Jewish Childhood in Kraków

Winner of the 2020 Ernst Fraenkel Prize from the Wiener Holocaust Library​Jewish Childhood in Kraków is the first book to tell the history of Kraków in the second World War through the lens of Jewish children’s experiences. Here, children assume center stage as historical actors whose recollections and experiences deserve to be told, analyzed, and treated seriously.
Sliwa scours archives to tell their story, gleaning evidence from the records of the German authorities, Polish neighbors, Jewish community and family, and the children themselves to explore the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland and in Kraków in particular. A microhistory of a place, a people, and daily life, this book plumbs the decisions and behaviors of ordinary people in extraordinary times.
Offering a window onto human relations and ethnic tensions in times of rampant violence, Jewish Childhood in Kraków is an effort both to understand the past and to reflect on the position of young people during humanitarian crises.

Jewish Childhood in Kraków plumbs the decisions and behaviors of ordinary people in extraordinary times. Author Joanna Sliwa illuminates the complex relations between Jews and non-Jews in response to the Holocaust in Kraków to understand the past and to reflect on the experiences of young people during humanitarian crises.

JOANNA SLIWA is a historian at the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) in New York City.
 

Note on Terminology
Introduction
1 Navigating Shifts in the City
2 Adapting to Life inside the Ghetto
3 Clandestine Activities
4 Child Welfare
5 Concealed Presence in the Camp
6 Survival through Hiding and Flight
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations Used in Notes
Notes
Bibliography
Index

"A well-researched book. An important addition to Holocaust literature."

:This well researched book on the history of Jewish Childhood in Kraków will become a standard work on the subject, inviting other scholars to investigate Jewish childhood in other ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe.:

"Joanna Sliwa offers a nuanced and compelling picture of what it meant to grow up Jewish under the German occupation of Kraków, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Poland. By giving voice to Jewish children and their fears, heartbreaks, loss, and survival, she allows readers to learn of children’s vulnerability and resilience, agency and helplessness firsthand. These voices will become central to the ways we think about Jewish children’s experiences during the Holocaust."

"Sliwa’s book is an essential contribution to Holocaust scholarship, but even more significantly, she offers us the opportunity to learn about children’s experiences, which often are absent from Holocaust literature. Their concealed presence, which Sliwa spends so much time discussing, is precisely what makes it difficult to tell their stories. But Sliwa’s persistence and ability to dig through a multitude of sources to find even the smallest pieces of information resulted in this remarkable account that will hopefully encourage future scholars to explore the experiences of children in other parts of Poland and Europe."