Central Europe Yearbook

Acts of Survival: Children’s Writings From the Sajmiste Concentration Camp

Sorcha Deheer

University of Lethbridge

Abstract

This paper aims to understand how children and youth aid in the survival of their social environment amid periods of severe systemic oppression by problematizing children as an ideological concept. Conventional perceptions of childhood consign children to passive roles as victims and symbols. An analysis of children’s writings during the Holocaust in former Yugoslavia reveals that children are active participants in the formation of the social world and retain a sense of agency in spaces that afford them little. Through their diaries, letters, and memoirs young people produce works of radical nonconformity that aided in their individual and social survival. As scholarship on the Holocaust and genocide progresses, this contribution shouldn't be overlooked.