Tracing the absence of children’s voices – artefacts of children’s persecution under the National Socialist regime

ABSTRACT

Research on the history of childhood faces fundamental challenges in tracing children’s voices. Not yet skilled in forms of written self-documentation, children leave few documents behind. Other forms of expression (i.e. drawings) must thus be recognised as valuable historical sources and appropriate methods must be applied. These research challenges are aggravated in regard to persecuted children under the National Socialist regime. Few artefacts produced by children have been preserved, and in many cases nobody is left to tell the stories attached to them. The rare preserved artefacts thus paradoxically refer to the absence of children’s voices in history. Referring to the epistemological concept of the trace and a material culture perspective, I address some of these remarkable exceptions to discuss their potential and limitations as historical sources to research children’s lives. Two drawings by an 11-year-old girl from her lessons at the Private Jewish Elementary School in Düsseldorf serve as the starting point of a case study. Beginning with the materiality this study raises further questions about conditions of origin and preservation. Furthermore I discuss the researcher’s role in identifying artefacts as sources and creating meaning. In this way, I contribute to the methodological discussion of how research on children’s history can draw on artefacts like drawings produced by children.

KEYWORDS:

• History of childhood
• children’s voices
• National Socialist regime
• Holocaust
• children’s drawings
• material culture
• artefact analysis

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the staff of Düsseldorf Municipal Museum, the conservator and Düsseldorf City Archive as well as the Düsseldorf Memorial and Education Centre for their support. Many thanks also to Meike Sophia Baader, Jan-Henrik Friedrichs and the reviewers of this article for their careful comments and suggestions. I especially thank Emily Richards for the careful editing and Edel Sheridan-Quantz for her support in researching Edith R.’s biography.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ See the photo project on this subject by Tal Schwarz, “Lalki z Majdanka”, http://www.majdanek.eu/en/exhibitions/dolls_of_majdanek__photo_exhibition/17 (accessed 14 November 2020).

² Cf. Patricia Heberer, Children During the Holocaust (Lanham: Alta Mira Press, 2011), xiv; see Nicolas Stargardt, Witnesses of War: Children’s Lives under the Nazis (New York: Knopf, 2006); Wiebke Hiemesch, (Über-)Lebenserinnerungen. Kinder im Konzentrationslager Ravensbrück (Cologne: Böhlau, 2015).

³ See Sonja Knopp, Sebastian Schulze and Anne Eusterschulte, eds., Videographierte Zeugenschaft: Ein interdisziplinärer Dialog (Weilerswist: Velbrück, 2016).

⁴ See Leora Auslander and Tara Zahra, eds., Objects of War: The Material Culture of Conflict and Displacement (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018).

⁵ See for instance Thomas Geve, Es gibt hier keine Kinder. Auschwitz – Groß-Rosen – Buchenwald. Zeichnungen eines kindlichen Historikers, ed. Volkhard Knigge (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1997); Hana Volavkovà, ed., “ … I never saw another butterfly” … Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp 1942–1944 (New York: Schocken Books, 1993). See also Juri Meda, “Sgorbi e scarabocchi. Guida ragionata alle collezioni storiche di disegni infantile”, History of Education & Children’s Literature II, No. 1 (2007): 349–72.

⁶ See Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, eds., Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury, 2015); Chris Tilley and others, eds., Handbook of Material Culture (London: Sage, 2013). For memorial sites: Brandenburg Memorial Foundation and University of Applied Sciences Berlin Materials – Relationship – Gender: Artefacts from the Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen Concentration Camps, www.kz-artefakte.de; Yad Vashem. The Holocaust Memorial Center Gathering the Fragments – About the Project. A National Campaign to Rescue Personal Items from the Holocaust Period, www.yadvashem.org/gathering-fragments/about.html (accessed 14 November 2020).

⁷ In this article, the child artist is not identified by her full name. This is in compliance with the guidelines of the Municipal Museum Düsseldorf and was a condition of their permission to use the drawings.

⁸ See Klaus Arnold, “Quelle”, in Grundbegriffe der Geschichtswissenschaft, ed. Stefan Jordan (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2019), 251–4.

⁹ See Philipp Müller, “Understanding history: hermeneutics and source-criticism in historical scholarship”, in Reading Primary Sources. The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century History, ed. Miriam Dobson and Bejamin Ziemann (New York: Routledge, 2009), 21–36.

