The analysis includes various elements: a
historical and political framing of the period, the close scrutiny
of the survivor and of his relationship with testimony, oral
history’s contribution to historiography, and collecting and
commenting on evidence. In particular, written and oral evidence –
with oral testimony collected expressly for this study – are
brought together in an attempt to consider all the many kinds of
experience children have had: first signs of changing treatment of
Jewish citizens, exclusion, assumption of a false name and
psychological difficulties connected with that step, physical
persecution, life in ghettos and in hiding, concentration camps,
escape, deportation, safety, return, survival after the
war.
The relationship between testimony and memory
Chapter one discusses the relationship between testimony and
memory, with a special focus on the unique aspects of children’s
memory and on the limited attention it usually attracts. Witnesses
who were very young during persecution are characterized by powers
of observation which differ from those of adults, lacking the
critical aptitude peculiar to adult. Consequently, scholars would
do well to forego the usual logical instruments of analysis and
comprehension and to attempt to see facts from a child’s
perspective, with the eyes of a child. The witnesses themselves,
however, recall their past from an adult view, and thus, their
approach also requires a return to a child’s point of view.
Unfortunately, the need for making use of children’s memories can
also become an alibi for those who believe that children’s
memories of their childhood are inadequate and inaccurate and who
forget that children’s memories are precise – especially in case
of traumas, which often cause the victims to undergo rapid
psychological maturation – and should if anything be read with
different instruments. Memories can be an aid in understanding
suffering which originates in childhood and in retracing the
individual’s process of growth and maturation.
The
forms of children’s testimony
The second chapter begins by classifying the forms of
children’s testimony on the Holocaust, according to whether the
testimony was recorded while genocide on the Jews was still going
on, shortly after its end, or much later.
Children who recorded their experiences during persecution
articulate their thought in diaries, letters, drawings or poems.
The limited numbers of this kind of source as compared to
testimony recorded after the Holocaust is a result of both
psychological and material difficulties: when the principal
objective is simply to survive, writing can be difficult and
dangerous. These works, which often outlived their authors, vary
greatly with respect to typology, their conformity with the
authors age, content, the experiences described, and the specific
context of each individual’s experience. Pinpointing differences
which correlate with the specific geographical origin of the
authors, in contrast, does not appear to be fruitful: despite deep
cultural and social disparities between Jews from Eastern European
shtetl and Jews integrated into Western European societies,
the typology of children’s stories is basically similar.
Few children wrote in the immediate postwar period, presumably
due to practical and especially psychological problems. For these
children, the memory of the trauma experienced was too new, and
the troubles they faced in a new and precarious life, in a world
that asks them to forget and to return to normality, were too
overwhelming. They lacked, in a word, the serenity to open their
hearts, as well as an audience who stimulated them to do so.
Testimony provided after a longer period of time is again more
frequent. Here, narrating one’s own experience becomes a sort of
protest against the negation of experience and against the silence
which society desires or demands, despite the fact that in the
last fifteen years or so, the recognition of memory’s contribution
to history has grown and historiography has again begun focusing
on the Holocaust more intensely.
Survivors’ accounts taken into consideration in this study
avail themselves of various techniques of memory:
self-identification from the perspective of children (e.g. in Jona
Oberski) – with intentionally plain and simple language, barely
articulated syntax, and a broken rhythm, in order to suggest more
effectively children’s feeling of alienation and their inability
to comprehend events completely on a rational level – or including
one’s own vicissitude in the general context of Nazi persecution
(Inge Auerbacher); the desire for temporal and emotional distance
between oneself and events (Benjamin Bender); the attempt to
analyze one’s own experiences and oneself with the instruments of
adulthood (Shlomo Breznitz, Saul Friedlaender); the explicit will
to give testimony focused on the dead and on honoring their memory
(Emanuele Pacifici).
Different experiences and specific
cases
The study then goes on to analyze different experiences and
specific cases; individual physical and psychological problems are
at the center of attention. Of special interest is the assumption
of a false identity, especially in Italy where Jews tried to
obtain documents from Italian citizens who were residents of the
regions occupied by the Allies, so that the Nazis and Fascists
could not check their validity. For children, assuming a new name
implies doubts and consternation, since it represents a subversion
of self-knowledge and of any logic. It is not so much the name
which makes a child knowable, recognizable and individual in the
eyes of others, as the physical person. Taking on one name instead
of another one is a pointless precaution to conceal one’s true
identity, but it can also provoke psychological distress and
uncertainty. The child does not know why he/she must change
his/her name, he/she is afraid of forgetting this new identity or
of even becoming someone else, of becoming a totally different
person, together with the assumed name.
