This illustrated lecture will focus on the complexities of children's relations with both Jewish and non-Jewish adults. The children who had found secure and loving shelter amongst the rescuers during the war, found it difficult, in the early postwar years, to leave that safe world and forge new bonds with forgotten or unknown relatives. Some remained in that safe world with the rescuers who became their adoptive parents, and only as adults did they fully grasp what had happened to them and come to terms with their complex dual identities and painful dual family past. Others were fortunate to be quickly reunited with loving biological family members while simultaneously maintaining warm family-like relations with their former rescuers. All the cases attest to the great vulnerability of children in the adult world not only during the wartime era, but also during the early postwar period.

Joanna Michlic is currently the director of PROJECT: CHILDREN, FAMILIES and the HOLOCAUST at Brandeis University since 2009. She is ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, the CHAIR in HOLOCAUST STUDIES and ETHICAL VALUES, DEPARTMENT of HISTORY at LEHIGH UNIVERSITY, BETHLEHEM, PA since 2007.