Childhood Restored: Art By Young Holocaust Survivors

“I wanted the children to feel that the world is still full of good and friendly people, who stretch their hand across oceans and wide countries to help their fellowmen.”—Alice Goldberger in 1957

The colorful and imaginative images featured in this story may look like typical children’s drawings. But the Nazis had stolen much of childhood from these young artists. The intervention of one extraordinary woman gave them back some semblance of a normal life.

Alice Goldberger was a German Jew who fled to the United Kingdom in 1939. After the war, she took in more than 20 young survivors at a house in Surrey, England.

Having lost her own family in the Holocaust, Alice shared a special, empathetic bond with the children. In the weeks and months following their arrival, she became a mother, caretaker, teacher, and advocate.

Over time Alice restored a measure of safety, order, and comfort to the lives of each of the children. And eventually something very much like childhood — as depicted in their artwork — returned.

Learn more from a curator at ushmm.org/curatorscorner/alicegoldberger.

The artwork in this story was created by child survivors living at Weir Courtney and Lingfield House between 1945 and 1954. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of Judith Sherman