"One of the great untold stories of the Holocaust was that of the thousands of children who, like me, survived by hiding or being hidden from the Nazis. Many were still emotionally “in hiding” until fifty years later when we at last revealed our stories at the First International Gathering of Children Hidden During World War II in May 1991 in New York City. Some 1,600 of us from around the world together broke the silence about how we survived Hitler’s killing machine.
"We exchanged stories about our hiding places: how we lived for months in sewers, closets, barns, and fields; how we joined the partisans and fought the enemy; how we stayed alive. We examined the guilt that continues to haunt us; the pain we felt at losing our loved ones; our anger; our inability to speak of these experiences with our family; our identity crises; and our confused, frightening, lost childhoods."
"When I was an infant growing up in German-occupied Poland, I was called Henryk Stanislas Kurpi. To all the world, Bronislawa Kurpi was my mother. Actually, she was my Polish Catholic nanny who promised my parents she would take care of me. I was baptized and raised as a Catholic. My parents survived the camps and returned to claim me. A custody battle with my nanny ensued but my parents won. Eventually, my family and I moved to the United States."
"Many thousands of us are still in virtual hiding. Some, particularly in Eastern Europe, are still afraid to admit they are Jews because of rampant anti-Semitism. Others may not even be aware of their true identities because their Jewish families perished during the war and their adoptive parents chose not to reveal their backgrounds.
"We should remember that many rescuers were ostracized by their countrymen for saving Jews during the Holocaust. Today, it is still an uncomfortable subject in some countries."
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The book began from an article assigned by an editor to Jane Marks to do, from which came a gathering of the hidden children, which she attended.
"What surprised me initially was who the former hidden children were: highly successful, super well educated, upscale—and very charming! Perhaps I’d expected cold people, who would say in effect, “You don’t understand. Leave me alone with my suffering.” Instead I found them extraordinarily open. If some were hesitant as they began to tell their stories, it was not because they wanted to shut out the listener but because it was painful to relive what they had been through."
"I remember one particularly moving workshop, “The Hidden-Child Experience.” At one point a woman who had been speaking stopped suddenly and stared at another woman who had just come in. “Oh, my God!” the one who had been talking cried out as they ran to embrace each other. “I came here for you,” the other woman said. They were friends who hadn’t seen each other in more than forty years.
"For others that workshop was stirring and important in other ways. One man, recounting his own hiding experience, said, “My mother wasn’t very maternal—she gave me up.”
"“Don’t you believe it!” another member of that workshop told him earnestly. “Your mother was maternal! She saved your life.” The man looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he admitted. Another woman movingly reminisced about her closest childhood friend—whose name was Anne Frank!"
An African American couple attended. She had read the article and wanted to be there.
"I used to hear my dad talk about “the six million Jews.” When he told me what that meant, something in my soul trembled. From that day on, my world became different. The horror of the pictures he showed me was forever burned into my being. How could people do such things to one another? They were all white!! Somehow this validated my belief that the institution of slavery went far beyond color."
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Discussing the Hidden Children, one point made by Eva Fogelman in The Psychology Behind Being A Hidden Child is the following:-
"Other traumatized groups, such as victims of incest, torture victims, and victims of racial bigotry, do not have this kind of identity conflict."
She's discussing holocaust survivor hidden children with other groups such as survivors of Cambodia or Vietnam or Lebanon, or physically abused children.
So far as she's seen, it's true; however, the immediate analogous similar people are obvious to those for whom they are not invisible - India, and particularly Hindus of India, who have been at the butt of every possible ridicule when not worse by not only the invading and colonising conquistadores but all who were in sympathy with the latter more than with the subjugated, that is, India and more particularly Hindus of India.
When not ridiculed, they were seen as epitomising ills and castigated as everything bad or stupid or evil, although, with the slightest honesty one can see that those qualities are far more evident in those pointing the fingers.
For example, India is castigated for her caste system, with an unspoken assumption to the effect equating the very word caste with India and Hindus. This is fraud, in that the word caste existed in Europe before Europe and arrived in India, and it related to castes of Europe until the Macaulay policy of breaking down India was implemented. It's only that castes elsewhere are based on power, wealth, landed property, royal blood and titles bestowed by royalty, race, and of course, gender. In India, it's about categorised classification of vocation of males, with women not held beneath or less. It seems arbitrary to those used to the primitive castes elsewhere, but so does civilisation to anyone uncivilised every time there is a confrontation, and the bully can always rape the artist or scientist. That's no proof of superiority.
Nor is it obvious why monotheism, another point held against India, should be considered superior, since most religious wars and massacres are due to intolerance by monotheistic perpetrated against everyone else, other monotheists or others. What is obvious in face of such intolerance is the stupidity of monotheistic system when it results in intolerance and wars rather than an automatic assumption that everyone is equal precisely if God is one and unique. Alternative is the existing situation where every monotheist preacher states the certainty of all others going to hell, which, summed up, amounts merely to everyone going to hell because all these Gods of various monotheistic are sending followers of every other God to hell.
She's discussing holocaust survivor hidden children with other groups such as survivors of Cambodia or Vietnam or Lebanon, or physically abused children.
So far as she's seen, it's true; however, the immediate analogous similar people are obvious to those for whom they are not invisible - India, and particularly Hindus of India, who have been at the butt of every possible ridicule when not worse by not only the invading and colonising conquistadores but all who were in sympathy with the latter more than with the subjugated, that is, India and more particularly Hindus of India.
When not ridiculed, they were seen as epitomising ills and castigated as everything bad or stupid or evil, although, with the slightest honesty one can see that those qualities are far more evident in those pointing the fingers.
For example, India is castigated for her caste system, with an unspoken assumption to the effect equating the very word caste with India and Hindus. This is fraud, in that the word caste existed in Europe before Europe and arrived in India, and it related to castes of Europe until the Macaulay policy of breaking down India was implemented. It's only that castes elsewhere are based on power, wealth, landed property, royal blood and titles bestowed by royalty, race, and of course, gender. In India, it's about categorised classification of vocation of males, with women not held beneath or less. It seems arbitrary to those used to the primitive castes elsewhere, but so does civilisation to anyone uncivilised every time there is a confrontation, and the bully can always rape the artist or scientist. That's no proof of superiority.
Nor is it obvious why monotheism, another point held against India, should be considered superior, since most religious wars and massacres are due to intolerance by monotheistic perpetrated against everyone else, other monotheists or others. What is obvious in face of such intolerance is the stupidity of monotheistic system when it results in intolerance and wars rather than an automatic assumption that everyone is equal precisely if God is one and unique. Alternative is the existing situation where every monotheist preacher states the certainty of all others going to hell, which, summed up, amounts merely to everyone going to hell because all these Gods of various monotheistic are sending followers of every other God to hell.
................................................................................................
................................................................................................
Nicole David and her parents fled Belgium as Germans invaded, and were in France for a while."“In France the Germans occupied part of the country, but they were not yet deporting Jews. Outside a shop one day some German soldiers gave another little girl and me some chocolate. As we ate it, the soldiers stood there, bragging to my father about how strong and well organized their army was: ‘With us an order is an order,’ one said, ‘For example, if we were ordered to shoot these children’—he patted my head—‘why, we would do it!’"
................................................................................................
Rosa Sirota and her mother, from Lvov, were helped by Marysia, Rosa's aunt's maid, who got her priest's consent for saving their lives.
"“Even talking to the priest had been a risk for Marysia, because so many priests were against the Jews. To most Polish people being anti-Semitic was perfectly okay and did not detract from a person’s good moral character. Anti-Semitism was very popular. People who were sympathetic to Jews or were helping them had not only the Germans to fear, they also had to keep those sympathies secret from relatives and friends."
Kristine Keren was in Lvov and her father used to hide her and her bother.
"“We lived in Poland, in the ghetto of Lvov. My father was always looking for places to hide my little brother, Pavel, and me because the Germans were intent on getting rid of all the Jewish children. One hiding place was a small, empty space, three feet long and one foot deep, below the window, which my father had camouflaged to look like the wall. I remember having to sit in there with Pavel for hours, struggling for air and being so scared! Tears were running down my cheeks, but I didn’t dare make a sound for fear the Germans would find us. But silently I’d pray for my father to come and let us out. Each time he came back, I begged him, ‘Daddy, please let this be the last time.’ I didn’t think I could take it anymore.
"“My parents had to work in the labor camp, so I was often left alone with my brother. Several times when the Germans came, I had to hide Pavel in a suitcase under the bed while I hid in the closet, behind my mother’s long, rust-colored satin robe. I was only seven or eight years old at the time, but I could recognize the German footsteps. I had to hide myself and then wait a few more minutes for fear they’d come back again. Then I ran back to let my brother out of the suitcase so he could breathe again.
"“He was good! He was only three and a half years old, but he never made a fuss. He understood, as I did, that we just had to be quiet and do what we were told. Life was getting scarier by the day.
"“One day I heard a noise—like somebody gasping for air—and I looked out the back window. There I saw some Polish teenagers swinging bats and hitting a Jewish man, who was begging them to stop. But they kept it up until he lay there, dead. I’ll never forget that choking sound he made. I was just stunned."
The father dug down through the basement, and the family escaped as German soldiers closed in.
"“We all stayed there for a few days. Some people couldn’t take the stench and the darkness, so they left, but ten of us remained in that sewer—for fourteen months!"
The descriptions are as horrible as can be expected, even when one is only reading it close to eight decades later.
