Traumatic Impact of the Holocaust on Adolescent Behavior

The following blog references Alexander Donat’s memoir, The Holocaust Kingdom, the 1999 edition, originally written in 1963.

Replication of a Child’s Drawing of KL Birkenau (Auschwitz II).

When visiting the Auschwitz I Museum, I took interest in a room filled with children’s drawings from the war years. The room was part of the Shoah exhibit in Block 27. The above drawing displays the railroad tracks leading into the entrance of Auschwitz II. The exhibit contained dozens of reproduced drawings found in concentration camps, orphanages, and hiding places. Although many sketches revealed the ordinary imaginations of youth such as family, animals, and flowers, a large portion revealed a child’s experience of life in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Children commonly reflect their surroundings and experiences of their world, yet looking back on this piece of history through the eyes of a child is particularly jarring. This insight into a child’s mind is also seen in The Holocaust Kingdom through Alexander Donat’s (Michael Berg) son William (Wlodek). Donat would come home from work in the ghetto to Wlodek playing make-believe games with another child. He recalls his “son was screaming, 'Juden raus! Allen Juden runter!' They were playing the resettlement game” (Donat 90). These harsh German words translating to ‘Jews out! All Jews down!’ were being shouted from the mouth of a four-and-a-half-year-old Jewish boy. Without a full comprehension of the world around him, the impressionable child was left with the dangerous combination of the toxicity in these words and the imagination his age brings.

Replication of a Child’s Drawing of a Threatening Soldier.

The drawing shows a woman. trapped by trees, vulnerable to the will of a soldier with a weapon. This portrayal was a common occurrence to war time activity, potentially witnessed by the drawing’s artist. The violence seen in this image was clearly felt by the child as they later drew it. Similar to Wlodek’s make-believe game, the drawing served as an outlet for what the child experienced. The violence seen by Wlodek caused him to have inclinations towards pretending to act out the anger, even just for a game. Donat was concerned, as many parents would be, by the rise in violent behavior he saw in his child.

The subjects of these drawings and games, though distressing to any individual, could be especially traumatic to the vulnerable mind of a child. Without the proper development to process the events happening before one’s eyes, the innocence of the child is broken. Beyond the shift in childhood drawings and games, the child’s psyche becomes darker, angrier. Their innocence is taken, forcing them to comprehend the real world far too early.

What moved me about this exhibit was its initial simplicity and brightness. I walked into a room of four white walls filled only with pencil sketches. It is immediately obvious that these pictures were made by children, creating an almost lighthearted sensation as I remember the countless scribbles that represented my own childhood experience. Only upon a closer look did I realize the material that tormented these bright walls. My emotions changed in conjunction to my realization of the innocence of these poor child victims. Age does not create security from the Holocaust’s damaging impact. This truth was instilled in me as I mourned for the loss of these young lives over their own form of testimonials to the horrors endured by so many.