Using fantasy and objects to in Holocaust books for children

There are hundreds of books for children about the Holocaust. The Diary of Anne Frank has been mentioned as a book that no child should miss. Recommended books range from the graphic depiction of life and death in Elie Wiesel’s Night (1958) to the brief mention of numbers tattooed on a survivor’s arm in Patricia Lakin’s Never Forget (1994). Some authors try to create a safe(r) distance between the reader and the events of the Holocaust by:

• using a non-realistic framework as fairy tales do,
• focusing on an object or ritual use of an object instead of people,
• writing about those who lived out the war in remote or relatively safe parts of the world.

The picture books I want to discuss this Wednesday use these techniques.

An interesting study could be made of the messages contained in Holocaust literature over the years. Is the Holocaust the story of the innocent victims? Of the heroic struggle to maintain one’s humanity in the death camps? Of the brave partisans who fought back? Of those who managed to escape the death camps only to endure hardships in remote locations? Of the righteous people who unselfishly risked or gave up their own lives to save others? Of the brave leaders who chose to help? Of the governments who chose not to? Of the great heights or depths that ordinary people can reach in the face of extraordinary circumstances? Of the effect of such barbarity on the lives of those not directly involved? Of the ultimate triumph of goodness? Of the absence of justice in the world? Of the banality of evil? Of the death of God?

Is it even possible to find meaning in the events of the Holocaust? Should we? Or is the Holocaust proof that life is at best meaningless? Do we continue to teach our children that the world is fundamentally a good place with kind people? Or is the world chaotic and the only meaning it has is whatever we choose to impose on it?

The meaning, or lack thereof, that we get from the Holocaust depends on how we approach it. Do we believe that undeserved suffering is good or bad? What religious values, if any, do we want to affirm? Is forgiveness always possible? Is it ever possible? Do we do unto others as they have done unto us? Or—the logical inverse— do we not do unto others what we do not want them to do to us? I.e., do we believe in revenge as so many people have in so many places for so many centuries; or do we try to create a world where the Holocaust will never happen again? (Obviously I believe in the latter.)

What meaning is imposed on the Holocaust by the very act of writing about it? When we read a first-person narrative of a survivor, do we take comfort in the many people who survived? When we read about narrow escapes and building successful lives do we remember those who were broken and slaughtered? Do we see the luck of living as a sign of special intelligence or worth? Stories, including history, impose meaning on events. They create order from chaos by picking and choosing facts. If the very act of creating a story is life-affirming, how does reading a story about death affect our understanding of what happened?

The enormity of the destruction of millions of people and the death of centuries-old cultures is mind-numbing. Human beings are not built to comprehend the death of over one million Jewish children, but we can mourn the death of one young girl when she becomes alive to us by reading her diary. The books I want to discuss this week touch, usually very gently, on some of the questions I’ve raised.

Terrible Things

This week we observe Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Commemoration Day. We have a very impressive collection of books on the Holocaust in the Temple Israel Library. One of the first books I noticed when I fell in love the place was The Black Book of Polish Jewry: An Account of the Martyrdom of Polish Jewry under the Nazi Occupation by Jacob Apenszlak (New York: The American Federation for Polish Jews in Cooperation with the Association of Jewish Refugees and Immigrants from Poland; 1943). Notice the date!

In addition there are histories, biographies, novels, memoirs, analyses, studies, and more about life, politics, and more before, during and after the Holocaust for adults and for children. (To get some idea of what is available here, “search” the shelves by going to the library’s catalog, entering “Holocaust” as a Search term, scrolling down to a book that says “Hol” to the left of the title, and, after clicking on the title, click on the “browse shelf >>” shown in red. Clicking on the arrows in circles at the far right and left of the window that appears is almost like browsing the shelves, without having to read sideways. Popup windows even provide brief descriptions of the books.)

Being me, however, I want to mention a picture book called Terrible Things: An Allegory of the Holocaust by Eve Bunting (JPS, 1989) about rabbits; although the book doesn’t mention it, the story is really a retelling of the quote

First They came… – Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Several websites talks about the quotation, one of them is http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm. Since this book is about animals and not people, it can not only be read to young(ish) children, but also used as a basis for discussion with adults. And since it is not about a particular time or place, it can be used to think not only about the past but also how to prevent the past from repeating itself. Terrible Things is mentioned in a School Library Journal article, “Bearing Witness Through Picture Books“; it is an interesting choice since, at first blush, it is a completely unrealistic fantasy about bunnies. For more examples of books that create a safe distance through the use of fantasy and objects, see an annotated bibliography I wrote. 

I also recommend Rose Blanche, with illustrations by Roberto Innocenti (1985), a story about a German girl who notices what is going on around her. One picture that especially impressed me was of her walking over a bridge; reflected in the water you can barbed wire not visible otherwise.

There are many, many other books to read. I recommend Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust by Yaffa Eliach (Oxford University Press, 1982).

Obviously, my interests tend towards stories that try to comprehend the incomprehensible. For those of you who want more information and historical analysis, we have that too.

What books do you suggest?

The Secret Seder

The Secret Seder by Doreen Rappaport, illustrated by Caldecott Medal winner, Emily Arnold McCully, tells the story of a Jewish boy who attends a Seder with his father while his family pretend to be Catholic during World War II. This picture book is meant for children; although neighbors are taken away by the Nazis and the boy’s grandparents have disappeared, no character dies. But it is clear that the family’s lives are in danger and that Jews throughout Europe are being murdered. This night if different from all other nights; in other times, Jews were oppressed, but now we are being destroyed. Gathering for a Jewish ceremony is an act of defiance and, hence, of freedom; but this is not an upbeat, optimistic story. Difficult questions are asked and, as in the Haggadah, they are not answered. (Which is fine—asking is more important than answering.) This book is not a “God is good and how can we be good in this good world” Jewish children’s book. It is about how to maintain your integrity in dire straits. (The Hebrew word, Mitzrayim, usually translated as Egypt, also means straits.)

When I picked up The Secret Seder and read it, I thought about how my husband’s brother’s wife’s father, like the father in this book, hid in the mountains during World War II. He even wrote a book about it. When I finished the story and read the afterword (I also read forewords and even title page versos) I saw the name, Mednicki. I remembered that my sister-in-law’s father, Bernard Mednick, used that name. And I thought, “ooh, ooh! I know the father in this story!”

I gave the book to my sister-in-law, even though I assumed she was already familiar with the book. But, no! Even her brother, the boy in the story, had never heard of The Secret Seder. Through a colleague, he contacted the author, Doreen Rappaport, who was delighted to find him. She had long since given up hope of making contact.[1] While the boy in the story and my relative by marriage both attended Seders, the details in The Secret Seder were invented by Ms. Rappaport, who was compelled to tell this story but had no access to any actual participants.

The meeting of the author and her main character was written about in the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. [2] No mention of me was made. Without me they probably would not have met. Clearly I am the most important part of this story. This has made me think about how history is recorded. Not everything is included. When it is included, it is not always accurate. In the Exponent article, my sister-in-law read The Secret Seder and saw mention of her father’s book; her brother then emailed the author. Deleting me and a music teacher with email makes the article shorter without loss of relevant details for the points made. But a different story could be written based on a fuller accounting.