Child hero in central European literatures with the theme of war and the Shoah

Abstract

The article deals with selected works of literature for children and youth of Czech, Slovak and Polish provenance, in which the authors focused on the period of the World War II and the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. It will specifically focus on the work of the Slovak author of Jewish origin writing in Czech Ladislav Grosman The Devil's Own Luck (Z pekla štěstí) and the diary of the Polish Jewish boy The Diary of David Rubinowicz (Dávidkov denník) with the issue of the Shoah, and works by Slovak authors Juraj Špitzer White Clouds (Biele oblaky) with the theme of the Slovak National Uprising and Vincent Šikula The Lilies of Erika (Erikine ľalie), in which he portrayed the Holocaust in Slovakia. The article deals mainly with two aspects of these works, namely the symbolism of childhood innocence, which stands in sharp contrast to the machinery of war murder and death of Jews in concentration camps, and the motif of the loss of childhood under the influence of horrors the main characters experienced.

Keywords

• children’s and youth literature
• Holocaust
• World War II.
• Slovak National Uprising