A Blessing in Disguise. On Holocaust Children’s Mothers [re: P. Dołowy: Wrócę, gdy będziesz spała. Rozmowy z dziećmi Holocaustu] Cover Image

Szczęście w nieszczęściu. O matkach dzieci Holocaustu[dot. P. Dołowy: Wrócę, gdy będziesz spała. Rozmowy z dziećmi Holocaustu]
A Blessing in Disguise. On Holocaust Children’s Mothers [re: P. Dołowy: Wrócę, gdy będziesz spała. Rozmowy z dziećmi Holocaustu]

Author(s): Aleksandra Grzemska
Subject(s): Polish Literature, Sociology of Culture, History of the Holocaust, Book-Review
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Keywords: Holocaust children; mothers; family relations; Holocaust narratives;

Summary/Abstract: The article is a discussion of Patrycja Dołowy’s book which contains conversations with Holocaust children, the survivors of Shoah. Its main theme are relations of Jewish children with their both “biological” and “foster” mothers. The topic is a complex one, for it relates to persons confronting the Holocaust trauma, their unstable, fractured identity, and more often than not, the lack of knowledge about one’s family fates and roots. The mother in those stories eludes a unifying, common, and typical definition. The cases described in the stories of Holocaust children undermine the simplifying socio-cultural constructs relating to mothers, liquefy the binary distinctions into “biological” and “foster”, Jewish and Polish; and transform the framework of speaking about motherhood and childhood.

  • Issue Year: 2019
  • Issue No: 2 (14)
  • Page Range: 253-263
  • Page Count: 11
  • Language: Polish