A trăi infernul (2). Jurnale din timpul Holocaustului ale copiilor și tinerilor din spațiul românesc
Living the Inferno (2). The Romanian Holocaust Diaries of Children and Youngsters

Summary/Abstract: In one of my previous articles (Tucan 2020), I showed the great extent of the phenomenon generated by the diaries kept by young children and youngsters during the Holocaust. For these young people experiencing directly the anti-Semite persecutions of the WWII, these diaries were the only way to preserve the direct experience of sufferance in a world haunted by terror. In truth, while most of them did not survive, their written pages made it through history to become authentic papers documenting the horrific universe of the ghettos, of the concentration camps, of the lives spent in hiding and in secrecy. Unlike the genre of memoirs, which encapsulates the story of survival, the diary is the survival itself; they are therefore able to allow us a close introspection into the traumatic experience of the Holocaust and become vital documents for preserving the memory of a historical rupture caused by this great tragedy of the 20th century. In addition to this, the innocence of the diarists, their young age and their wide range of intensely emotional experiences recorded in these personal journals are essential pieces necessary for completing the picture of this collective tragedy, which the present must not forget and must cherish as an antidote against ideological and totalitarian irrationalism. In my article, I will dwell on similar phenomena closely connected with the Romanian Holocaust (Eva Heyman, Zimra Harsá nyi, Miriam Korber-Bercovici, and some others). Such a scholarly enterprise is extremely necessary since, in Romanian culture, the memory of the tragedy inflicted by the Holocaust has been rather obscured and purposely avoided (see Florian, 2018).

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