¹⁰ Willem Frijhoff, “Historian’s Discovery of Childhood”, Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 1 (2012), 11–29, 11.

¹¹ See the work of Egle Becchi, Il Bambini nella storia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994). For an overview see: Meike Sophia Baader, “Kindheit”, in Historische Bildungsforschung. Konzepte – Methoden – Forschungsfelder, ed. Gerhard Kluchert et al. (Bad Heilbrunn: utb), 149–60; Meike S. Baader, Florian Eßer and Wolfgang Schröer, eds., Kindheiten in der Moderne. Eine Geschichte der Sorge (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 2014); Paula S. Fass, ed., Encyclopaedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan Publishers, 2004); Peter N. Stearns, Childhood in World History (New York: Routledge, 2006).

¹² Cf. Peter N. Stearns, “Challenges in the History of Childhood”, Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 1, no. 1 (2008), 35–42.

¹³ See Imbke Behnken and Jürgen Zinnecker, eds., Kinder. Kindheit. Lebensgeschichte. Ein Handbuch (Seelze-Velber: Kallmeyer, 2001).

¹⁴ See Nell Musgove, Carla Pascoe Leahy and Kristine Moruzi, eds., Childen’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).

¹⁵ Cf. Meike S. Baader, “Tracing and Contextualising Childhood Agency and Generational Order from Historical and Systematic Perspectives” in Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies, ed. Florian Eßer et al. (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2016), 135–49.

¹⁶ Cf. Rodney G.S. Carter, “Of Things Said and Unsaid: Power, Archival Silences, and Power in Silence”, Archivaria. The Journal of the Association of Canadian Archivists 61 (2006): 215–33.

¹⁷ Cf. Ibid.; Aleida Assmann, Der lange Schatten der Vergangenheit. Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2006), 149–342.

¹⁸ Cf. Sharon Kangisser Cohen, Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Israel: Social Dynamics and Post-War Experiences, “Finding Their Voice” (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Hiemesch, (Über-)Lebenserinnerungen, 41–67.

¹⁹ Harry Hendrick, “The Child as Social Actor in Historical Sources: Problems of Identification and Interpretation”, in Research With Children. Perspectives and Practices. 2nd edition, ed. Pia Christensen and Allison James (New York: Routledge, 2010), 36–61.

²⁰ Cf. Spyros Spyrou, “The Limits of Children’s Voices: From Authenticity to Critical, Reflexive Representation”, Childhood 18, no. 2 (2011): 151–165; Sirkka Komulainen, “The Ambiguity of the Child’s ‘Voice’ in Social Research”, Childhood 14, no. 1 (2007): 11–28.

²¹ Mona Gleason, “Avoiding the agency trap: caveats for historians of children, youth, and education”, History of Education 45, no. 4 (2016): 446–59, 452.

²² See Florian Eßer et al., eds., Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies (Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2016); Allison Clark, Anne Trine Kjørholt and Peter Moss, eds. Beyond Listening: Children’s Perspectives on Early Childhood Services (Bristol: Policy Press, 2005).

²³ Carter, Things Unsaid, 223 (note that Carter is not explicitly discussing the Nazi regime).

²⁴ Sybille Krämer, Medium, Messenger, Transmission: An Approach to Media Philosophy (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), 174.

²⁵ Ibid., 178. This part is also based on Sybille Krämer, “Was also ist eine Spur? Und worin besteht ihre epistemologische Rolle? Eine Bestandsaufnahme”, in Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst, ed. Sybille Krämer, Werner Kogge and Gernot Grube (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2016), 11–36.

²⁶ Sybille Krämer, “Immanenz und Transzendenz der Spur. Über das epistemologische Doppelleben der Spur”, in Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst, ed. Sybille Krämer, Werner Kogge and Gernot Grube (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 2016), 155–81, 156 [translated into English by the author].

²⁷ See for example John H. Arnold, History. A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford Press, 2000), 61; Müller, Understanding history, 27 (Müller refers to Johann Gustav Droysen).

²⁸ See Doris Bachmann-Medick, Cultural Turns. Neuorientierungen in den Kulturwissenschaften (Reinbek b. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2018), 330-81.

²⁹ Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing. The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (New York Cornell University Press, 2001), 15. Burke here refers to the Dutch historian Gustaaf Renier.

³⁰ Ibid., 13.

