Czarne sezony. Czarne latawce. O dziecięcych bibliotekach w gettach

Abstract

The article Black Seasons. Black Kites. About the Children’s Reading in Ghettos is devoted to the Holocaust seen and lived from the perspective of children. The author is interested in book collections of those who survived the war and later became writers (U. Orlev, A. Frankel, and M. Głowiński), and those stories that thematise children’s reading in ghettos (D. Combrzyńska-Nogala, M. Szczygielski). Joanna Roszak shows which books became for the children readers a matrix imposed on reality, which met the needs of a library therapy, helped children to cope with the emotional challenges of ghetto existence, and which enabled integration and identification processes. Moreover, the authoress presents which books triggered the escapist interpretation and finally which found an extension in the stories and essays created after the war. The title of the paper refers to The Black Seasons [Czarne sezony] by Michał Głowiński, and to a line from Czesław Miłosz’s Campo di Fiori.