Review: Birgit Schreiber (2006). Versteckt. Jüdische Kinder im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland und ihr Leben danach [Hidden. Jewish Children in National Socialist Germany and Their Lives Afterwards]

Abstract

In her empirical study, Hidden. Jewish children in National Socialist Germany and their lives afterwards, Birgit SCHREIBER analyses five autobiographical interviews. She presents different perspectives to the reader: a) the contemporary, political dimension of the topic concerning German history and recollection, b) the (problematic) structures of communication between German Jews and non-Jewish Germans (keywords: "crisis of witnesses"), c) a narrative prospect and analysis, and d) a psychoanalytic access of the life stories of traumatized people. Its special potentials—partly innovation and, at the same time, its soft spots—lie in these "multidimensional prospects" of the study. On the one hand, it seems to be unclear where to put the emphasis; is it an Oral-History study, a structural narration, mainly autobiographical work or psychoanalytically substantiated research? On the other hand, the different perspectives allow a sensitive way of dealing with specific forms of communication and meeting and providing a special, empathetic way of analyzing data. Above all, this "mixture" offers the possibility of a wide discussion of basic topics within qualitative research—especially the relation between science and therapy, ethics in research and the construction of an empirically grounded typology. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0703166

Keywords

• biographical research
• communication between German Jews and non-Jewish Germans in the Federal Republic of Germany
• hidden Jewish children
• National Socialist Germany fascism
• narrative-structural and psychoanalytic reconstructions
• survivors of the Holoc