The Children’s Voice: Postwar Collection of Testimonies from Child Survivors of the Holocaust Boaz Cohen Bar-Ilan University, Sha’anan College, Western Galilee College In the aftermath of World War II, adults—mainly survivors—collected thousands of hand-written testimonies from child survivors of the Holocaust. In this article, the author describes the process by which the testimonies were collected and examines the underlying sensibilities of its initiators. Further, he outlines the widespread publication of children’s testimonies in the immediate postwar period and the evolution of anthologies of children’s testimonies. His analysis sheds new light on the social, cultural, and historical facets of the post-Holocaust Jewish world’s interest in the experience of child survivors. Yes girl, yes thin arms You can cry now ... What have they done to you, tortured lamb ... You were so wise and disciplined And in the darkness you didn’t cry ... And everything, oh everything’s written down now There’s a protocol my little one All organized and stapled— You can cry now. 1 In the immediate postwar period, thousands of testimonies were taken from Jewish children who survived the Holocaust. These testimonies, many of them in the chil- dren’s own handwriting, enable us better to understand the Holocaust experience of Jewish children and provide a unique insight into their world. This article explores the background and motivations of the people who undertook the collec- tion of these important testimonies, as well as the social, historical, and institutional circumstances surrounding the collection process. The initiators of the collections believed that the testimonies served therapeutic purposes for the children involved, and also broader educational and moral purposes—for example, to focus the world’s attention on the Jewish tragedy. doi:10.1093/hgs/dcm004 Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 73–95 73