"“All this time nobody had to tell us to be quiet. I felt like an animal, ruled by instinct. I never spoke above a whisper. But after a few months of this life I was very, very depressed, and I didn’t want to eat or talk to anybody.
"“That was when Leopold Socha picked me up and took me through the tunnels and said, ‘Look up.’ I saw the daylight, and he said to me, ‘You have to be very strong, and one day you will go up there and live a life like other children.’ At my father’s suggestion Mr. Socha brought books so my father could teach me to read and count. This way, they said, I’d be ready for school when the war was finally over.
"“From then on I’d always watch for Mr. Socha when he would come every other day with our food. Always the first thing I’d see was his smile: a radiant smile with perfect teeth. He was such a cheerful man—and thoughtful too! He managed to get my mother candles for the Sabbath, and he’d always share his own lunch with Pavel and me.""
Socha told them they could come out when Russian troops had arrived, but now they were without means in cold winter. Kristen went to school without footwear until the parents bought her boots. Socha was hit by a drunken driver and died. The family moved to Krakow.
"But even though the war was over, anti-Semitism in Poland was not. My mother and even the school principal, a thoughtful woman named Mrs. Zajac, agreed that I must pose as a Christian. Can you imagine? Even after the war I had to hide my identity! In many ways the anti-Semitism I experienced after the war was more painful than anything that happened in the sewer. I remember how mortified I was when some neighborhood children taunted me and wrote Kristine, the Jew in huge letters on a wall. Even when my mother took us for a little vacation in the country, the lady we rented from said, ‘Hitler made one mistake: He didn’t kill all the Jews.’"
They moved to Israel in 1957, and Kristine enrolled in medical/dental school, but she knew neither Hebrew nor English, and despaired despite having been a good student. Her father assured her she'd do well. She worked hard, translating word by word, till she began to get it. Her first exam was chemistry and she did well, and was congratulated by her professor.
"“Actually I had a little trick I used then—and used until recently. Whenever anything was difficult, I would imagine myself in a concentration camp with a German soldier standing next to me pointing a gun. If I didn’t do whatever I was supposed to do, he would kill me. It was a painful way of motivating myself, but it was effective. It certainly got me through a lot."
She got over much, but hasn't forgotten the cousin and other family members who were taken to the concentration camps.
"“The experience stays with me in small ways or daily things. All I have to do is smell old fat, and it makes me nauseous—not because it’s spoiled but because I remember this as a taste from during the war. When we bought our house fifteen years ago, I noticed that the entrance to the attic was camouflaged in a bookshelf. I thought, What a good place to hide! I also can’t stand to see fear in someone’s eyes, especially when it’s a child. That’s why I am an extraordinarily gentle dentist. Believe me, none of my patients are afraid. If anyone shows fear, I have to stop."
Kristine had never hidden her past, but her son's were shocked to realise how small she had been when she had undergone those times.
Rosa Sirota and her mother, from Lvov, were helped by Marysia, Rosa's aunt's maid, who got her priest's consent for saving their lives.
"“Even talking to the priest had been a risk for Marysia, because so many priests were against the Jews. To most Polish people being anti-Semitic was perfectly okay and did not detract from a person’s good moral character. Anti-Semitism was very popular. People who were sympathetic to Jews or were helping them had not only the Germans to fear, they also had to keep those sympathies secret from relatives and friends."
................................................................................................
Kristine Keren was in Lvov and her father used to hide her and her bother.
"“We lived in Poland, in the ghetto of Lvov. My father was always looking for places to hide my little brother, Pavel, and me because the Germans were intent on getting rid of all the Jewish children. One hiding place was a small, empty space, three feet long and one foot deep, below the window, which my father had camouflaged to look like the wall. I remember having to sit in there with Pavel for hours, struggling for air and being so scared! Tears were running down my cheeks, but I didn’t dare make a sound for fear the Germans would find us. But silently I’d pray for my father to come and let us out. Each time he came back, I begged him, ‘Daddy, please let this be the last time.’ I didn’t think I could take it anymore.
"“My parents had to work in the labor camp, so I was often left alone with my brother. Several times when the Germans came, I had to hide Pavel in a suitcase under the bed while I hid in the closet, behind my mother’s long, rust-colored satin robe. I was only seven or eight years old at the time, but I could recognize the German footsteps. I had to hide myself and then wait a few more minutes for fear they’d come back again. Then I ran back to let my brother out of the suitcase so he could breathe again.
"“He was good! He was only three and a half years old, but he never made a fuss. He understood, as I did, that we just had to be quiet and do what we were told. Life was getting scarier by the day.
"“One day I heard a noise—like somebody gasping for air—and I looked out the back window. There I saw some Polish teenagers swinging bats and hitting a Jewish man, who was begging them to stop. But they kept it up until he lay there, dead. I’ll never forget that choking sound he made. I was just stunned."
The father dug down through the basement, and the family escaped as German soldiers closed in.
"“We all stayed there for a few days. Some people couldn’t take the stench and the darkness, so they left, but ten of us remained in that sewer—for fourteen months!"
The descriptions are as horrible as can be expected, even when one is only reading it close to eight decades later.
"“All this time nobody had to tell us to be quiet. I felt like an animal, ruled by instinct. I never spoke above a whisper. But after a few months of this life I was very, very depressed, and I didn’t want to eat or talk to anybody.
"“That was when Leopold Socha picked me up and took me through the tunnels and said, ‘Look up.’ I saw the daylight, and he said to me, ‘You have to be very strong, and one day you will go up there and live a life like other children.’ At my father’s suggestion Mr. Socha brought books so my father could teach me to read and count. This way, they said, I’d be ready for school when the war was finally over.
"“From then on I’d always watch for Mr. Socha when he would come every other day with our food. Always the first thing I’d see was his smile: a radiant smile with perfect teeth. He was such a cheerful man—and thoughtful too! He managed to get my mother candles for the Sabbath, and he’d always share his own lunch with Pavel and me.""
Socha told them they could come out when Russian troops had arrived, but now they were without means in cold winter. Kristen went to school without footwear until the parents bought her boots. Socha was hit by a drunken driver and died. The family moved to Krakow.
"But even though the war was over, anti-Semitism in Poland was not. My mother and even the school principal, a thoughtful woman named Mrs. Zajac, agreed that I must pose as a Christian. Can you imagine? Even after the war I had to hide my identity! In many ways the anti-Semitism I experienced after the war was more painful than anything that happened in the sewer. I remember how mortified I was when some neighborhood children taunted me and wrote Kristine, the Jew in huge letters on a wall. Even when my mother took us for a little vacation in the country, the lady we rented from said, ‘Hitler made one mistake: He didn’t kill all the Jews.’"
They moved to Israel in 1957, and Kristine enrolled in medical/dental school, but she knew neither Hebrew nor English, and despaired despite having been a good student. Her father assured her she'd do well. She worked hard, translating word by word, till she began to get it. Her first exam was chemistry and she did well, and was congratulated by her professor.
"“Actually I had a little trick I used then—and used until recently. Whenever anything was difficult, I would imagine myself in a concentration camp with a German soldier standing next to me pointing a gun. If I didn’t do whatever I was supposed to do, he would kill me. It was a painful way of motivating myself, but it was effective. It certainly got me through a lot."
She got over much, but hasn't forgotten the cousin and other family members who were taken to the concentration camps.
"“The experience stays with me in small ways or daily things. All I have to do is smell old fat, and it makes me nauseous—not because it’s spoiled but because I remember this as a taste from during the war. When we bought our house fifteen years ago, I noticed that the entrance to the attic was camouflaged in a bookshelf. I thought, What a good place to hide! I also can’t stand to see fear in someone’s eyes, especially when it’s a child. That’s why I am an extraordinarily gentle dentist. Believe me, none of my patients are afraid. If anyone shows fear, I have to stop."
Kristine had never hidden her past, but her son's were shocked to realise how small she had been when she had undergone those times.
................................................................................................
"RENEE ROTH-HANO
"“I was born in Mulhouse in 1931. Germany, moving fast after France lost the war, annexed Alsace, where we lived. A few days later, we were expelled. We took refuge in Paris, but it wasn’t any real sanctuary. Fourteen major anti-Semitic decrees were passed between 1940, when we arrived in Paris, and 1942, when we had to go into hiding. The one that bothered me most was the one that said I had to wear the Star of David. I was ten years old. I had always been a very inquisitive, outgoing kid, but wearing the star was like the final straw, the most damaging of all; it made me feel ashamed. I became very withdrawn.
"“Six weeks later fourteen thousand Jews were arrested in a roundup. A secret maid’s room was found for my parents to hide in. Meanwhile my two sisters and I were sent off to a convent called ‘La Chaumière,’ or ‘The Cottage,’ in Flers, a small town in Normandy. I resented the fact that my parents hadn’t found another way to hide us. I knew that friends of ours and even relatives had managed to stay together as a family. I really felt abandoned, but I couldn’t say so. As the eldest in the family, I understood that it was my job to maintain the family honor and take care of my two little sisters, Denise and Lily. It was a stiff-upper-lip kind of thing: I felt cornered and very burdened, but I had to make the best of it."
Renee felt abandoned, but knew she shouldn't question the adults' decision, and had to look after her younger sisters. They didn't mention being Jewish and had to blend in, attend church and so on.
"What I loved most was the singing. It made me feel like I belonged, which I needed desperately then. We sang hymns every evening, and I loved that. It wasn’t so much God—I didn’t believe in God. He was lousy to the Jews! But if you cannot pray to him, who can you pray to? At least when I was singing, there was hope coming from my heart. It was a way of begging God to listen. And as our voices harmonized, I didn’t feel so alone or scared."
