The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the HolocaustThey hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war - Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, and even years, they lived in constant danger of discovery, in tiny huts, in wretched sewers, in closets, in barns, in the woods - any place that might provide shelter. They had to behave as adults, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. They couldn't cry, it was perilous to be sick. They were innocent victims in a world gone mad. For years, many secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories. They have kept their stories to themselves. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences - often for the first time. There is Kristine, who, with her family, hid in the sewers of Lvov for fourteen months; Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who, with his family, lived in a closet for thirteen months. The stories of danger and sacrifice go on... Yet the hiding and the devastation of the war are only part of the story. After the war ended, lives had to be rebuilt again. That was when the reality of survival began to sink in - when the guilt of surviving and the difficulty of living proved nearly impossible for so many. Symbolic of the strength of the human spirit and the will to go on, these personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life-affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled documentof witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage. |
Contents
Kristine Keren D D | 26 |
Renee RothHano | 34 |
Richard Rozen | 43 |
Copyright | |
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