On scraps of paper hidden by friends and strangers until their dying moments, young Ana Novac kept a diary in Auschwitz, a testimony that deserves to become one of the most treasured books of our time.

The "utterly compelling, uncommonly beautiful" collection of personal essays (Newsweek) that established Jo Ann Beard as one of the leading writers of her generation. Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that remain when the boys of her youth -- and then men who replace them -- are gone. This widely praised collection of autobiographical essays summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death. The Boys of My Youth heralded the arrival of an immensely gifted and influential writer and its essays remain surprising, original, and affecting today. "A luminous, funny, heartbreaking book of essays about life and its defining moments." --Harper's Bazaar

This book examines a wide range of works written by and about child survivors and victims of the Holocaust. The writers analyzed range from Anne Frank and Saul Friedlander to Ida Fink and Louis Begley; topics covered include the Kindertransport experience, exile to Siberia, living in hiding, Jewish children masquerading as Christian, and ghetto diaries. Throughout, the argument is made that these texts use such similar techniques and structures that children's-eye views of the Holocaust constitute a discrete literary genre.

During the Holocaust, amid death and violence, Jewish men were not mere powerless victims. Linking gender studies with a history of sexuality and emotions will highlight intimate agency, power struggles, negotiations of relationships, social dynamics, and representations of masculinities. Considering the agency and vulnerability will further convey intimate choices, the representation of masculine ideals, intimate violence, and the expression of various emotions such as honour and love. As research on the Holocaust often links women with sexuality or portrays women as gendered beings, it is crucial to excavate the intimate, hidden lives of Jewish men and their specific intimate experiences as men. The analysis not only demonstrates how Jewish men remember and make sense of their experiences, but also how they chose to form the narrative and how they represented their ordeal in four chapters, namely ghettos, concentration camps, Jewish resistance in the countryside, and finally, DP camps in the aftermath of the Holocaust. The consideration of these four spaces allows a nuanced, innovative understanding of the intimate history of Jewish men during the Holocaust, i.e. how some men established male dominated structures and established intimate strategies to find solace and pleasure.