"“There was another nun, Sister Madeleine, who was extra nice. We were often hungry, but we children were not supposed to ask for extra food. Sometimes Sister Madeleine would scream to summon my sisters and me to the kitchen. She made it sound as if she were scolding us. Once we were safely out of sight of the others, she would give us special treats, such as eggs. She was wonderful. A couple of times she baked cakes and sent them to my parents!"
Soon she was baptised, and was terrified she'd go to heaven alone, leaving her parents behind. She went through jaundice.
"Allied troops landed. It was late afternoon. The nun tried to shoo me outside to play with the other children, but I was worried. I wanted to stay near the kitchen to hear the news on the radio. All during supper I was frightened. Afterward I looked outside and I saw this formation of planes come in—like a flock of birds! Then I saw the planes stop, and the bombs fall. I saw it happening! I started to scream: ‘Au secours! Help!’ Then the bombing grew more intense. We were bombed for three solid days. Again I thought I was going to die. On D-Day, June 6th, I made a vow: ‘God, if you get me out of this one, I promise to become a nun.’ From that moment on I was totally committed."
They had to leave because a German ammunition dump was close and British would bomb. Nuns took children to another village, and they all battled with shortage of food and water and hygiene problems.
"German soldiers, who were on the run from the British, would come out of the woods and try to steal the few potatoes still growing, but Madame Huet faced them down, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves for stealing food from children. Toward the end we were so weak, we didn’t get up in the morning. Sympathetic, the nuns told us, ‘Stay where you are.’"
Soon the war was over and they returned to find most of the school destroyed, all but the virgin statue. After they united with parents, their Jewish identities still remained a problem for the Renee, who told people she was Catholic and was anguished about her vow to be a nun.
"“When I was nineteen, I came to the United States by chance, as a governess. One day something amazing happened. I was at Macy’s in the early spring—I thought in terms of Easter. There were two ladies at the cosmetics counter, one actually hollering to the other, ‘How was your seder last night?’ I froze. I thought, ‘Wait! You can’t talk about a seder here, in public!’ I gasped. But nobody minded. I said to myself, ‘My God, it’s wonderful! Nobody’s even ashamed.’ The two women went on talking like it was no big thing. I felt something inside me breaking free."
When she visited France, she found her sister's children making anti Semitic remarks, and the sister explained that people were still antisemitic. Renee tried to explain it was ok being a Jew, but she didn't think that the sister understood.
"“In the last decade my healing and happiness have grown deeper. I married an accountant named John. We have a wonderful relationship. I also wrote an autobiographical children’s book, Touch Wood: A Girlhood in Occupied France (Puffin, 1989), which brought many fan letters, including one from Normandy that said, ‘Thank you for honoring our town.’ In November 1991 the town of Flers held a special event to honor me. There was a dinner, and they presented me with a medal.
"“One of my former classmates, named Yvette, was there. She told me that when we were children, she always felt that there was something mysterious about me. She didn’t know what it was, but when she saw The Diary of Anne Frank, she thought of me. Isn’t that amazing? Yvette wrote a wonderful poem for the newspaper about how she wanted to wipe my tears. It was deeply moving to me. It made me realize that there were people in my corner I didn’t even know about.
"“Now I feel so close to the people of Flers. I’m a special citizen of the town. I almost feel like when I die, I want to be buried there. It’s so healing at this point in my life to learn that I can be completely honest and open about myself and still be liked. How strange—and also wonderful—to find that I’m rewarded for the very thing that I had once been made to feel so very much ashamed of!”"
"RICHARD ROZEN"
Richard was born in Radom, Poland, in 1935, and they were well to do, his father being a doctor.
"“In 1939 the war began, but it was still remote to me until the Germans actually arrived in our town. We escaped to Luboml, which was on the Russian side of then-divided Poland. In July 1941, when the Germans suddenly invaded Luboml, there was a great hurry to go into hiding. My father had gold coins, and with that he was able to buy us shelter on a farm near Luboml. I don’t know how the contact was arranged, but there we stayed in what was actually a cabinet, only sixty or seventy centimeters wide. The length of it would have been a couple of meters, because we could all lie on top of each other comfortably. My parents couldn’t stand, but I could, and I sort of walked between them. This cabinet was in a cellar, so it was well hidden. Our presence there was so secret, not even the children of the hiding family knew that we were there. That was where we stayed for thirteen months!"
"“In the middle of the night the farmer would bring us bread and potatoes, and often cold soup and vegetables, a bucket of water for drinking and washing, and a separate bucket to use for a toilet. So we weren’t starving; and as horrible as it sounds, I didn’t think it was so bad. In fact one great thing about this odd existence was that I got to see so much of my father for the first time in my life! He taught me the alphabet and counting to one hundred by writing on the palm of my hand and silently whispering in my ear. I was challenged and fascinated. I would have loved to get out and go play with the children I could hear in the distance, but when my parents said I couldn’t until the war was over, I accepted that."
After a year the money ran out, and soon they had to leave. The parents couldn't stand straight, but they all walked away.
"“Then something extraordinary happened: The color of the world started changing from pitch black to the pinks, reds, and oranges of a sunrise. I was dazzled! After nearly a quarter of my life in that cabinet I was literally seeing the light. My father warned me not to look at the brightness too quickly, so I wouldn’t go blind, but I was enthralled."
They were caught by Ukrainian soldiers and were taken to Lublin ghetto, where adults had meagre ration and children none. But the partisans needed a doctor, so they were smuggled out. The family stayed in a village, but soon Richard joined his father in forests. The partisans decided Richard should be one of them. They caught German soldiers and executed them.
"“My job was to put my feather under the nose of each soldier and count up to a hundred to see if he was dead. (Luckily I could do that, thanks to my schooling in the cabinet.) Occasionally the Germans used to plead with me and say, ‘Frau, frau, kinder…my wife, my wife, my children.’ But being a very hardened partisan, I had no feeling. Partisans took no prisoners. It was either them or us. For every one of them that lived, it could be one of us who died. I would call over some of the partisans to finish the job. I never did that part. I didn’t want to get blood on my hands. I just did the feather business."
"The present I got for my ninth birthday was a loaf of bread, the most precious gift I ever got in my life, during the war, before, or since! I kept that bread sitting inside my shirt for about three months. Whenever I was hungry, I would scratch a few crumbs. I started scratching on it in April and I scratched it until it was midsummer. It’s impossible to describe how I treasured that bread!"
The bombings got more intense in 1944. Richard saw a leg without the body, and with great effort brought it to his father expecting he could use it for someone who needed it. The hospital was attacked, and Richard was told Germans had taken away his father. He was reunited with his mother and they returned home, but were very poor. Their former friends, other doctor's wives, slammed the doors in their faces because Jews were supposed to be dead. Some threw them food.
"“For me this more or less closed a chapter. My father had been a patriotic Pole. He gave his life fighting for that country. Yet this was the reception his wife got from the Poles! As a result I’ve never considered myself a Pole, and I never will. To them I was always a Jew. I never speak that language, even though I understand it perfectly well. And I will never go back to Poland as long as I live."
Richard had tuberculosis and was hospitalised, and recovered. His mother was shocked when Richard and she saw a Jew shot in street lying in a pool of blood and Richard indicated that he'd seen worse. They soon left for a DP camp in Stuttgart, where he could go to school, and then to France where Richard's mother had a brother. She couldn't find good work since she didn't speak French, and he was sent to an orphanage by his uncle.
"At least the schooling was good. In those four and a half years I completed ten grades!"
"“Master Pier, director at the orphanage, ran a very disciplined establishment. We all shared various chores: cooking, cleaning, gathering wood, and so on. The best times were when American ladies from Joint and other Jewish organizations visited us. In return for chocolates, sweets, and chewing gum we told them stories about the war. My stories were the most popular. As the years went by, I had a real fan club."
They migrated in 1951 to Australia to join another uncle and his family, where he was treated better than in the home of the French relatives. He gives talks about his war experience, apart from his work at the hospital.
"I feel that this time it was us: the Jews. But the same kind of genocide can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone. Until we finally start to put an end to racism, bigotry, and intolerance, I don’t see how any one of us will ever be safe.”"
"RENEE ROTH-HANO
"“I was born in Mulhouse in 1931. Germany, moving fast after France lost the war, annexed Alsace, where we lived. A few days later, we were expelled. We took refuge in Paris, but it wasn’t any real sanctuary. Fourteen major anti-Semitic decrees were passed between 1940, when we arrived in Paris, and 1942, when we had to go into hiding. The one that bothered me most was the one that said I had to wear the Star of David. I was ten years old. I had always been a very inquisitive, outgoing kid, but wearing the star was like the final straw, the most damaging of all; it made me feel ashamed. I became very withdrawn.
"“Six weeks later fourteen thousand Jews were arrested in a roundup. A secret maid’s room was found for my parents to hide in. Meanwhile my two sisters and I were sent off to a convent called ‘La Chaumière,’ or ‘The Cottage,’ in Flers, a small town in Normandy. I resented the fact that my parents hadn’t found another way to hide us. I knew that friends of ours and even relatives had managed to stay together as a family. I really felt abandoned, but I couldn’t say so. As the eldest in the family, I understood that it was my job to maintain the family honor and take care of my two little sisters, Denise and Lily. It was a stiff-upper-lip kind of thing: I felt cornered and very burdened, but I had to make the best of it."