³¹ See Martin Knauer and Jens Jäger, Bilder als historische Quellen? (Paderborn: Fink, 2009); Gerhard Paul, ed., Visual History. Ein Studienbuch (Göttingen: Vadenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006); for the History of Education see the work of Ulrike Pilarczyk: “Chalutzimç – Zionist Photography in Germany and Palestine in the1930s: A Comparative Analysis of Images”, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 64, no. 1 (2019): 91–114.

³² See Barbara Wittmann, Bedeutungsvolle Kritzeleien: Eine Kultur- und Wissenschaftsgeschichte der Kinderzeichnung, 1500–1950 (Zürich: Diaphanes, 2018).

³³ Cf. Sara Eldén, “Inviting the Messy: Drawing Methods and ‘Children’s Voices’”, Childhood 20, no. 1 (2012): 66–81.

³⁴ Claudia Aradau and Andrew Hill, “The Politics of Drawing: Children, Evidence, and the Dafur Conflict”, International Politics Sociology 7 (2013): 368–87, 369. See also: Mary Tomsic, Children’s Art: Histories and Cultural Meanings of Creative Expression by Displaced Children, in Children’s voices from the past, ed. Kristine Moruzi et al. (Cham: Springer International, 2019), 137–58; Alexis Artaud de La Ferrière, “The voice of the innocent: propaganda and childhood testimonies of war”, History of Education Journal of the History of Education Society 43, no. 1 (2014): 105–23; Margaret R. Higonnet, “Child Witnesses: The Case of World War I and Dafur”, PMLA 121, no. 5 (2006): 1565–76.

³⁵ See for instance Núria Padrós Tuneu et al., “The Spanish Civil War as Seen Through Children’s Drawings of the Time”, Paedagogica Historica 51, no. 3 (2015): 478–95; Sarah Kass, Kinderzeichnungen aus dem Ghetto Theresienstadt (1941–1945): Ein Beitrag zur Erinnerungs- und Vermächtniskultur (Marburg: Tectum Verlag, 2015); Christian Roith, “Trotz allem zeichnen sie: Der Spanische Bürgerkrieg mit Kinderaugen gesehen”, Paedagogica Historica 45, no. 1–2 (2009): 191–214; Nicholas Stargardt, “Children’s Art of the Holocaust”, Past and Present. A Journal of Historical Studies 161, no. 1 (1998): 191–235. See also the work of Juri Meda (unfortunately not yet available in English): “Los dibujos infantiles como fuentes históricas: perspetivas heurística y cuestiones metodológicas”, Revista Brasileira de História da Educação 14 (2014), no. 3 (36): 139–65.

³⁶ I have already outlined this shift from representation to artefact in: Wiebke Hiemesch, “Betrachtungen zu Kinderzeichnungen als Artefakte. Zeichnungen aus dem Projekt ‘Bridging the Gap’”, in Den Dingen auf die Spur kommen, ed. Wiebke Waburg and Petra Götte (Wiesbaden: VS Springer, 2021), 17–41. See also Wiebke Hiemesch, “Kinderkulturen und ihre Materialitäten Überlegungen zu Artefakten als Gegenstand von Forschung und historischem Lernen”, in Historisches Lernen und Materielle Kultur. Von Dingen und Objekten in der Geschichtsdidaktik, ed. Sebastian Barsch and Jörg van Norden (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2020), 91–110.

³⁷ See Manfred K.H. Eggert, “Artefakt”, in Handbuch Materielle Kultur. Bedeutungen, Konzepte, Disziplinen, ed. Stefanie Samida, Manfred Eggert and Hans Peter Hahn (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2014), 169–73; Ian Hodder, “The Entanglements of Humans and Things: A Long-Term View”, New Literary History 45, no. 1 (2014): 19–36; Chris Gosden and Yvonne Marshall, “The Cultural Biography of Objects”, World Archaeology 31, no. 2 (1999): 169–78; for the History of Education see Karin Priem, Gudrun M. König und Rita Casale, eds., Die Materialität der Erziehung. Kulturelle und soziale Aspekte pädagogischer Objekte (Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Beiheft; 58) (Weinheim: Beltz, 2012).

³⁸ Karen Harvey, “Introduction. Historians, Material Culture and Materiality”, in History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources, ed. Karen Harvey (London: Routledge, 2009), 2–3.

³⁹ See Hans Peter Hahn, Vom Eigensinn der Dinge. Für eine neue Perspektive auf die Welt des Materiellen (Berlin: Neofelis 2015).

⁴⁰ Krämer, Medium, 174.

