Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games among the Shadows - Paperback

by George Eisen (Author)

Occasionally an accident of research produces a book more engaging than the one the historian originally intended. While sifting through material for his Ph.D. dissertation, which dealt with an entirely different topic, Eisen came across a diary from the Vilna ghetto written by Zelig Kalmanovitch. His tone was sober, but not entirely so. The passage that caught Eisen's eye concerned a playground erected around 1942 and the author's inner conflict surrounded the coexistence of games and sports and mass murder in the ghetto.

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My main theme deals primarily with experiences in the Holocaust, but the study offers also a certain universality, for it addresses as well the basic theorem of play under adverse circumstances, under stress, and under in-human conditions, the conditions of children in war.

Author Biography

George Eisen teaches at California State Polytechnic University. He is a contributor to Meaningful Play, Playful Meaning, edited by Gary Alan Fine, and author of Understanding Leisure.