Renee felt abandoned, but knew she shouldn't question the adults' decision, and had to look after her younger sisters. They didn't mention being Jewish and had to blend in, attend church and so on.
"What I loved most was the singing. It made me feel like I belonged, which I needed desperately then. We sang hymns every evening, and I loved that. It wasn’t so much God—I didn’t believe in God. He was lousy to the Jews! But if you cannot pray to him, who can you pray to? At least when I was singing, there was hope coming from my heart. It was a way of begging God to listen. And as our voices harmonized, I didn’t feel so alone or scared."
"“There was another nun, Sister Madeleine, who was extra nice. We were often hungry, but we children were not supposed to ask for extra food. Sometimes Sister Madeleine would scream to summon my sisters and me to the kitchen. She made it sound as if she were scolding us. Once we were safely out of sight of the others, she would give us special treats, such as eggs. She was wonderful. A couple of times she baked cakes and sent them to my parents!"
Soon she was baptised, and was terrified she'd go to heaven alone, leaving her parents behind. She went through jaundice.
"Allied troops landed. It was late afternoon. The nun tried to shoo me outside to play with the other children, but I was worried. I wanted to stay near the kitchen to hear the news on the radio. All during supper I was frightened. Afterward I looked outside and I saw this formation of planes come in—like a flock of birds! Then I saw the planes stop, and the bombs fall. I saw it happening! I started to scream: ‘Au secours! Help!’ Then the bombing grew more intense. We were bombed for three solid days. Again I thought I was going to die. On D-Day, June 6th, I made a vow: ‘God, if you get me out of this one, I promise to become a nun.’ From that moment on I was totally committed."
They had to leave because a German ammunition dump was close and British would bomb. Nuns took children to another village, and they all battled with shortage of food and water and hygiene problems.
"German soldiers, who were on the run from the British, would come out of the woods and try to steal the few potatoes still growing, but Madame Huet faced them down, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves for stealing food from children. Toward the end we were so weak, we didn’t get up in the morning. Sympathetic, the nuns told us, ‘Stay where you are.’"
Soon the war was over and they returned to find most of the school destroyed, all but the virgin statue. After they united with parents, their Jewish identities still remained a problem for the Renee, who told people she was Catholic and was anguished about her vow to be a nun.
"“When I was nineteen, I came to the United States by chance, as a governess. One day something amazing happened. I was at Macy’s in the early spring—I thought in terms of Easter. There were two ladies at the cosmetics counter, one actually hollering to the other, ‘How was your seder last night?’ I froze. I thought, ‘Wait! You can’t talk about a seder here, in public!’ I gasped. But nobody minded. I said to myself, ‘My God, it’s wonderful! Nobody’s even ashamed.’ The two women went on talking like it was no big thing. I felt something inside me breaking free."
When she visited France, she found her sister's children making anti Semitic remarks, and the sister explained that people were still antisemitic. Renee tried to explain it was ok being a Jew, but she didn't think that the sister understood.
"“In the last decade my healing and happiness have grown deeper. I married an accountant named John. We have a wonderful relationship. I also wrote an autobiographical children’s book, Touch Wood: A Girlhood in Occupied France (Puffin, 1989), which brought many fan letters, including one from Normandy that said, ‘Thank you for honoring our town.’ In November 1991 the town of Flers held a special event to honor me. There was a dinner, and they presented me with a medal.
"“One of my former classmates, named Yvette, was there. She told me that when we were children, she always felt that there was something mysterious about me. She didn’t know what it was, but when she saw The Diary of Anne Frank, she thought of me. Isn’t that amazing? Yvette wrote a wonderful poem for the newspaper about how she wanted to wipe my tears. It was deeply moving to me. It made me realize that there were people in my corner I didn’t even know about.
"“Now I feel so close to the people of Flers. I’m a special citizen of the town. I almost feel like when I die, I want to be buried there. It’s so healing at this point in my life to learn that I can be completely honest and open about myself and still be liked. How strange—and also wonderful—to find that I’m rewarded for the very thing that I had once been made to feel so very much ashamed of!”"
................................................................................................
"RICHARD ROZEN"
Richard was born in Radom, Poland, in 1935, and they were well to do, his father being a doctor.
"“In 1939 the war began, but it was still remote to me until the Germans actually arrived in our town. We escaped to Luboml, which was on the Russian side of then-divided Poland. In July 1941, when the Germans suddenly invaded Luboml, there was a great hurry to go into hiding. My father had gold coins, and with that he was able to buy us shelter on a farm near Luboml. I don’t know how the contact was arranged, but there we stayed in what was actually a cabinet, only sixty or seventy centimeters wide. The length of it would have been a couple of meters, because we could all lie on top of each other comfortably. My parents couldn’t stand, but I could, and I sort of walked between them. This cabinet was in a cellar, so it was well hidden. Our presence there was so secret, not even the children of the hiding family knew that we were there. That was where we stayed for thirteen months!"
"“In the middle of the night the farmer would bring us bread and potatoes, and often cold soup and vegetables, a bucket of water for drinking and washing, and a separate bucket to use for a toilet. So we weren’t starving; and as horrible as it sounds, I didn’t think it was so bad. In fact one great thing about this odd existence was that I got to see so much of my father for the first time in my life! He taught me the alphabet and counting to one hundred by writing on the palm of my hand and silently whispering in my ear. I was challenged and fascinated. I would have loved to get out and go play with the children I could hear in the distance, but when my parents said I couldn’t until the war was over, I accepted that."
After a year the money ran out, and soon they had to leave. The parents couldn't stand straight, but they all walked away.
"“Then something extraordinary happened: The color of the world started changing from pitch black to the pinks, reds, and oranges of a sunrise. I was dazzled! After nearly a quarter of my life in that cabinet I was literally seeing the light. My father warned me not to look at the brightness too quickly, so I wouldn’t go blind, but I was enthralled."
They were caught by Ukrainian soldiers and were taken to Lublin ghetto, where adults had meagre ration and children none. But the partisans needed a doctor, so they were smuggled out. The family stayed in a village, but soon Richard joined his father in forests. The partisans decided Richard should be one of them. They caught German soldiers and executed them.
"“My job was to put my feather under the nose of each soldier and count up to a hundred to see if he was dead. (Luckily I could do that, thanks to my schooling in the cabinet.) Occasionally the Germans used to plead with me and say, ‘Frau, frau, kinder…my wife, my wife, my children.’ But being a very hardened partisan, I had no feeling. Partisans took no prisoners. It was either them or us. For every one of them that lived, it could be one of us who died. I would call over some of the partisans to finish the job. I never did that part. I didn’t want to get blood on my hands. I just did the feather business."
"The present I got for my ninth birthday was a loaf of bread, the most precious gift I ever got in my life, during the war, before, or since! I kept that bread sitting inside my shirt for about three months. Whenever I was hungry, I would scratch a few crumbs. I started scratching on it in April and I scratched it until it was midsummer. It’s impossible to describe how I treasured that bread!"
The bombings got more intense in 1944. Richard saw a leg without the body, and with great effort brought it to his father expecting he could use it for someone who needed it. The hospital was attacked, and Richard was told Germans had taken away his father. He was reunited with his mother and they returned home, but were very poor. Their former friends, other doctor's wives, slammed the doors in their faces because Jews were supposed to be dead. Some threw them food.
"“For me this more or less closed a chapter. My father had been a patriotic Pole. He gave his life fighting for that country. Yet this was the reception his wife got from the Poles! As a result I’ve never considered myself a Pole, and I never will. To them I was always a Jew. I never speak that language, even though I understand it perfectly well. And I will never go back to Poland as long as I live."
Richard had tuberculosis and was hospitalised, and recovered. His mother was shocked when Richard and she saw a Jew shot in street lying in a pool of blood and Richard indicated that he'd seen worse. They soon left for a DP camp in Stuttgart, where he could go to school, and then to France where Richard's mother had a brother. She couldn't find good work since she didn't speak French, and he was sent to an orphanage by his uncle.
"At least the schooling was good. In those four and a half years I completed ten grades!"
"“Master Pier, director at the orphanage, ran a very disciplined establishment. We all shared various chores: cooking, cleaning, gathering wood, and so on. The best times were when American ladies from Joint and other Jewish organizations visited us. In return for chocolates, sweets, and chewing gum we told them stories about the war. My stories were the most popular. As the years went by, I had a real fan club."
They migrated in 1951 to Australia to join another uncle and his family, where he was treated better than in the home of the French relatives. He gives talks about his war experience, apart from his work at the hospital.
"I feel that this time it was us: the Jews. But the same kind of genocide can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone. Until we finally start to put an end to racism, bigotry, and intolerance, I don’t see how any one of us will ever be safe.”"
................................................................................................
"KIM FENDRICK
"A family therapist in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Kim is a divorced mother of two and a new grandmother. With both her parents gone now, Kim feels an enormous sense of loss. “I adore my new little grandson,” Kim says. But she resents it when someone suggests that the baby is a replacement for her father. “As much as I love little Josh, he can never be what my father was to me,” Kim says with characteristic honesty about her feelings. In her life there is also Walter, whom she met a year ago and calls, “my third child.” Walter lives nearby, paints houses, plays guitar—and happens to be the grandson of Jeremkov, the Polish farmer who kept Kim and her family safe from the Nazis."
"“When the pogroms began, my grandfather was one of the first to be taken. He was rounded up in the street with some other men, marched to the zamuk, a big stone building in the center of town, and shot. We learned about it later that day, when one man who had managed to escape came and told us the sad news. I was shocked, but as a child I don’t think I grasped that he was gone for good.
