Download or read book The Impossible Legacy written by Gillian Lathey and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contends that although autobiographical children's literature (fictionalized or straight accounts) about World War II may ostensibly be directed toward juvenile readers, they are primarily written for the authors themselves, to help them establish their identity or to serve a therapeutic purpose. Compares works written in 1970-95 by Germans, Britons, and Jews (mainly refugees from Nazism). Understandably, their perspectives are quite different. The Jews write about persecution and exile. Germans who want to write about their childhood in the Third Reich are faced with an "impossible legacy": how to depict their childhood experiences (sometimes including membership in the Hitler youth movement) and, at the same time, express rejection of Nazi values. Concludes that this type of literature has not yet established its true audience and that further research might study children's responses and the contrast in ideological perspectives between works written in West and East Germany.