Jewish Childhood in Kraków: A Microhistory of the Holocaust

"A well-researched book. An important addition to Holocaust literature."

Jan T. Gross, author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

:This well researched book on the history of Jewish Childhood in Kraków will become a standard work on the subject, inviting other scholars to investigate Jewish childhood in other ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe.:

Joanna Beata Michlic, author of Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present

"Joanna Sliwa offers a nuanced and compelling picture of what it meant to grow up Jewish under the German occupation of Kraków, one of the oldest Jewish communities in Poland. By giving voice to Jewish children and their fears, heartbreaks, loss, and survival, she allows readers to learn of children's vulnerability and resilience, agency and helplessness firsthand. These voices will become central to the ways we think about Jewish children's experiences during the Holocaust."

Natalia Aleksiun, author of Conscious History: Polish Jewish Historians before the Holocaust

"Sliwa's book is an essential contribution to Holocaust scholarship, but even more significantly, she offers us the opportunity to learn about children's experiences, which often are absent from Holocaust literature. Their concealed presence, which Sliwa spends so much time discussing, is precisely what makes it difficult to tell their stories. But Sliwa's persistence and ability to dig through a multitude of sources to find even the smallest pieces of information resulted in this remarkable account that will hopefully encourage future scholars to explore the experiences of children in other parts of Poland and Europe."

Rachel Rothstein, H-Poland