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A Swansea University academic’s latest book, about child survivors of the Holocaust, has been included in the Daily Telegraph’s list of the best history books of 2020.
Dr Rebecca Clifford, an associate professor of modern European history at Swansea University, is the author of Survivors: Children's Lives After the Holocaust. The book tells the story of children who survived the chaos and trauma of the Holocaust, and looking for the first time at what became of these children in the years and decades after the war.
In the book, Dr Clifford follows the lives of one hundred Jewish children from the time of conflict through to their adulthood and into old age, drawing on archives and interviews. Survivors explores the aftermath of the Holocaust in the long term, and reveals how these children—often branded “the lucky ones” who managed to survive —had to struggle to be able to call themselves “survivors” at all. The experiences of these children and those who cared for them—as well as those who studied them -- are also charted in the book.
Dr Clifford said: “I am thrilled that my book has been included on the Daily Telegraph History Book of the Year list. I hope the book will shed light, for readers, on what it’s like to live with childhoods marked by rupture and loss, and also that it will challenge some deep-seated assumptions about the nature of trauma.”
Survivors: Children's Lives After the Holocaust by Rebecca Clifford is published by Yale.