"“A few days later two Nazi soldiers came barging into our apartment, on a search for whatever. My grandmother, who was heartbroken, started to question them: ‘Why did you take my husband?’ she asked in perfect German. She still had trouble believing that people who spoke the same cultured language as Goethe and Schiller could behave so brutally. Instead of answering, one of the soldiers raised his gun and he shot her, right in the chest. I just stood there, unable to believe what I’d just seen. ‘This isn’t really happening,’ I told myself. Luckily the bullet missed my grandmother’s heart. She recovered, but I understood that life was no longer normal or safe."
The family went into hiding, literally underground, and were helped by a series of people, some subsequently executed by nazis for hiding Jews, and they kept on moving from one underground hiding to another, then to forest and later joined by an uncle and then moved to a ghetto loft, and then a cave. In April 1944 Russians arrived.
"By July the area had been secured by the Russian army. When the Jeremkovs came and told us it was safe to leave, we moved into a little abandoned house on the outskirts of town. I don’t know if we got permission or if we just found it, but seven of us moved in: my uncle and aunt, his mother, my parents, my grandmother, and I. My father got a job in a flour mill. He’d bring home sacks of flour, and the women would bake rolls. Then my aunt and I would sell them to the Russian soldiers.
"“Eagerly my aunt and uncle went to claim their daughter, Fela, the baby they had given away two years earlier. Apparently her foster parents didn’t want to give her up. Nor was three-year-old Fela thrilled about joining us either."
They moved from Floceow to western Poland, where Kim was appreciated at school by her teachers, but faced antisemitism from children, some threw lighted matches at her on way home. Her parents let her leave school and they all migrated to U.S., where Fela eventually was a judge in California.
"The Jeremkovs, the Polish family who saved us, had five children. Over the years my mother and my aunt kept in touch with all of them. When one of the sons died, the son of that son wrote to my aunt and said, ‘You can stop writing. My father is dead.’ My aunt wrote back, ‘If your father is gone, then you must continue writing!’ That grandson, whose name was Walter, did keep up a correspondence with her. Then, quite unexpectedly in the summer of 1990, he was here! He had engaged in anti-Communist activities, and because of that he had been forced to leave Poland."
He was close to where Kim lived, and visited. It was a connection with past for Kim after losing her parents. Kim took him to a Chinese restaurant where they managed conversation.
"I handed him an envelope filled with money, a gift from my son and me. Walter shook his head. He didn’t even know how much it was, but he refused to take it.
"“I told him, ‘You must. I never had a chance to thank your grandparents for our lives. That’s why you have to take this, because you’re my symbol of them.’ With some reluctance Walter did take the money, which he clearly needed to get himself established. Since then we’ve developed a wonderfully warm relationship. I call him my third child! I’ve helped him get work as a housepainter—he’s an excellent craftsman! And now he lives near here."
His fiance arrived from Poland, and Kim threw them a reception where over sixty people arrived, although he knew no one.
"LEON GINSBURG"
"“I was born in 1932 in Maciejow, a small town at the border where Poland ends and Russia begins. Our community was basically Hasidic. We all kept our heads covered, and the older men wore beards. The Ukrainians who ruled that part of Poland were viciously anti-Semitic, but we were unprepared for the Germans and their absolute policy of getting rid of the Jews. I was on the street the day the Germans marched into town. As a gesture of friendship the rabbi was sitting at a little table on the street with bread and salt, the traditional way of saying welcome. Suddenly one of the Germans pushed the table over and told the rabbi to get out of there. I didn’t understand what was happening.
"“Shortly after that an SS group settled in the town. The first thing they did was to order all the men between sixteen and sixty to report. The SS made it clear that anyone who didn’t go could be killed. So most of the people reported. But once they lined up, they couldn’t get out; they were covered by machine guns. I was just a little boy, but I saw what was happening, and I got out of that area quickly. Later I heard the shots. All those people had been marched inside the headquarters and killed. After that the killing was at random, but for us Jews normal life was over. We had a six P.M. curfew. If you were caught outside after that, you were shot. I would hear the German patrols marching on the cobblestone streets a block away."
Hereafter it becomes a tale of series of hiding and escapes Leon went through, with other people to begin with and finally by himself as they kept getting caught and killed. He saw his mother killed, as was his brother when Leon went to get food. There were various farmers who helped by hiding and feeding him.
"“When spring came, I felt I ought to earn my keep, so I took a job as a shepherd and worked until summer. At this time the Ukrainians decided that the Jews were all gone, and they started attacking Polish villages. Some of these Seventh-Day Adventists believed, as many Jews did, that God would intercede and smite the Germans. Just like the Jews, those Protestants and Catholic Poles were taken to their death—forty thousand of them! Some of them didn’t want to run away. I knew of one family that was killed except for one boy who ran away. He saw the Ukrainians kill everyone in his family, bayoneting children to the walls, just like they’d done with the Jews before."
"“On another occasion two German officers had taken over half the farmhouse where I was working. They took a liking to me. They thought I was Christian. Every time they got their rations, they would give me the candy. When they saw what a hard worker I was, they said that their mother had a farm in Germany and they wanted to send me to her. I got scared because that was all I needed! I knew if I got to Germany, they would give me an inspection and I’d be finished. I had to tell them, ‘No, I’m waiting here. My parents may be alive.’ Somehow I got out of that.
"“Finally the war and my hiding ordeal were over. I was brought to the United States in a group of orphans. I went to live with an aunt. I spoke no English, but always resourceful, I managed to excel in school, earning grades of ninety-five and higher. Later I put myself through college, first with a job selling ice cream and candy in the subways and then with a part-time job in a factory. Now, four decades later, I have a beautiful wife who was also hidden as a child, three successful children, and even a grandchild."
"I can’t stay quiet any longer. I was just reading about an organization that’s been putting ads in college newspapers, claiming that the Holocaust never happened. In response I wrote an article, giving a little of my background. I sent it to the editor of the Rutgers University newspaper. I felt I had to go on record. I realize that the older survivors are passing away, and I’m getting older myself. When I’m gone, there will be very few people left with any firsthand experience. So what can I do but tell the truth?”"
"KIM FENDRICK
"A family therapist in Haddonfield, New Jersey, Kim is a divorced mother of two and a new grandmother. With both her parents gone now, Kim feels an enormous sense of loss. “I adore my new little grandson,” Kim says. But she resents it when someone suggests that the baby is a replacement for her father. “As much as I love little Josh, he can never be what my father was to me,” Kim says with characteristic honesty about her feelings. In her life there is also Walter, whom she met a year ago and calls, “my third child.” Walter lives nearby, paints houses, plays guitar—and happens to be the grandson of Jeremkov, the Polish farmer who kept Kim and her family safe from the Nazis."
"“When the pogroms began, my grandfather was one of the first to be taken. He was rounded up in the street with some other men, marched to the zamuk, a big stone building in the center of town, and shot. We learned about it later that day, when one man who had managed to escape came and told us the sad news. I was shocked, but as a child I don’t think I grasped that he was gone for good.
"“A few days later two Nazi soldiers came barging into our apartment, on a search for whatever. My grandmother, who was heartbroken, started to question them: ‘Why did you take my husband?’ she asked in perfect German. She still had trouble believing that people who spoke the same cultured language as Goethe and Schiller could behave so brutally. Instead of answering, one of the soldiers raised his gun and he shot her, right in the chest. I just stood there, unable to believe what I’d just seen. ‘This isn’t really happening,’ I told myself. Luckily the bullet missed my grandmother’s heart. She recovered, but I understood that life was no longer normal or safe."
The family went into hiding, literally underground, and were helped by a series of people, some subsequently executed by nazis for hiding Jews, and they kept on moving from one underground hiding to another, then to forest and later joined by an uncle and then moved to a ghetto loft, and then a cave. In April 1944 Russians arrived.
"By July the area had been secured by the Russian army. When the Jeremkovs came and told us it was safe to leave, we moved into a little abandoned house on the outskirts of town. I don’t know if we got permission or if we just found it, but seven of us moved in: my uncle and aunt, his mother, my parents, my grandmother, and I. My father got a job in a flour mill. He’d bring home sacks of flour, and the women would bake rolls. Then my aunt and I would sell them to the Russian soldiers.
"“Eagerly my aunt and uncle went to claim their daughter, Fela, the baby they had given away two years earlier. Apparently her foster parents didn’t want to give her up. Nor was three-year-old Fela thrilled about joining us either."
They moved from Floceow to western Poland, where Kim was appreciated at school by her teachers, but faced antisemitism from children, some threw lighted matches at her on way home. Her parents let her leave school and they all migrated to U.S., where Fela eventually was a judge in California.
"The Jeremkovs, the Polish family who saved us, had five children. Over the years my mother and my aunt kept in touch with all of them. When one of the sons died, the son of that son wrote to my aunt and said, ‘You can stop writing. My father is dead.’ My aunt wrote back, ‘If your father is gone, then you must continue writing!’ That grandson, whose name was Walter, did keep up a correspondence with her. Then, quite unexpectedly in the summer of 1990, he was here! He had engaged in anti-Communist activities, and because of that he had been forced to leave Poland."
He was close to where Kim lived, and visited. It was a connection with past for Kim after losing her parents. Kim took him to a Chinese restaurant where they managed conversation.
"I handed him an envelope filled with money, a gift from my son and me. Walter shook his head. He didn’t even know how much it was, but he refused to take it.
