Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust by Joanna Sliwa

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust by Joanna Sliwa Melissa R. Klapper Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust. By Joanna Sliwa. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2021. ix + 204 pp. When Debórah Dwork published Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe in 1991, neither the history of childhood nor, obviously, Holocaust studies were new fields. But both were about to see an explosion of interest in the academy and they continued to intersect, as seen, for example, in the 2004 publication of papers from a symposium on children and the Holocaust at the United States [End Page 317] Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and then the 2011 volume Children During the Holocaust, edited by Patricia Heberer for the same institution. The perennial, global appeal of The Diary of Anne Frank has also kept the Holocaust experiences of young people in the spotlight, as has the Children's Memorial at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a monument to the approximately 1.5 million children who were murdered. Joanna Sliwa's book Jewish Childhood in Kraków explores the circumstances and stories of the children of just one city in Poland, but by doing so she provides a multifaceted, deeply researched account that functions simultaneously both as an important contribution to scholarship and also, inevitably, as a moving memorial. Sliwa approaches her topic from various perspectives, focused largely on the different types of literal spaces where Jewish children lived in and around Kraków before, during, and just after World War II. The first chapter explores Jewish children's life in the city when it was under German occupation but before the ghetto was established at the relatively late date of 1941. Chapter 2 follows the Jewish community into the new ghetto by highlighting the extreme dislocations experienced by children who lost any remaining access to the spaces of their former lives. In the third chapter, Sliwa uncovers various sites of Jewish children's agency as seen in what she calls "clandestine activities" such as engaging in smuggling and black market trade, sneaking in and out of the ghetto, and taking on adult work assignments. Chapter 4 shifts the focus away from children themselves toward the relief efforts aimed at them by adults inside and outside the ghetto, who tried to preserve some remnants of childhood education, entertainment, and play under dire circumstances. Though there were not supposed to be any children in the Plaszow work camp adjacent to Kraków, chapter 5 documents their presence in a place that also served as a concentration camp and killing site. Chapter 6 examines the experiences of hidden Jewish children who either never went into the ghetto or stayed only briefly before going into hiding. Finally, in the epilogue, Sliwa traces the postwar experiences of Jewish children in Kraków who somehow had to find a way to rebuild their lives, both literally and metaphorically, despite the devastation and a persistent anti-Semitism that made it nearly impossible for most of them, with or without their families, to stay. Jewish Childhood in Kraków is a slim volume but one that deals with some of the basic questions of the history of childhood. For one, who counts as a child? Age was a major factor in children's Holocaust experiences. As an example, it was often easier to hide infants and toddlers outside the ghetto, but some of those children were then lost to the Jewish community if they grew up not knowing who they were and no family survived to come back for them. The Germans classified fourteen-year-olds as adults old enough to work. This put [End Page 318] an enormous physical strain on young bodies but also resulted in a (limited) sort of protection for those deemed useful. Many Jewish children lied about their ages and presented themselves as older than they were in an effort to avoid seeming immediately expendable. This was particularly important in Plaszow, given that no children were allowed in the camp. Another central issue to the history of childhood is the intersection of age with class...