ABSTRACT
Child-centred Holocaust represents how Jewishness may be considered externally as otherness, highlighting the psychological issues of child characters who develop ambiguous relationships to their Jewish identities. The degrees to which protagonists identify themselves as Jewish and interact with that religious identity are represented as not based on family values or personal feelings, but rather, it is an identification forced upon them by others ideologies. The child's unformed sense of self is the vehicle by which the historical Jew may be expressed. Holocaust fiction also must grapple with a specific anxiety about the historical, literary, ethical and theological responsibilities of Holocaust representation. The Eastern, Western, religious and assimilated young Jews during the years of the Holocaust had their identities shaped and re-shaped by themselves, other Jews and non-Jews. In a time period in which the boundaries of Jewish identity were being tested, refashioned and blurred, the child characters act as an instrument.
