Shoah-Themed Literature and Art as a Starting Point for Building Children ́s Identity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21409264 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Milan Mašát (0000-0001-8602-3059, Palacký University Olomouc, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-05 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Children s Literature in Education (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0045-6713 • E-ISSN: 1573-1693 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10583-025-09636-9 |
| OpenAlex | W4414833994 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 24 |
This paper examines how authentic works created by boys imprisoned in the Terezín ghetto can function as didactic resources for introducing primary school pupils to the Shoah. Using narrative content analysis and visual interpretation, it focuses on three contributions to the secret magazine Vedem : Jiří Bruml’s short story Fate , Petr Ginz’s poem The Fool , and Ginz’s drawing Moon Landscape . Fate deploys humour and satire to expose the collapse of social hierarchies and to reflect everyday struggles for survival; The Fool traces a shift in values as youthful ideals give way to the pragmatics of endurance, articulated through irony and absurd imagery; Moon Landscape , though outwardly science-fictional, fuses imaginative escape with coded testimony to fear and insecurity. Taken together, these testimonies show how children’s cultural production mediated trauma, resilience, and identity formation. When ethically and age-appropriately scaffolded—through guided discussion, creative writing, art-based tasks, and exploration of the digitized Vedem archive—such materials help pupils form personal connections to historical peers while cultivating empathy, critical reflection, and ethical awareness. The study thus argues that children’s literature and art from Terezín serve not only as historical documentation but also as potent tools for nurturing identity, resilience, and civic responsibility in contemporary classrooms
Content (measure theory) · Documentation · Identity (music) · Irony · Narrative · Poetry · Point (geometry) · Pragmatics · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · German History and Society · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration
The Cambridge Guide to Jewish History, Religion, and Culture
Disaster Drawn
The Oxford Handbook of World War II
«Fuir la Shoah. Ma rencontre avec des témoins». Une application numérique pour enseigner la Shoah avec des témoignages audiovisuels
Hypoverbalisation as a Principle of Meaning Construction in Short Literary Texts
Child Survivors
Artists Behind Barbed Wire
Performing captivity, performing escape
Surviving Art from Terezín
A generation of resistance
O campo de Terezin
| Highly cited | No |
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