1. The Children’s Books
Birds’ land
Yet another book about the Holocaust?!
The context
The selection
Reception
The books
The trials of writing
Why did they write?
Tombs made of words
Traces of a lost world
The workings of memory
Memories engraved in the body
Writing
Life and literature
Creating distance
The regard of the children
Through their eyes
Sensory world
Reality of uncertain contours
Magical worldview
Interpreting the world
Knowing without knowing

2. Persecution
Exclusion
Everyday racism
Social inequalities
The road to mass murder
Facing persecution: denial
Families in the eye of the storm
Conflicts
When families fail
Children becoming parents
Stolen childhood
Identity
Hiding identities
God—Faithlessness
Sacrifice
Visions of apocalypse
Hostile nature
Stranger to oneself
Space and time out of joint
Final deprivation

3. Coping: Refuges and Escape Routes
Imagination as a refuge
Refuges: The magic of words
Literature
Writing
Music and other forms of art
Escape routes: Nature
Memory as a refuge
Escape routes: Solidarity
The Righteous ones
Resistance
The courage of despair
Refuges: Friendship and love
Sexuality
Escape routes: Laughter
The theatre of the absurd
Playing

4. The Aftermath: Surviving Survival
Return to what used to be home
Return to “normal”
Lingering racism
Silence
Coping with the loss
From persecution to opposition
Exile
Exiled to a new language
Out of time in a no-man’s land
The war is not over
Marked for life
Return to life: rediscovering the beauty of nature
Feeling human again
Becoming an adult—love and sex
Rediscovering arts and books and creativity
Breaking the silence—writing

5. The Next Generation
Never again?
Cambodia, Rwanda, and Bosnia
The next generation
The prism of senses
A genocide in the making—discrimination and persecution
Sinister forebodings
The collapse of a world
Unreal reality
Exclusion
Poisonous language
Confiscated time
Erasing the past
The end of childhood
Lost trust
....