The world has seen many atrocities through its history, The Holocaust often centers the conversation when talking about the horrors this world has seen. When we think about Post-Holocaust Jewish literature, “The Diary of Anne Frank” sticks out, but many works hold significant and important value to the genre. When building a unit around “The Diary of Anne Frank” or even building off a YA unit “The Hunger Games” these valuable supplemental texts can help to further the themes in your reading.
“This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” by Tadeusz Borowski
“Deathfugue,” “Aspen Tree,” “Shibboleth,” by Paul Celan
“God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children,” “Tourists,” “Jerusalem,” “An Arab Shepherd Is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion,” by Yehuda Amichai
“The Daydreams of a Drunk Woman,” by Clarice Lispector
These authors all capture the horrors of hard times, while also revealing the strength of the human spirit. One unique theme throughout this genre is maintaining hope through atrocity. This is a theme that pairs well with YA novels like “The Hunger Games” or other dystopian novels. Hope is a universal cultural identifier, that we as humans have to maintain hope through hard times and look to the past in order to hope for a better future. Especially in these tumultuous times, it is easy to see how the world can get to such low times. But that is why the education of the past, combined with ethics education, is so important. We must teach our students that the worlds we hear about in novels such as “The Hunger Games” isn’t far from the world we live in today. When reading “The Hunger Games,” we ask, how could anyone ever let children kill each other, forgetting that not long ago 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered under Nazi rule. Post-Holocaust Jewish literature serves not only as a lesson but as a reminder that we must strive for a better future.
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