"“I told him, ‘You must. I never had a chance to thank your grandparents for our lives. That’s why you have to take this, because you’re my symbol of them.’ With some reluctance Walter did take the money, which he clearly needed to get himself established. Since then we’ve developed a wonderfully warm relationship. I call him my third child! I’ve helped him get work as a housepainter—he’s an excellent craftsman! And now he lives near here."
His fiance arrived from Poland, and Kim threw them a reception where over sixty people arrived, although he knew no one.
................................................................................................
"LEON GINSBURG"
"“I was born in 1932 in Maciejow, a small town at the border where Poland ends and Russia begins. Our community was basically Hasidic. We all kept our heads covered, and the older men wore beards. The Ukrainians who ruled that part of Poland were viciously anti-Semitic, but we were unprepared for the Germans and their absolute policy of getting rid of the Jews. I was on the street the day the Germans marched into town. As a gesture of friendship the rabbi was sitting at a little table on the street with bread and salt, the traditional way of saying welcome. Suddenly one of the Germans pushed the table over and told the rabbi to get out of there. I didn’t understand what was happening.
"“Shortly after that an SS group settled in the town. The first thing they did was to order all the men between sixteen and sixty to report. The SS made it clear that anyone who didn’t go could be killed. So most of the people reported. But once they lined up, they couldn’t get out; they were covered by machine guns. I was just a little boy, but I saw what was happening, and I got out of that area quickly. Later I heard the shots. All those people had been marched inside the headquarters and killed. After that the killing was at random, but for us Jews normal life was over. We had a six P.M. curfew. If you were caught outside after that, you were shot. I would hear the German patrols marching on the cobblestone streets a block away."
Hereafter it becomes a tale of series of hiding and escapes Leon went through, with other people to begin with and finally by himself as they kept getting caught and killed. He saw his mother killed, as was his brother when Leon went to get food. There were various farmers who helped by hiding and feeding him.
"“When spring came, I felt I ought to earn my keep, so I took a job as a shepherd and worked until summer. At this time the Ukrainians decided that the Jews were all gone, and they started attacking Polish villages. Some of these Seventh-Day Adventists believed, as many Jews did, that God would intercede and smite the Germans. Just like the Jews, those Protestants and Catholic Poles were taken to their death—forty thousand of them! Some of them didn’t want to run away. I knew of one family that was killed except for one boy who ran away. He saw the Ukrainians kill everyone in his family, bayoneting children to the walls, just like they’d done with the Jews before."
"“On another occasion two German officers had taken over half the farmhouse where I was working. They took a liking to me. They thought I was Christian. Every time they got their rations, they would give me the candy. When they saw what a hard worker I was, they said that their mother had a farm in Germany and they wanted to send me to her. I got scared because that was all I needed! I knew if I got to Germany, they would give me an inspection and I’d be finished. I had to tell them, ‘No, I’m waiting here. My parents may be alive.’ Somehow I got out of that.
"“Finally the war and my hiding ordeal were over. I was brought to the United States in a group of orphans. I went to live with an aunt. I spoke no English, but always resourceful, I managed to excel in school, earning grades of ninety-five and higher. Later I put myself through college, first with a job selling ice cream and candy in the subways and then with a part-time job in a factory. Now, four decades later, I have a beautiful wife who was also hidden as a child, three successful children, and even a grandchild."
"I can’t stay quiet any longer. I was just reading about an organization that’s been putting ads in college newspapers, claiming that the Holocaust never happened. In response I wrote an article, giving a little of my background. I sent it to the editor of the Rutgers University newspaper. I felt I had to go on record. I realize that the older survivors are passing away, and I’m getting older myself. When I’m gone, there will be very few people left with any firsthand experience. So what can I do but tell the truth?”"
................................................................................................
"LOLA KAUFMAN"
"“I was born on October 4, 1934, in the western Ukraine, in a town called Czortkov. One day when I was a very little girl, I was standing on the street when the Russians came in with tanks and soldiers. Suddenly shooting broke out. Everyone was running. That was scary, but in 1941 when the Germans came in, all the Jews were petrified in general—with good reason!"
"Two weeks later it was Purim, a Jewish holiday of joy and celebration. My mother and her cousin and two other women had just left on their way to work when an SS officer with a huge police dog stopped them. He arrested all four of them for no special reason. He took them to the local headquarters, made them undress, and then he shot them to death. That night my grandmother told me what had happened. She hugged me and she said, ‘Don’t ever forget you were very important to your mother.’ That night I lay in bed terrified, wondering what would happen next."
Lola's grandmother paid a Ukrainian farmer woman to take care of her, which she did, but her son in law threatened to take her to Gestapo. She then arranged it with her sister who hid and fed her out of kindness despite a son who was policeman and very antisemitic. After Russians came, Lola was taken care of by strangers including Russian soldiers, until her uncle found her, he'd lost all his family. They'd lost most relatives.
"I’m very, very glad to be alive. I want to make the most of every moment I have. That’s the point I keep trying to make to my kids when I say to them, ‘Listen, this is not a dress rehearsal.’ ”"
"SANNE SPETTER"
"“I was born in Amsterdam in 1942. Besides being Jewish, my parents were politically active and wanted by the police. So, when I was two months old, they found a safe place for me with a Christian doctor named Drion and his wife, who agreed to keep me in their home in Rotterdam for however long the war would take."
"I was very gregarious and would run up to strangers, including SS officers, who said, ‘Oh, what a sweet little child,’ and jiggled me on their knees. My mother—that is, my hiding mother—told me, ‘I used to go crazy. If they’d only known!’ But it was probably the smart thing to do.
"“How did I learn that all my aunts and uncles, my little brother, my ‘twin’ sister, Hanneke, and even my parents weren’t mine? For years I have racked my brain over that. Even if someone did try to explain it to me then, it would have made no sense. Apparently both my parents had been listed as dead. The Drions were preparing to adopt me when word came that my mother had been killed in Auschwitz, but my father was alive! Sometime after that the Drions were asked to put me in a halfway house until my father could get me. The Drions’ job was done, and they were not supposed to have any further contact with me."
"“No doubt in my mind, I still assumed that I’d go back to the Drions when I was well. That didn’t happen. Instead I went to Amsterdam to live with my father and Ina, his new bride. The Drions were supposed to be well out of my life by then, but I missed them. Even a year later I begged so relentlessly to see them, my father finally allowed Hanneke to come and spend a weekend with us. I looked forward to that visit, but it wasn’t fun. It was very awkward. I couldn’t figure out why. It was only years later that Hanneke told me how difficult my stepmother had made it for her."
Sanne suffered due to this separation from the Drions, especially when taken away to U.S., in her having to learn to please her family and not being able to trust the stepmother who said that Drions were only doing it for money and took things given for Sanne to use them for Hanneke. Later, the Drions called her when Mrs Drions was seriously ill, and she went to be with them, staying five weeks. Mrs. Drions died soon after her return.
"LOLA KAUFMAN"
"“I was born on October 4, 1934, in the western Ukraine, in a town called Czortkov. One day when I was a very little girl, I was standing on the street when the Russians came in with tanks and soldiers. Suddenly shooting broke out. Everyone was running. That was scary, but in 1941 when the Germans came in, all the Jews were petrified in general—with good reason!"
"Two weeks later it was Purim, a Jewish holiday of joy and celebration. My mother and her cousin and two other women had just left on their way to work when an SS officer with a huge police dog stopped them. He arrested all four of them for no special reason. He took them to the local headquarters, made them undress, and then he shot them to death. That night my grandmother told me what had happened. She hugged me and she said, ‘Don’t ever forget you were very important to your mother.’ That night I lay in bed terrified, wondering what would happen next."
Lola's grandmother paid a Ukrainian farmer woman to take care of her, which she did, but her son in law threatened to take her to Gestapo. She then arranged it with her sister who hid and fed her out of kindness despite a son who was policeman and very antisemitic. After Russians came, Lola was taken care of by strangers including Russian soldiers, until her uncle found her, he'd lost all his family. They'd lost most relatives.
"I’m very, very glad to be alive. I want to make the most of every moment I have. That’s the point I keep trying to make to my kids when I say to them, ‘Listen, this is not a dress rehearsal.’ ”"
................................................................................................
"SANNE SPETTER"
"“I was born in Amsterdam in 1942. Besides being Jewish, my parents were politically active and wanted by the police. So, when I was two months old, they found a safe place for me with a Christian doctor named Drion and his wife, who agreed to keep me in their home in Rotterdam for however long the war would take."
"I was very gregarious and would run up to strangers, including SS officers, who said, ‘Oh, what a sweet little child,’ and jiggled me on their knees. My mother—that is, my hiding mother—told me, ‘I used to go crazy. If they’d only known!’ But it was probably the smart thing to do.
"“How did I learn that all my aunts and uncles, my little brother, my ‘twin’ sister, Hanneke, and even my parents weren’t mine? For years I have racked my brain over that. Even if someone did try to explain it to me then, it would have made no sense. Apparently both my parents had been listed as dead. The Drions were preparing to adopt me when word came that my mother had been killed in Auschwitz, but my father was alive! Sometime after that the Drions were asked to put me in a halfway house until my father could get me. The Drions’ job was done, and they were not supposed to have any further contact with me."
