'Once Upon a Time, When I Was Small': Narratives of Childhood in East European Jewish Autobiographies

• In Event: Between Experience and Memory: East European Jewish Childhood in Ego-Documents

Abstract

This paper examines the narratives of childhood in the autobiographies of Jews who spent their early years in the Russian Empire, with a particular focus on the experiences within family. It explores the complex interplay between lived childhood experiences, contemporary discourses on childhood, and the ways these experiences are reconstructed in memory. Introducing a new methodological approach to the analysis of autobiographical narratives, I argue that the typology of interfamilial relationships, the child’s position within the family, and other structural elements of the narrative reflect the behavioral models of family life internalized by the author during childhood.

Author

• Ekaterina Oleshkevich, Hebrew U of Jerusalem (Israel)