ABSTRACT After the liberation of the camps the vast numbers of orphaned and refugee children emerged from camps, hiding places, forests where they had somehow managed to survive against all odds and under miserable circumstances, taking aid workers by surprise. Of the estimated 175,000 Jewish children who survived the Holocaust, a few thousand found their way to Jewish children’s homes scattered throughout Europe.
Recently, a wealth of scholarship has drawn attention to rescue operations like the Kindertransport as well as child survivors of the Holocaust. By drawing on child survivor stories told in their own voices, they give them agency and bring them from the silent margins to the center of Holocaust and post-Holocaust history. Some of these scholars have discussed post-Holocaust children’s homes, but most studies have focused on a single home or national setting.
Using personal testimonies, memoirs and other primary sources focusing the lives of caregivers and their work in a few homes in England, France, and Germany in the immediate post-Holocaust period, this article identifies practices that aided child survivors’ recovery from traumatic experiences. By considering these homes together, similarities and differences in caregiving practices are identified, suggesting that exceptional caregivers made vital contributions to reestablishing Jewish identities and communities after the Holocaust.
issue 29 / n.1 (2026)
