Description

This collection presents an arc of historical experience of Jewish child and teen life during the Shoah. Across Central and Eastern Europe, the young and hunted in these stories hide in forests; survive in ghettoes and camps; assume new identities under the protection of Righteous Among the Nations. With the exception of two historical fiction narratives, the stories were reconstructed from the oral testimonies of child and teen survivors, many of whom settled in Toronto. As a daughter of two child survivors, Carol Lipszyc has also included stories of her parents, natives of Belarus and Lublin, Poland. The stories in this collection depict children as creative, resilient, aged-before their time, as they adapt to their unconscionable reality. The historical experience in this collection provides a wide spectrum of what a race of children endured; the few that attested to that experience in this collection lend voice, detail and insight to a massive, unfathomable crime.