"“No doubt in my mind, I still assumed that I’d go back to the Drions when I was well. That didn’t happen. Instead I went to Amsterdam to live with my father and Ina, his new bride. The Drions were supposed to be well out of my life by then, but I missed them. Even a year later I begged so relentlessly to see them, my father finally allowed Hanneke to come and spend a weekend with us. I looked forward to that visit, but it wasn’t fun. It was very awkward. I couldn’t figure out why. It was only years later that Hanneke told me how difficult my stepmother had made it for her."
Sanne suffered due to this separation from the Drions, especially when taken away to U.S., in her having to learn to please her family and not being able to trust the stepmother who said that Drions were only doing it for money and took things given for Sanne to use them for Hanneke. Later, the Drions called her when Mrs Drions was seriously ill, and she went to be with them, staying five weeks. Mrs. Drions died soon after her return.
................................................................................................
"MARIE-CLAIRE RAKOWSKI"
"“For me the hell began after the war. I was born in Belgium in 1943, when the Germans were in control. Afraid we were going to be captured, my mother sent my sister to a convent. Because I was just a baby, I was placed with a Catholic couple named Hicket, who couldn’t have children. I felt safe and much loved in their home. I was especially attached to the husband, a jolly, big teddy bear of a pharmacist I called Poppy."
She was happy and loved.
"“All that changed abruptly in 1947, when I was taken away from the Hickets in the middle of the night. All I remember is a red-headed man with a red beard, holding tightly to my hand as we walked across railroad tracks in pitch darkness. As a four-year-old I was very, very perplexed. I didn’t know this man. When I started to whimper, he gave me candy: strange, iridescent hard candy, which I didn’t like. It was nothing like the delicious gumdrops in my Poppy’s jar. Moments later we boarded a train. I felt very uncomfortable and very confused. This will be over and he’ll take me home soon,’ I told myself over and over.
"“I was wrong. I was never to see Monsieur or Madame Hicket again. That night I didn’t know what was happening. What I learned later was that my mother had tried to get me back earlier, but my hiding family had not wanted to let me go. In fact the war had ended in 1945 when I was two, but my mother, just coming out of Auschwitz, was so ill then that I was allowed to stay with the Hickets for another couple of years while she recuperated. Now, however, she had authorized a Jewish organization to take me back."
"“The train took us to Switzerland, where I was reunited with my sister. She had contracted typhus in the convent and lost most of her hair. She could see right away that I was a more glowing, happy child in many ways, and she resented it. The first thing she did when she met me was to grab the doll I’d brought and rip it apart. From then on she took every possible opportunity to make me miserable."
Marie went through a series of foster homes, always with her sister who went on beating her up, and a last foster home was of a rabbi who abused her sexually. Finally they were reunited with their mother who had arrived late in U.S. because the daughters were Belgian and the mother Polish. But it continued to be miserable for Marie who was perceived by the sister as not having undergone the misery of holocaust which they had, and she couldn't bond with either, being ill treated by them. She left at sixteen, placed in a group home, but eventually graduated from college and did better.
"What protected me was the solid foundation of love that I’d had up to the age of four. That was something I was able to hold on to in a private place. It helped me to endure the bad parts because I knew there was something better, even if I didn’t have it anymore, even if I’d never find it again. That of course was what my sister was always so jealous of and couldn’t forgive me for. She understood that I had had love and security, which she had never had. That drove her crazy."
Marie attended a meeting of survivors and met some, and began a healing process in the Hidden Child gathering.
"‘I would like to give you a homework assignment for the next thirty years: Tell your story! Tell your story to someone, and you will begin the process of healing.’
"“I really hope they took that to heart. I’m convinced that it’s time for us to share our stories with the world. If we don’t speak up while we have the chance, there will be nothing to stop future generations of people from saying, ‘Those children were so young then, and it was so long ago. How could it ever really matter anymore?’ ”"
................................................................................................
"RUTH RUBENSTEIN"
"“My life began in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, but we fled from there to Belgium in 1939 when I was one and a half. Shortly after that my father was picked up and sent to a detention camp. I was distraught. I kept asking for him, but all my mother could think of to say was, ‘He went to buy bread,’ or ‘He went to the butcher shop.’ The camp was a horrifying, filthy place. When he escaped and came home a year later, I didn’t even recognize him. I called him the uncle. I said to my mother, ‘The uncle brought me chocolate.’ I don’t know if I truly didn’t know that he was the beloved papa I’d missed so much—or if, even then, I had the concept that you just blot out the picture of a loved one who’s left in order not to hurt so much. “
"By 1942 life was more precarious. My father was almost arrested, but he jumped off of a balcony and escaped. However, the Gestapo had his papers, so from then on we had to keep a very low profile. Because I spoke German, my parents were always shushing me in the street. I noticed they both had stricken, angry looks on their faces, and I wondered what I’d said that was bad. In the evenings they’d often snap at me. Not understanding the pressure they were under, I felt responsible. At night I slept between them. My father tossed and turned and talked in his sleep. Once, my mother’s crying woke me up. I tried to stroke her cheek and her soft curly hair, but that just made her cry harder."
Ruth was taken to a convent where she was ill and suffered from being left. Her parents brought her back, but it still wasn't safe. They found a Belgian couple to take her.
"My parents had located a Belgian couple named DeMarneff, who had no children and were eager to take me into their home. I don’t remember saying good-bye to my parents as I went off with Madame and Monsieur DeMarneff. She played with me—something about fingers and pretending they weren’t there. We laughed together. “I recovered very quickly, at least on the surface. The couple lived in a villa in a suburb of Brussels, and they were very, very kind to me. The DeMarneffs passed me off as a niece from Italy. Later I learned that the whole village knew I was Jewish and they all protected me. Madame DeMarneff-Mami—was very nurturing and roly-poly and always making wonderful butter cookies and overfeeding me. I became a fat little girl, which is where I get my obsession with fat."
She was loved, safe and played with other children around.
"“My parents, who spent the war hiding in a series of different places in Brussels, visited me once a month. Apparently that was the only time they got to eat. Strangely I cannot remember a single one of their visits! There was one time I wasn’t there when they came, and my mother left a chocolate hen. When I saw that chocolate hen, I just cried and cried. It was such a breakthrough of grief! Underneath the outward composure I must have been brimming with sadness and longing."
"“I stayed there for two and a half years. When the war was over, Mami and Papi DeMarneff didn’t want to part with me."
Being shuttled and feeling out of control, abandoned, she withdrew within.
"“We came to America when I was eleven. I was pretty excited about it. The man who gave us our affidavit put us up in an apartment house he owned in New York City. It was very swank. My mother covered the rug with newspapers—this gorgeous blue rug! I went to the neighborhood school and I was put in a class for non-English-speaking kids. Compared with the rest of them, I was brilliant. However, the first day I tried to come home for lunch, and I got lost. I wandered for a long time and finally found my way home and went upstairs, and I was all alone in the place. Suddenly I heard a siren from a fire engine, and I got very frightened. I was sure it was a bombing raid."
Her emotional problems came to a head when, after a marriage of twenty five years, her husband who was younger and serial philanderer, left, for another younger woman. She went emotionally out of control, and it was tough for her daughters. She's healing now, especially due to Hidden Child.
"JOSEPH STEINER"
"“I was born in 1934 in Warsaw, but it was only by chance that we were still there when the war began. In 1939, when the war broke out, my father went to Vilna. He made arrangements for the whole family to join him, and he even sent a car for us. But my mother said, ‘No, how can I leave this beautiful house?’ She was certain that the war would be over in a few months. Some neighbors from downstairs took our places and ended up safe in Australia.
"“We were not so lucky. In 1941 the Nazis forced all seven hundred thousand Warsaw Jews into the ghetto. By Yom Kippur of 1942 most of them had been sent to the death camps; only about ten thousand Warsaw Jews were left. My mother and my sisters, Ania and Nusia, and I were among those remaining. As far as the Germans were concerned, all the children were officially gone. I was still there because we were hiding out in a huge warehouse with a group of rag collectors."
Hiding in the warehouse there was problem with infestation, and Ania along with a few other people took him for a bath to the ghetto, which was then mostly empty - out of seven hundred thousand people living there, all but a thousand had been sent to extermination camps. While they slept late into morning after baths at night, the warehouse was raided, and Nusia and their mother was amongst those taken. He and Ania went from one hiding place to another, managing to survive with luck.
"“Here’s the strange thing: I was never really scared! Going from hiding place to hiding place was a game of hide-and-seek. To summarize my odyssey, I hid in twenty-two places. Half the time we all stayed together, but sometimes I lost my sister for a day or a week and hid out by myself. I grew up in a hurry! I taught myself to read and write, and I even carried a map so I could plot the advance of the Russian armies. There was another element of danger: Out of those twenty-two hiding places I was in, at least sixteen of them were with members of the Polish resistance, who used me as a courier. Naturally this magnified the danger."
Joseph survived and got education in U.S. after war. He has trouble connecting emotionally with that past.
"One friend I run with is a psychiatrist, so I get free analysis. I tell him all my dreams, and he must know me very well. He says, ‘Joe you’re a survivor, and you know why? It’s because you’re always on the outside looking in. Don’t you get it? You’re never really there.’ ”"
"MARIE-CLAIRE RAKOWSKI"
"“For me the hell began after the war. I was born in Belgium in 1943, when the Germans were in control. Afraid we were going to be captured, my mother sent my sister to a convent. Because I was just a baby, I was placed with a Catholic couple named Hicket, who couldn’t have children. I felt safe and much loved in their home. I was especially attached to the husband, a jolly, big teddy bear of a pharmacist I called Poppy."
She was happy and loved.
