“You don’t understand this yet, you’re too young Still”: Holocaust Atrocity in Three Important Children’s Novels

This essay covers three contemporary Holocaust children’s novels from different countries: Hans Peter Richter’s Friedrich (Germany), Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic (United States), and Morris Gleitzman’s Once (Australia). The article begins with a personal example, which then leads into a discussion of whether children can emotionally handle reading literature containing traumatic and violent events. It also focuses on whether children and young adults truly learn about the Holocaust if they read novels that are sanitized and have happy endings to avoid traumatizing them. The article provides an in-depth study of these three novels and discusses strategies such as transformation and “information gaps.” It also examines Elizabeth Baer’s argument about the Holocaust representing a new algorithm in horror and evil and how that affects the novels.