Voices of the Past
Imagine what it was like to be a child during World War II, specifically in the USSR and in Germany. Like in any war, it can be said that children suffered the most. In most countries in Europe, children were subject to violence. In the United States, it was less so, since there was only one attack directly on the United States throughout the war, and that was Pearl Harbor (in which there were no children). Despite political differences between Germany and the USSR, children in both of these countries suffered greatly.
Marya created oral histories about the children of World War II because her family is Jewish and were living in Ukraine at the time of the Holocaust. She recorded the experiences of Ms. Yeva Dogayman, a young Jewish girl in Ukraine at the time of World War II and Mary’s grandmother, and of Ms. Eleanor Rosenthal, a young Jewish girl in Silesia (now Poland) at the time that Hitler invaded. See the transcripts of her interviews and listen to the interviews here!
Harley used this project to learn more about his family’s history and interviewed his mother about her upbringing in the Cold War and beyond. His initial theory was that, like the World Wars, the Cold War uprooted normal life as people knew it. But, after talking with his mother and doing further research, Harley found that life wasn't that much changed by the Cold War.
As a school child, Harley's mother, Susan Hooper, did learn to do things like duck under their desks in case of a nuclear attack, but given that the Cold War was “cold” and didn’t touch the mainland U.S., she, like many American children, wasn’t that affected by it. See the transcript of his interview here!
The Second World War was a conflict that spanned the world and affected every individual alive in the combatant nations. It was a total war, a conflict that required immense involvement by combat troops and the populous at home. Anyone alive during the time remembers events from the war, even seventy-five years after it began. The war changed American society./p>
In order to understand what life was like for children during the Second World War, Alex interviewed two individuals. The first person he interviewed was his paternal grandmother, Margaret Nichols. The second person he interviewed was hi maternal grandmother, Margaret Vogel. Both born in 1930 to American families, they experienced the war first-hand as children and grew up in the aftermath. Their lives weren’t purely dictated by war, but it was a large part of their beginnings. See the transcripts of his interviews and listen to the interviews here!
Created by Emily Baker with materials provided by students from the class, "Voices of the Past"
Interviewees & interviewers signed release forms, allowing interviews to be placed on the web.