3 results for "Jewish History"

A past without shadow: constructing the past in German books for children

Shavit, Zohar
A Past Without Shadow examines 50 years of German children's books in which the darkest horrors of the Third Reich have routinely remained hidden. The horrors of the Third Reich are systematically screened and filtered, allowing the darker, bleaker parts of history to escape illumination. Here Zohar Shavit explores 345 German books for children describing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and finds a shocking distortion of the past: a recurrent narrative which suggests that the Germans themselves had no hand in the suffering inflicted on the Jews. These books, Shavit argues, have created the false historical lesson that the real victims of Hitler's crimes were the German people themselves. First published to great acclaim in Hebrew and now available in English, this book is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about German children's literature and its responsibility to past and future.
Routledge 2005 353 pages

From East End to Land's End: the evacuation of Jews' Free School, London, to Mousehole in Cornwall during World War Two

Soyinka, Susan
Told for the first time, this is a unique and heart-warming tale of World War Two Jewish evacuees sent to Mousehole, Cornwall from London's East End. In a time of conflict and atrocities, this story of mutual acceptance and integration is an inspiration to modern society. From East End to Land's End is the heart-warming and inspiring story of the World War Two evacuation of Jews' Free School (JFS) in the East End of London to Mousehole, a remote fishing village on the tip of Cornwall. In June 1940, around 100 JFS children and 5 of their teachers, together with thousands of other London evacuees, embarked on the lengthy and exhausting train journey from Paddington to Penzance. The JFS group was bussed to Mousehole, where the children were billeted with the villagers, and Jews' Free School, Mousehole, was established in the premises of Mousehole School. Arrangements were made for synagogue services to be held in the church hall of a nearby village, while many of the evacuees also attended chapel with their foster families, most of whom were strong Methodists. Remarkably, most of the evacuees quickly integrated into village life, and were accepted by the villagers as their own
DB 2010 281 pages

Facing the past: looking back at refugee childhood in New Zealand, 1940s-1960s

Beaglehole, Ann
Focuses on the lives of the children of wartime immigrants, whose perceptions and experiences of both the old and the new world were very different from their parents'. At school, in the neighbourhood, or on the sportsfield, many of them were painfully aware of being 'outsiders' in a society unused to cultural diversity. Yet their need to belong was frequently complicated by loyalty to the very different ideals and expectations of their parents. Based on a wide range of interviews as well as documentary evidence from second-generation refugees worldwide, this is an account of the lives of immigrant children growing up in the decades between the 1940s and the 1960s.
Allen & Unwin 1990 209 pages