⁴¹ Cf. Ibid., 179–82; cf. Emmanuel Lévinas, Die Spur des Anderen (Munich: Alber, 2017), 209–35.

⁴² Krämer, Medium, 177.

⁴³ See: Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, “Testimonial Objetcs: Memory, Gender, and Transmission”, in Poetics Today 27, no. 2 (2006): 353–83.

⁴⁴ Cf. Benjamin Allgaier et. al., “Gedächtnis – Materialität – Schrift. Ein erinnerungskulturelles Modell zur Analyse schrifttragender Artefakte”, Saeculum 69, no. 2 (2019): 181–244.

⁴⁵ Cf. Ralph Buchhorst, “Ding und Gedenken. Materialität und Authentizität in Erinnerungskulturen”, in Materialität. Herausforderungen für Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Herbert Kalthoff, Torsten Cress and Thobias Röhl (Paderborn: Fink, 2016), 153–69, 167.

⁴⁶ Cf. Allgaier et al., Gedächtnis, 188.

⁴⁷ Cf. Sybil Milton, ed., The Art of Jewish Children. Germany 1936–1941 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1989).

⁴⁸ Interview with a staff member, Düsseldorf Municipal Museum, 24 July 2020.

⁴⁹ Cf. Milton, Art of Jewish Children, figs. 65 and 67.

⁵⁰ Cf. ibid., figs. 91 and 92.

⁵¹ Cf. Annette Baumeister, “Dreams, Hopes and Realities”, in Milton, Art of Jewish Children, 71–84.

⁵² Cf. Milton, Art of Jewish Children, fig. 56.

⁵³ Request to Düsseldorf Memorial and Education Centre and Yad Vashem “The Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names” (without result), July 2020.

⁵⁴ See references in footnote 36 and 37; Thomas Meier et al, eds., Materiale Textkulturen. Konzepte – Materialien – Praktiken (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015).

⁵⁵ Cf. Stadtmuseum (2012): Kinderzeichnungen Restaurierung1.wmv [YouTube], published 1 February 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAaDqx_DazI (00:04:40) (last accessed 14 November 2020).

⁵⁶ These categories are close to approaches in visual history (see footnote 31), such as the analysis of the iconographic, the conditions of creation, modes of use and their reception. However, the focus here is less on the image itself and more on its material condition as well as signs of use.

⁵⁷ In compliance with Düsseldorf Municipal Museum’s conditions of use, I have obscured the artist’s last name with a superimposed grey box.

⁵⁸ Cf. the (unpublished) notes by the conservator.

⁵⁹ Interview with staff member of Düsseldorf Municipal Museum, 24 July 2020.

⁶⁰ Cf. Mieke Monjau, “Memories of Julo Levin and Franz Monjau and the Story of the Students’ Drawings”, in Milton, Art of Jewish Children, 26–36, 33.

⁶¹ Cf. Sybil Milton, “Julo Levin and his Düsseldorfer Circle of Friends”, in Milton, Art of Jewish Children, 37–49; see Annette Baumeister, ed., Julo Levin 1901–1943. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis (Cologne: Wienand, 2001).

⁶² See on the history of children’s drawings in culture and knowledge Wittmann, Bedeutungsvolle Kritzeleien, 65–116 and 141–86; Corrado Ricci, L’arte dei bambini (trans. into German in 1906 as Kinderkunst) (Bologna: N. Zanichelli, 1886).

⁶³ Cf. Siegrid Kleinbongartz, “Biographischer Abriss”, in Julo Levin 1901–1943. Monographie und Werkverzeichnis, ed. Annette Baumeister (Cologne: Wienand, 2001) 8–33, 20 f; see Adelheid Sievert-Staudte, “Kind und Kunst. Die Kinderzeichnung und die Kunst im 20. Jahrhundert”, in Perspektiven auf Kinder und Kindheit, ed. Gerold Scholz and Alexander Ruhl (Wiesbaden: VS Springer, 2001), 115–41.

⁶⁴ Cf. Wittmann, Bedeutungsvolle Kritzeleien, 171–2.

⁶⁵ Cited in Barbara Suchy, “‘There is no school anymore!’ The History of the Private Jewish Elementary School in Düsseldorf, 1935–142”, in Milton, Art of Jewish Children, 50–70, 61.

⁶⁶ Cf. Suchy, Private Jewish Elementary School, 61; Kleinbongartz, Biographischer Abriss, 22.

