„És a bombázások sem izgattak… legalább egy kis változatosság van.” Gyereknaplók a második világháborúból
“And I Did Not Worry Much about the Bombings Either… At Least We Have Some Variety.” Children’s Diaries in the Second World War

Summary/Abstract: The paper makes an attempt to show the significance of children’s diaries, written during the Second World War, from a psychological point of view. Most of these children were born between 1928 and 1931 and started their diaries in different years. What is common among them is that all of them were adolescents when they decided to do so. So the inner problems common in this period of life are very strong and analyzable in the diaries. The influence of the War and the resulting stress and trauma also appear in them – and the an-swers the children themselves gave to these problems are interesting for us. The expression of their mental, psychical and empirical world in the diaries show that they used a kind of psychological preventive mechanism as a self-defense technique. On the whole, we can say that they primarily tried to protect their mental world and their self-confidence – with more or less success. It was typical that in their inner world they imagined something worth living for and in most cases this “something” was some kind of a profession. That was one of the most important part of their identity and they stuck to it to survive. In con-nection to that, they tried to take refuge in those kind of activities which diverted their at-tention from the outside world. For example, keeping a diary was such in some cases, just like the games played in the cellars during the siege of Budapest.

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