The German Home and Child as Traumascape: The Problematic Site of the German Child Victim in North American World War II Narratives

Abstract

While the strategic use of the figure of the child in narratives of German victimization has not gone unnoticed, the use of setting -- an integral part of these narratives of individual and national crisis -- has often been taken for granted. This paper examines the relationship between the figure of the child and setting in three North American World War II narratives that feature German children as victims. It finds that these narratives locate the healing of the traumatized child and/or setting on foreign soil or through foreign intervention. By examining this trend through Maria Tumarkin's concept of the traumascape, this paper concludes that these texts appropriate the figure of the traumatized German child in order to reaffirm traditional North American family values and concepts of childhood, rather than to address or confront contentious issues of German victimization.