⁶⁷ Cf. Wittmann, Bedeutungsvolle Kritzeleien, 145.

⁶⁸ Cf. Kleinbongartz, Biographischer Abriss, 21.

⁶⁹ Cf. ibid.

⁷⁰ See: Teacher Jule Kleinmann in Classroom, GED-31-024-200.091_1, Collection Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf..

⁷¹ Gesetz gegen die Überfüllung deutscher Schulen und Hochschulen vom 25. April 1933, Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt 1933 (RGBI), Part 1, 225.

⁷² Cf. Suchy, Private Jewish School, 51.

⁷³ Cf. ibid., 52, 53; see Gisela Miller-Kipp, Zwischen Kaiserbild und Palästinakarte: Die jüdische Volksschule im Regierungsbezirk Düsseldorf (1815–1945). Archive, Dokumente und Geschichte (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010).

⁷⁴ Cf. Miller-Kipp, Kaiserbild und Palästinakarte, 81.

⁷⁵ Cf. Saul Friedländer and Orna Kenan, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. 1933–1945 (shortened edition) (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 2010), 143.

⁷⁶ See for the pupils numbers: Miller-Kipp, Kaiserbild und Palästinakarte, 81, 83.

⁷⁷ Cf. Suchy, Private Jewish School, 67; Miller-Kipp, Kaiserbild und Palästinakarte, 83.

⁷⁸ Suchy, Private Jewish School, 53.

⁷⁹ Cf. ibid., 53.

⁸⁰ Cf. ibid., 53, 59–61, Miller-Kipp, Kaiserbild und Palästinakarte, 87–8.

⁸¹ Kurt Bergel cited from the English translation in Suchy, Private Jewish School, 57.

⁸² Baumeister, Dreams, Hopes and Realities, 78.

⁸³ In Düsseldorf, the first major deportations to Lodz, Minsk and Riga took place from October 1941; others followed in 1942 to Sobibor, Theresienstadt and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Cf. Bastian Fleermann and Hildegard Jakobs, Düsseldorfer Deportationen. Massenverschleppungen von 1933 bis zur Befreiung 1945 (Düsseldorf: Droste, 2015).

⁸⁴ Cf. Suchy, Private Jewish School, 67–8.

⁸⁵ Edith R., front centre (fourth from right), GED-31-542-300.023_1, Collection Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Düsseldorf ©Mahn- und Gedenkstaettedüsseldorf. The photograph was kept by one of the girls pictured and later given to the Düsseldorf Memorial and Education Centre. Two other girls from the photograph are known to the memorial by name.

⁸⁶ Meldekarten der Familie R., film nos. 7-4-3-258_1324 and 1330, Düsseldorf City Archive.

⁸⁷ See Wolfgang Benz, Claudia Curio and Andrea Hammel, eds., Die Kindertransporte 1938/39 (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 2003); Rebekka Göpfert, Der Jüdische Kindertransport von Deutschland nach England 1938/39 (Frankfurt/M.: Campus, 1999).

⁸⁸ Cf. Ruth David, Child of our time. A young girl’s flight from the Holocaust (London: IB Tauris, 2003), 73, 98–9.

⁸⁹ Gedenkbuch “Opfer der Verfolgung der Juden unter der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft in Deutschland 1933–1945”, Bundesarchiv.

⁹⁰ Suchy, Private Jewish School, 68.

⁹¹ Cf. Monjau, Memories of Julo Levin, 33.

⁹² Cf. ibid., 33–5.

⁹³ Cf. interview with a staff member of Düsseldorf Municipal Museum, 24 July 2020.

⁹⁴ See The Arts Center, Haifa Museum of Art: https://www.hma.org.il/eng/Exhibitions/5355/Once_upon_a_time (accessed 4 January 2022).

⁹⁵ Cf. Suchy, Private Jewish School, 50–1.

⁹⁶ Cf. interview with a staff member of Düsseldorf Municipal Museum, 24 July 2020.

⁹⁷ Higonnet, Child Witnesses, 1575.

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Wiebke Hiemesch

Wiebke Hiemesch is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of General Education at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Her research deals with the history of children and childhood. Her latest work focuses on the material culture of children including children’s drawings. Currently she is working with Professor Meike S. Baader in the DFG-funded project “Paradoxical Education – Resistance – Surviving. Secret teaching and children’s drawings in the Ravensbrück Women’s Concentration Camp” (project no. 416725854).