‘Jewish Childhood in Eastern Europe’ is an examination of the history of children, childhood, and child-rearing in Jewish Eastern Europe. The contributors, drawn from Israel, Poland, western Europe, and North America, have endeavoured throughout to let children and teenagers speak for themselves and, while aware of the limits of their freedom of action, to assess their degree of agency. At the same time, close attention has been paid to ideas and ideals about Jewish children and Jewish childhood expressed by those with a degree of power over these children’s lives: not only their parents, but religious and communal leaders, educators and political activists invested in mobilizing the youth. Edited by Natalia Aleksiun, Harry Rich Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida, François Guesnet, Professor in Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London, and Antony Polonsky, Chief Historian of the Global Educational Outreach Program at the Polin Museum.
Among the topics we have investigated are conceptions of childhood and family in Jewish Eastern Europe, changes in the medical treatment of children, the educational experience of Jewish children and children and trauma from 1914 to 1947. Gershon Hundert has argued that studying the experience of children and the attitudes towards coming of age offers an important corrective to the way we think of the Jewish past. This volume proves the potential of this lens for such topics as local history, the history of education, and charitable institutions, the history of medicine, emotions, gender history and Polish-Jewish relations to name just a few.
Natalia Aleksiun, François Guesnet, Antony Polonsky: Introduction 1
Gadi Sagiv: Children and Childhood in Hasidic Courts before 1939 17
Rotem Preger-Wagner: Representations of Boyhood in Nineteenth-Century Hebrew Literature 40
Yehoshua Ecker: The Beautiful Manor House: Glimpses of Jewish Childhood in the Galician Countryside 63
Sean Martin: Advocacy and Practice in CENTOS Journals 87
The Medical Treatment of Children
Marek Tuszewicki: The Child in Traditional Jewish Medicine around 1900 102
Zvi Eckstein, Anat Vaturi: Newborn Care and Survival among Jews in Early Modern Poland 120
Ekaterina Oleshkevich: Who Nursed the Jewish Babies? Wet-Nursing among Jews in the Late Russian Empire 138
Rakefet Zalashik: TOZ Summer Camps: Modern Welfare for Weak and Exhausted Jewish Children in Poland 161
The Educational Experience
David Assaf, Yael Darr: What Kind of Self Can a Pupil’s Letter Reveal? The Tarbut School in Nowy Dwór, 1934–1935 181
Agnieszka Wierzcholska: State Schools as Polish–Jewish Contact Zones: The Case of Tarnów 200
Anna Landau-Czajka: Working Children and young People as Seen by Contributors to Mały Przegląd 221
Ula Madej-Krupitski: Through Their Own Eyes: Jewish youngsters Describe Their Holidays in Interwar Poland 243
Natalia Aleksiun: Autograph Books of Polish Jewish Schoolgirls as Historical Documents 269
Sarah Ellen Zarrow: From Relief to Emancipation: Cecylia Klaftenowa’s vision for Jewish Girls in Interwar Lwów 293
Children and Trauma, 1914-1947
Jan Rybak: Zionist Care and Education for Galician Refugee Children in Austria during the First World War 311
Joanna Śliwa: Jewish Children Seeking Help from Catholic Institutions in Krak.w during the Holocaust 329
Sarah A. Cramsey: ‘It was easier with a child than without’: Creating and Caring for Polish Jewish Families in the Wartime Soviet Union, 1939–1946 344
Anna Shternshis: Voices of Soviet Jewish Children Documenting the Second World War 367
Joanna Michlic: Jewish Child Survivors in the Aftermath of the Holocaust 392
Boaz Cohen: The Rehabilitation of Jewish Child Holocaust Survivors, Poland, 1944–1947 401
Childhood in Post-1945 Poland
Kamil Kijek: Beyond Post-Holocaust Trauma: Polish Jewish Childhood in Dzierżoni.w, Lower Silesia, 1945–1950 420
Łukasz Bertram: Blurred Spots of Revolution: Polish Communists of Jewish Origin and Their Early Political Socialization 450