Pothiti Hantzaroula - Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity

A historical investigation of childrens memory of the Holocaust in Greece illustrates that age, generation and geographical background shaped postwar Jewish identities. The examination of childrens narratives deposited in the era of digital archives enables an understanding of the age-specific construction of the memory of genocide, which shakes established assumptions about the memory of the Holocaust.

In the context of a global Holocaust memory established through testimony archives, the present research constructs a genealogy of the testimonial culture in Greece by framing the rich source of written and oral testimonies in the political discourses and public memory of the aftermath of the Second World War. The testimonies of former hidden children and child survivors of concentration camps illuminate the questions that haunted postwar attempts to reconstruct communities, related to the specific evolution of genocide in Greece and to the rising anti-Semitism of postwar Greece.

As an oral history of child survivors of the Holocaust, the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of the history of childhood, Jewish studies, memory studies and Holocaust and genocide studies.

Pothiti Hantzaroula is Assistant Professor of Historical Anthropology in the Department of Social Anthropology and History at the University of the Aegean (Mytilene, Greece). Her fields of research include oral history, the history and historiography of gender and sexuality, the memory and history of the Second World War and the history of emotions.

The Second World War remains today the most seismic political event of the past hundred years, an unimaginable upheaval that impacted upon every country on earth and is fully ingrained in the consciousness of the worlds citizens. Traditional narratives of the conflict are entrenched to such a degree that new research takes on an ever important role in helping us make sense of World War II. Aiming to bring to light the results of new archival research and exploring notions of memory, propaganda, genocide, empire and culture, Routledge Studies in Second World War History sheds new light on the events and legacy of global war.

Recent titles in this series:

Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece

Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity

Pothiti Hantzaroula

Advancing Holocaust Studies

Edited and introduced by Carol Rittner and John K. Roth

Staging the Third Reich

Anson Rabinbach

Edited by Stefanos Geroulanos and Dagmar Herzog

The Polish Wild West

Forced Migration and Cultural Appropriation in the Polish-German

Borderlands, 19451948

Beata Halicka

Food in Wartime Britain

Testimonies from the Kitchen Front (19391945)

Natacha Chevalier

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Studies-in-Second-World-War-History/book-series/WWII

First published 2021

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2021 Pothiti Hantzaroula

The right of Pothiti Hantzaroula to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hantzaroula, Pothiti, author.

Title: Child survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: memory, testimony and
subjectivity / Pothiti Hantzaroula.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge studies in Second World War history | Includes
bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020027370 (print) | LCCN 2020027371 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138579491 (hbk) | ISBN 9780429507984 (ebk)

Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust survivorsGreece. | Jewish children in the
HolocaustGreece. | Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)Greece. | World
War, 19391945AtrocitiesGreece. | Collective memoryGreece. |
JewsIdentity. | GreeceHistoryOccupation, 19411944.

Classification: LCC DS135.G7 H36 2021 (print) | LCC DS135.G7
(ebook) | DDC 940.53/1808309495dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027370

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027371

ISBN: 978-1-138-57949-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-429-50798-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

First comes the debt to the women and men the subjects of the book who showed me the way to write this book. As with every book, it is a path to self-understanding. Flora Mihael, survivor of the Bergen Belsen camp, told me, during our conversation, that she started fervently to read about the Holocaust in order to respond to the questions her children posed: I wanted to understand first of all who I am. If in this search, I managed to throw light at the minds of the former children, I will feel proud. The names of the subjects will be found in the book, following their consent. It was an honour to be trusted with an interview. Pavlina (Palomba) Matathia, Rina Koen and Ketty Samuel trusted me and introduced me to former child survivors, giving an impetus to my research, which would not have been possible without their help. I am deeply indebted to Efi Avdela for granting permission, as a coordinator, to use the interviews I conducted in the framework of the research project Forms of Public Sociality in 20th Century Urban Greece: Associations, Networks of Social Intervention and Collective Subjectivities (University of Crete) under Thalis: 10.74.11.03. Reinforcement of Interdisciplinary and Interinstitutional Research and Innovation for priority axe 10, NSRF. I would like to thank Riki Van Boeschoten, initiator and former director of the Audio-Visual Archive of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology, University of Thessaly), for giving me permission to use the interviews of the archive.

My gratitude is addressed to Robert Langham, the History Research Senior Publisher for Routledge. His patience and trust gave me great encouragement to proceed with the writing. I felt from the start that my relationship to the publishing house is personal and understanding.

To Rika Benveniste I owe my greatest gratitude. Her unconditional support, friendship and patience enabled my understanding of the generation of children who suffered from the German persecution. As a coordinator of the project From Between the Wars to Reconstruction (19301960). The Experience of the Jews of Greece in Audio-Visual Testimony, funded by the John S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation, she shared her expertise and supported my research choices. She also generously shared valuable advice and suggestions at every stage of the writing. Dimitra Labropoulou with her friendship and deep knowledge has always provided support and advice. Needless to say, the mistakes are all mine.