Zohar Shavit

זהר שביט

Based on a study of hundreds of children's books on the Third Reich and the Holocaust, published in West Germany in 1945-89, and especially on 74 of them, which were awarded literary prizes. The books differentiate between "Germans" and "Nazis, " and focus on the suffering of the German people, who are presented as the main or only victims of Nazism. The suffering of other peoples or countries is hardly ever mentioned. The "story" of the Germans as victims of the First and Second World Wars was invented in the 1960s, possibly to avoid moral dilemmas, and was adopted by authors of children's books. In many of the books, analogies are even made between Nazis and Jews: both are described or illustrated as dark-skinned, small, cunning, crazed, suicidal, and ruling or taking advantage of the Germans. Discusses strategies used by historians and authors in their "story" of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, e.g. differentiation between the Wehrmacht and the SS, identification with the heroism of the Wehrmacht, emphasis on Soviet war crimes, and relativization of the Holocaust.

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