Introduction
The Holocaust and Nazi period in Germany has always been looked upon as a time of trauma, horror and death. Over six million people were killed by the Nazi’s in the period between 1933 to 1945 with some predicting numbers a lot higher than that. The Holocaust was a genocide of innocent people. The Nazi’s, at the orders of Adolf Hitler, killed people that were deemed a threat or inhuman, this included: the Jewish community, Gypsies, disabled people, political opposition and homosexuals. These people did nothing wrong but were killed because they didn’t fit into the Germany Hitler had planned. Hitler wanted to create something called Lebensraum, or living space, for the German people so getting rid of people by killing them meant he had more room. Many who survived are very rightfully adamant that the Holocaust should be remembered and have written countless books and testimonials, spoken in interviews and documentaries and tried to keep the memory alive, despite how horrible the reality was. For the contemporary western world though this can still be too much to process, especially for children and young adults, which is why many of them turn to ‘popular’ Holocaust literature and media to understand the atrocities committed by Hitler and his men. As mentioned the Holocaust was an age of terror, many people want it remembered that way, however, many children are still developing emotionally so often the true reality is distorted as it can be a “difficult subject to explain to any literary audience, particularly children.’ This ultimately means that there have always been lots of debates surrounding the topic of accuracy and children’s Holocaust literature. Many authors struggle to balance the accuracy and how descriptive to go when their audience is children, as it is important, of course, to remember the events in a way that brings some kind of justice to those killed. Although this topic has been talked over thoroughly over the past seventy-five years, it is still just as important to discuss today because people are still getting the balance wrong, which begs the question, can children’s literature ever accurately reflect reality?
This essay will try and find an answer to the debate of accurately reflecting reality in children’s literature through looking work including John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006), Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2007) and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young girl (1942 – this edition is the original and thus it is hard to pin down a copy. The copy used is referenced in the footnotes, but this essay will acknowledge the presence of earlier editions). All three books are written for children and young adults. Boyne’s novel is a fictional story about a young boy who meets a devastating and ambiguous end. The main character is very oblivious and this is ultimately his demise. The book has won many awards including the Irish Book Award Children’s Book of the Year and has been made into a film of the same name, despite this success the book has also sparked lots of controversies, which will be discussed in this essay. Zusak’s, The Book Thief, features a young girl called Liesel, who is on the quest for knowledge and words in a time where words are being taken away. The novel has also been very successful like Boyne, with the Daily Telegraph calling it “Extraordinary, resonant and relevant, beautiful and angry.” Finally, The Diary of a Young Girl will be discussed, the diary is the story of Anne Frank, one of the most well-known people when looking at the Holocaust. The book shows the story of an average teenage girl in a not so normal setting, Anne is cheerful and kind, but she can also be quite selfish and the diary shows how she navigates the challenges of keeping quiet. The essay will try and find an answer to how closely children’s literature can accurately reflect reality through analysing the rights of an author to talk about the reality, looking at if the reality is too haunting to be recounted, how children and events are presented and how writing for an audience changes accuracies.
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