Growing Up in the Unseen Shadow of the Kindertransport

Abstract

This poetic-narrative autoethnography employs expressive writing in exploring the author’s experiences of living and growing up as a second generation Kindertransport survivor. The methodological approach involved selecting poems from two books of poetry written about the Holocaust by the author during the 1980s and adding narrative reflections explicating the author’s perspectives and understandings of his experience. The poetic-narrative autoethnography focuses on the difficulties in connecting to an unspoken, painful past family history and explores the difficulties of writing and telling this particular story. This study offers a first insight into the experience and consciousness of being a second-generation Kindertransport survivor.