Abstract:

Childhood studies scholars have challenged the widely-held idea of childhood as a temporal space of becoming by championing children’s being and capacities for agency whereas scholars working on identity have understood the concept as more complex than being, arguing for an ongoing process of becoming over the life course. This tension between different disciplines within the social sciences presents as an area ripe for further exploration. In this paper I will utilize a cultural studies lens to focus on depictions of Jewish children hiding in Holocaust cinema, the dominant medium for representing the stories of victims and survivors of the Nazis’ genocidal program in our contemporary context. Identity plays a crucial role in these narratives with concealment of Jewishness often precipitating disavowal and renegotiations with other overlapping identities. I will argue that neither being nor becoming is sufficient to account for the experiences of Jewish children who lived through or perished in the Holocaust in terms of how they self-identified or were identified by others. A more intricate and interdisciplinary framework for the theorizing of identity in childhood and across the life course is required and will be tentatively advanced based on the screened memories and imaginings of young Jews who were caught up in the Holocaust, findings that should fruitfully inform the interrelated fields of Jewish, childhood, identity, film and cultural studies.