The specific
nature of the Italian case
The third and last chapter discusses in particular the fate of
children in the Holocaust in Italy, in order to emphasize those
aspects which set apart the situation in Italy from that in other
European countries and to underline the Fascist regime’s
complicity in extermination, which was subsequently continued by
the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (Italian Social Republic).
Unlike their counterparts in the countries occupied by the
Nazis, Italian Jews believed that their country conditions would
not permit persecution. Thus, they were caught unaware by the
racial laws passed in 1938. In the public memory, the enactment of
these laws represents a truly traumatic event, the symptom of a
painful and sudden rupture of the relations between Italian Jewry
and the state. For children the most devastating consequence
resulting from the racial laws was no doubt expulsion from school
- often linked to the bitter realization that they were being
ostracized by schoolmates and friends.
The Jewish
charitable institutions in Italy
In a further section of the study, the work of the Jewish
charitable institutions to aid both foreign refugees and Italian
Jews during the war and soon afterwards is reviewed. Among the
organizations active in Italy, DELASEM (Delegazione Assistenza
Emigrati Ebrei, Delegation for Aid to Jewish Emigrants) held a
prominent position and also installed, in Florence, a section
devoted to psychological support for children. In 1942 »DELASEM
dei Piccoli« (DELASEM of Children) was established, also in
Florence, to look after young foreign Jews interned in Italian
camps, providing them with books, medical care, toys, and baby
clothes. In the Ferramonti camp, DELASEM and engineer Kalk’s
»Mensa dei Bambini« (Refectory for Children) helped improve the
life of babies, children, and teenagers. After the war, one of
DELASEM’s main tasks was recovering children hidden in convents
and arranging their religious and educational
rehabilitation.
Conclusion and plans for further
research
In the study outlined here, I focused on historiographical
questions which are still controversial among scholars today: the
theory of Jewish passivity towards their persecutors (which, at
least in the case of children, has been demonstrated to be
incorrect), the ambiguous policy of the Judenraete in the
ghettos, the various patterns of behavior found in the Christian
population, the methods used to pursue the »final solution« and
the singularity of the Holocaust, the nature of Italian
anti-Semitism, and the civil society’s limited attention to the
problems and psychological needs of child survivors.
Based on this research, some observations on witnesses’
productive modes of memory may be advanced. Generally speaking,
memories which have been articulated by survivors who have for
years deliberately and continually commemorated the fates
experienced by themselves and others are richer in detail and
contain more accurate data. Those who have not repeatedly recalled
and recounted their experiences during persecution now have
difficulty reconstructing, in more than a general way, the phase
of increasing exclusion and the ensuing hunting-down of the Jews.
People who are accustomed not only to remembering and exercising
their memory, but also to recounting their own memories in public,
in contrast, have memories which are not only vivid but also
elaborated and revisited with subsequent reflections and
interpretations. Rather than being recreated, their memories
change in time, becoming memories of memory, a remembrance of
elements selected and kept alive. The past models memory and
memory therefore changes in time. And in the process of
construction of a reworded and reinterpreted past, survivors are
inclined to adopt a form of literary narrative typification. This
occurs frequently to people whose involvement in providing
testimony is intense, persevering, and continual, especially if
they favor the written form – pondered over, revised, polished,
frozen in black and white, and re-presented in identical form in
their subsequent accounts, written as well as oral ones.
This last reflection concerns the weight of testimony in
history, the need for a collaborative and dialectical comparison
between oral history and historiographical studies. What was once
the necessity of hearing witnesses during trials has recently been
replaced by the will to do so – with regard not only to the
Holocaust, but to every kind of event. Witnesses, the only
individuals who experienced events personally, provide a means of
integrating the historiographical activity and an essential
contribution to the kind of in-depth comprehension which archives
cannot provide. The words of witnesses thus complete the picture
outlined by historians.
At present I am developing a concept for a research project
which will focus on child survivors of the concentration and
extermination camps. My aim is to analyze the events experienced
by children who survived one or more camps, the work of the
charitable institutions that took care of them; the subsequent
lives of these survivors (emigration, return home, adoption) to
the present, and to end with interviews with some survivors who
are still alive today. As yet, the project is still very broad and
general in scope and will require further clarification, based on
the material available for study, during the first phase of
research.
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