"“All that changed abruptly in 1947, when I was taken away from the Hickets in the middle of the night. All I remember is a red-headed man with a red beard, holding tightly to my hand as we walked across railroad tracks in pitch darkness. As a four-year-old I was very, very perplexed. I didn’t know this man. When I started to whimper, he gave me candy: strange, iridescent hard candy, which I didn’t like. It was nothing like the delicious gumdrops in my Poppy’s jar. Moments later we boarded a train. I felt very uncomfortable and very confused. This will be over and he’ll take me home soon,’ I told myself over and over.
"“I was wrong. I was never to see Monsieur or Madame Hicket again. That night I didn’t know what was happening. What I learned later was that my mother had tried to get me back earlier, but my hiding family had not wanted to let me go. In fact the war had ended in 1945 when I was two, but my mother, just coming out of Auschwitz, was so ill then that I was allowed to stay with the Hickets for another couple of years while she recuperated. Now, however, she had authorized a Jewish organization to take me back."
"“The train took us to Switzerland, where I was reunited with my sister. She had contracted typhus in the convent and lost most of her hair. She could see right away that I was a more glowing, happy child in many ways, and she resented it. The first thing she did when she met me was to grab the doll I’d brought and rip it apart. From then on she took every possible opportunity to make me miserable."
Marie went through a series of foster homes, always with her sister who went on beating her up, and a last foster home was of a rabbi who abused her sexually. Finally they were reunited with their mother who had arrived late in U.S. because the daughters were Belgian and the mother Polish. But it continued to be miserable for Marie who was perceived by the sister as not having undergone the misery of holocaust which they had, and she couldn't bond with either, being ill treated by them. She left at sixteen, placed in a group home, but eventually graduated from college and did better.
"What protected me was the solid foundation of love that I’d had up to the age of four. That was something I was able to hold on to in a private place. It helped me to endure the bad parts because I knew there was something better, even if I didn’t have it anymore, even if I’d never find it again. That of course was what my sister was always so jealous of and couldn’t forgive me for. She understood that I had had love and security, which she had never had. That drove her crazy."
Marie attended a meeting of survivors and met some, and began a healing process in the Hidden Child gathering.
"‘I would like to give you a homework assignment for the next thirty years: Tell your story! Tell your story to someone, and you will begin the process of healing.’
"“I really hope they took that to heart. I’m convinced that it’s time for us to share our stories with the world. If we don’t speak up while we have the chance, there will be nothing to stop future generations of people from saying, ‘Those children were so young then, and it was so long ago. How could it ever really matter anymore?’ ”"
................................................................................................
"RUTH RUBENSTEIN"
"“My life began in Koenigsberg, East Prussia, but we fled from there to Belgium in 1939 when I was one and a half. Shortly after that my father was picked up and sent to a detention camp. I was distraught. I kept asking for him, but all my mother could think of to say was, ‘He went to buy bread,’ or ‘He went to the butcher shop.’ The camp was a horrifying, filthy place. When he escaped and came home a year later, I didn’t even recognize him. I called him the uncle. I said to my mother, ‘The uncle brought me chocolate.’ I don’t know if I truly didn’t know that he was the beloved papa I’d missed so much—or if, even then, I had the concept that you just blot out the picture of a loved one who’s left in order not to hurt so much. “
"By 1942 life was more precarious. My father was almost arrested, but he jumped off of a balcony and escaped. However, the Gestapo had his papers, so from then on we had to keep a very low profile. Because I spoke German, my parents were always shushing me in the street. I noticed they both had stricken, angry looks on their faces, and I wondered what I’d said that was bad. In the evenings they’d often snap at me. Not understanding the pressure they were under, I felt responsible. At night I slept between them. My father tossed and turned and talked in his sleep. Once, my mother’s crying woke me up. I tried to stroke her cheek and her soft curly hair, but that just made her cry harder."
Ruth was taken to a convent where she was ill and suffered from being left. Her parents brought her back, but it still wasn't safe. They found a Belgian couple to take her.
"My parents had located a Belgian couple named DeMarneff, who had no children and were eager to take me into their home. I don’t remember saying good-bye to my parents as I went off with Madame and Monsieur DeMarneff. She played with me—something about fingers and pretending they weren’t there. We laughed together. “I recovered very quickly, at least on the surface. The couple lived in a villa in a suburb of Brussels, and they were very, very kind to me. The DeMarneffs passed me off as a niece from Italy. Later I learned that the whole village knew I was Jewish and they all protected me. Madame DeMarneff-Mami—was very nurturing and roly-poly and always making wonderful butter cookies and overfeeding me. I became a fat little girl, which is where I get my obsession with fat."
She was loved, safe and played with other children around.
"“My parents, who spent the war hiding in a series of different places in Brussels, visited me once a month. Apparently that was the only time they got to eat. Strangely I cannot remember a single one of their visits! There was one time I wasn’t there when they came, and my mother left a chocolate hen. When I saw that chocolate hen, I just cried and cried. It was such a breakthrough of grief! Underneath the outward composure I must have been brimming with sadness and longing."
"“I stayed there for two and a half years. When the war was over, Mami and Papi DeMarneff didn’t want to part with me."
Being shuttled and feeling out of control, abandoned, she withdrew within.
"“We came to America when I was eleven. I was pretty excited about it. The man who gave us our affidavit put us up in an apartment house he owned in New York City. It was very swank. My mother covered the rug with newspapers—this gorgeous blue rug! I went to the neighborhood school and I was put in a class for non-English-speaking kids. Compared with the rest of them, I was brilliant. However, the first day I tried to come home for lunch, and I got lost. I wandered for a long time and finally found my way home and went upstairs, and I was all alone in the place. Suddenly I heard a siren from a fire engine, and I got very frightened. I was sure it was a bombing raid."
Her emotional problems came to a head when, after a marriage of twenty five years, her husband who was younger and serial philanderer, left, for another younger woman. She went emotionally out of control, and it was tough for her daughters. She's healing now, especially due to Hidden Child.
................................................................................................
"JOSEPH STEINER"
"“I was born in 1934 in Warsaw, but it was only by chance that we were still there when the war began. In 1939, when the war broke out, my father went to Vilna. He made arrangements for the whole family to join him, and he even sent a car for us. But my mother said, ‘No, how can I leave this beautiful house?’ She was certain that the war would be over in a few months. Some neighbors from downstairs took our places and ended up safe in Australia.
"“We were not so lucky. In 1941 the Nazis forced all seven hundred thousand Warsaw Jews into the ghetto. By Yom Kippur of 1942 most of them had been sent to the death camps; only about ten thousand Warsaw Jews were left. My mother and my sisters, Ania and Nusia, and I were among those remaining. As far as the Germans were concerned, all the children were officially gone. I was still there because we were hiding out in a huge warehouse with a group of rag collectors."
Hiding in the warehouse there was problem with infestation, and Ania along with a few other people took him for a bath to the ghetto, which was then mostly empty - out of seven hundred thousand people living there, all but a thousand had been sent to extermination camps. While they slept late into morning after baths at night, the warehouse was raided, and Nusia and their mother was amongst those taken. He and Ania went from one hiding place to another, managing to survive with luck.
"“Here’s the strange thing: I was never really scared! Going from hiding place to hiding place was a game of hide-and-seek. To summarize my odyssey, I hid in twenty-two places. Half the time we all stayed together, but sometimes I lost my sister for a day or a week and hid out by myself. I grew up in a hurry! I taught myself to read and write, and I even carried a map so I could plot the advance of the Russian armies. There was another element of danger: Out of those twenty-two hiding places I was in, at least sixteen of them were with members of the Polish resistance, who used me as a courier. Naturally this magnified the danger."
Joseph survived and got education in U.S. after war. He has trouble connecting emotionally with that past.
"One friend I run with is a psychiatrist, so I get free analysis. I tell him all my dreams, and he must know me very well. He says, ‘Joe you’re a survivor, and you know why? It’s because you’re always on the outside looking in. Don’t you get it? You’re never really there.’ ”"
................................................................................................
"CLEM LOEW, PH.D."
"“I was born in Stanislawów, which is Russia now, but was part of Poland in 1937. The war broke out in 1939 when the Russians invaded our country. However, things were still fine for us. My father was a bank manager, so we were comfortable. I was an only child. When my father carried me on his shoulders, I held on to his straight blond hair and I felt like I was on top of the world. My father seemed so very tall!
"“But those innocent days were soon over. In 1941 the Germans invaded Poland, took away our house, and put us in a ghetto. To me that was a drastic change, much as if a hurricane had struck. As a four-year-old I felt naked, exposed, vulnerable, deprived, angry, and confused. I’d just been literally stripped of all my toys and possessions. My room, my things, my order, and my friends were all gone! The most painful part of all, though, was seeing how helpless my father had become. Up to that point my dad, and my grandfather, too, had seemed so powerful and protective. But the Germans didn’t respect them. Now suddenly life seemed dangerous.
"“My father got hold of some false papers certified by the church, which was the best kind. There were only three sets: for my mother, my grandmother, and me. We three would go to another town and live as Christians, while my father and my grandfather stayed in the ghetto. Of course I would have liked it better if we’d all been together, but I wasn’t worried when we said good-bye. I understood that this was only a temporary separation. It never crossed my mind that I might never see my dad again."
While they were in that house, Gestapo came. His grandmother took him out through a back exit and they warned his mother, on her way back from work.
"“My mother and my grandmother had a more immediate concern: whatever jewelry or money that remained was in our rented room. There was a lot of discussion then about who would sneak back to get our valuables and who would stay with me. