Empathy Across Time in Speculative Children’s Shoah Fiction

The end of the Second World War, close enough for survivors to still be able to tell their tales themselves, for some was so long ago as to be unimaginable. Although the common pledge is to ‘never forget’, for young children it is not their story to remember, which is why it is up to society to keep the warning and memory of the war and its many crimes alive. Yet not all children enjoy an education which teaches this history effectively, and even adults can be Shoah deniers. Additionally, much of the Shoah is deemed inappropriate or too horrible to communicate to children. These societal failings to inform the young generation about the War and the Shoah create a gap, which especially historiographical literature can potentially fill. In the following paper, I explore both the opportunities and risks of using children’s speculative historical fiction to teach about the Shoah