This course examines the experiences of childhood and adolescence, male and female, under the Nazis in World War II as witnessed, remembered, and represented, through a variety of means and genres in text and image. Through their writings, two 16-year olds in 1944, Anne Frank (Dutch) & Elie Wiesel (Hungarian), are probably the best known-adolescents of this period. But our reading introduces a host of other remarkable voices that attest to the creative power of the written word to grapple with the extraordinary and often unspeakable, along with a selection of relevant films. All the major books assigned in this course (with a few exceptions) have genuine literary merit, mostly written by gifted, even professional authors. Memoirs are a dime a dozen; many are worth reading; but there needs to be something more to engage the mind, to probe the uses of language where language is insufficient and to explore the aesthetics of persecution and atrocity. Fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction too are essential to our project. All these readings are meant to challenge us as to how to reconcile the child-self with the adult-narrating self; how to represent versions of the trope, 'coming of age,’ in such appalling conditions, along with issues of ethical complexity (and complicity), and finally, the significance of gendered differences. Likewise, the films in the course are for the most part by equally well-known directors (e.g., Holland, Wajda, Malle, Shortland). Although we focus on the fate of Jewish youth, who were specific targets of genocidal policy, not just unintended victims, we will also attend to others in the occupied countries (Poland, USSR, Hungary, Italy, Romania, France, Netherlands) as well as in Germany itself. Some recurrent themes: childhood and its ramifications (metaphorical or otherwise): coming of age: (premature, foreshortened, achieved): memory, recollection, and retrospection (with attendant problems), confused identities with evidence of emotional trauma as well as coping mechanisms of resilience and adaptation.