fractured lives, with many children having been hidden during the war, spending time in concentration camps. Their subsequent journeys varied widely, as they were placed in care homes, foster homes, or adopted, often relocating to countries like Canada, Australia, England, New Zealand, America, or Israel. Quotas allocated by different countries played a crucial role in determining their destinations.
Despite having at least one living parent in some cases, the children often thrived better in care homes due to the profound effects of war trauma, post-war poverty, and insecurity. Staffed by Jewish caregivers who had themselves experienced trauma and concentration camps, these care homes operated under the guidance of fostering organisations.
This book is very clearly well-researched and does appear very academic in a lot of the writing and description. Compared to what the book is described as on the blurb as well as marketed, I was expecting more accounts of the survivors what their story was and what happened next. I think for me to have been able to have finished the book, it could have focused more on the stories of the children who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. The author has done an amazing job at documenting and recounting these stories whilst backing everything up with facts and statistics. The author is a very talented historian and there are lots of people out there for whom this will be a five-star read.
Support a local, independent bookshop and buy the book here.
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