Through the Eyes of Jewish Child Survivors from Poland: Family, War, Identity, and Nationhood

Through the Eyes of Jewish Child Survivors from Poland offers an intimate social history of Jewish childhood during and after the Holocaust. Centered on children from German-occupied Poland but informed by experiences across Nazi-occupied Europe, the book highlights the child’s own perspective to illuminate rescue, survival, and relationships with adults under the Nazi occupation. In the first part, Joanna Beata Michlic examines children’s wartime experiences, showing how agency, gender, class, and religious or social background shaped their chances of survival. The second part traces the complex efforts of these young survivors to reclaim both childhood and Jewish identity, revealing the gap between their hopes and the actual opportunities of the immediate postwar period.

Drawing on children’s diaries, letters, testimonies, and memoirs, Michlic illuminates how children experienced and remembered trauma: the destruction of their families, the loss of their prewar worlds, and the struggle to adapt to a new reality, challenging myths that sentimentalize the children’s endurance and portray the Holocaust as neatly concluded.  This powerful study shows why the history of Holocaust child survivors remains a vital resource for understanding vulnerability, agency, and the enduring impact of war and genocide.