Adapting Atrocity in Children’s Holocaust Literature – A Case Study on Kushner and Sendak’s Brundibar

This article considers children’s Holocaust literature (CHL) through the framework of adaptation. It begins with an overview of the strategies and framing techniques used by both prose and graphic CHL narratives to highlight how texts of this genre adapt the violence of the Holocaust for young audiences. Subsequently, it focuses on the children’s picture book Brundibar written by Tony Kushner and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, exploring how the text facilitates the audience’s engagement with the Holocaust through the story’s historical legacy, visual symbolism and moral message. Thereafter, this article briefly ponders the pedagogical limitations and possibilities of CHL and, specifically, Brundibar. Finally, it argues that CHL is still important in the 21st century not only because of its pedagogical potential but also because of its ability to operate as a medium through which Holocaust memory may be transmitted, maintained and performed.