How+did+artwork+and+poetry+help+the+children+cope+through+the+Holocaust?

Elle Hayes
“In spite of their acute vulnerability, many children discovered ways to survive. Children smuggled food and medicines into the ghettos, after smuggling personal possessions to trade for them out of the ghettos. Children in youth movements later participated in underground [|resistance] activities. Many children escaped with parents or other relatives -- and sometimes on their own -- to family camps run by Jewish partisans.” –__Children During the Holocaust__  An example of someone who helped children of the Holocaust was Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig, a Jewish girl from Austria who nursed Jewish children. She got a book of signatures from them and some drew pictures. It is possible that her allowing them to have a creative outlet helped the children cope too. Children will be children, no matter where they are. Even in the hell of a concentration camp. Their innocence gives them both strength and vulnerability, and this is shown in the art and poetry by them created during the Holocaust.

It is incredible to see how such young souls of the Jewish community can still show the strength that we see in Hebrew eyes today. Allowing children to carry on with their creativity certainly helped the children’s’ psyches get through what was going on around them. They could both tell their own story and express the cruelty that consumed them day after day.

However, Jewish children were not alone in their deprivation of life and creativity. An example of a heroine to children’s creativity was Elizabeth Kaufmann Koenig, a Jewish girl from Austria who nursed Jewish children. While she worked, she managed to get a book of signatures from them and some drew pictures. It is possible that her allowing them to have a creative outlet helped the children cope too.