10 films and books to explain the Holocaust to children and teenagers

Remembrance Day is an opportunity to understand what the Holocaust was. Here is a series of films and books to explain it to the youngest.

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

Memory, remembrance, thought. If it does any good, now is the right time not to forget an evil called the Holocaust. There Remembrance day - scheduled every year on January 27 - is a good opportunity to understand what this authentic massacre was, what the word Shoah means and all the consequences of wicked policies.

Why January 27? Because on this day in 1945 the gates of the Auschwitz concentration camps were opened and the few people left alive were freed.

Extermination and anti-Semitic hatred united by a meaningless idea of "mass elimination" and "final solution to the Jewish problem". They were the "problem", the Jews, and the millions of gypsies and homosexuals and disabled people who were subjected to all sorts of torture.

Explain it to today's kids? It is not an easy thing. It was not easy to understand it for us, who perhaps until yesterday had grandparents who told us about those years in person, let alone for those who were born in 2000.

How to do? Parents and teachers have from their cinematographic works and precious books to take inspiration from and begin to explain. Beyond the famous (to name a few) "The boy in the striped pajamas", "The Pianist" by Roman Polanski, the "Diary of Anne Frank" or "If this is a man" by Primo Levi (which should be a bit in everyone's homes), here are the titles (many books, among other things, have inspired several films) that we have chosen and which we think are a little closer to the tastes of the youngest:

10 films and books to explain the Holocaust to children and teenagers

Index

Life is Beautiful

10 films and books to explain the Holocaust to children and teenagers

How to tell the tortures of a concentration camp as if it were a fairy tale. Roberto Benigni with this film, which in 1999 won three Oscars (including best foreign film), has fully hit the most desperate desire of a parent to never make their children unhappy. In the film, Guido, Dora and their son Giosuè are transported to a concentration camp, where Guido tries in every way to make his son believe that it's all a game. Romantic and heartbreaking.

Jona who lived in the whale (and the book Years of childhood. A child in the concentration camps)

By Roberto Faenza (1993), Jona who lived in the Whale is inspired by the autobiographical novel by Jona Oberski entitled Years of Childhood. A child in the concentration camps. The story of a 4-year-old boy who, after the occupation of Amsterdam by the Germans, is deported to the concentration camp with his whole family. Here he will suffer hunger and cold, the death of his father and the madness of his mother.

Mr. Batignole

By Gerard Jugnot, who in 2002 retraces not without a hint of criticism the behavior of the French during the Second World War. Edmond Batignole is a butcher who tries to "survive" in a completely selfish way, an attitude with which he will have to deal when he is "forced" to help three children in his house who escaped the Nazis.

Jakob the liar

By Peter Kassovitz with Robin Williams (1999), the film travels on the tragicomic thread, because, a bit like Life is Beautiful, it makes you think and smile. In a Polish city, the last surviving citizens of a ghetto try to avoid the death camps and among them Jakob befriends a little girl to whom he tells stories to keep hope alive in her.

Train de vie - A train to live

This is also decidedly "fun" given the delicate theme it tells. But in its lightness, it outlines the features of a group of Jews who manage to pretend to be German soldiers to escape deportations. Once they have set up a fake railway train, they will try to reach the USSR, to then continue on to Palestine.

Sara's flight

Book by Lorenza Farina, illustrated by Sonia ML Possentini (Fatatrac editions), tells the little ones a story of deportation and the Shoah. On the pages, the delicate encounter between a little girl and a robin in a concentration camp during the Second World War. The little robin will take this new friend with him because the Shoah is "too cruel a thing for a child".

Jorg's diary. The tragedy of truth in the life of a German boy

By Giuseppe Pederiali. A 13-year-old boy from Munich discovers that his father is a German SS officer. Very proud of his father's work, he begins to change his mind and conflict with him when he begins to become aware of the atrocities done to the Jews.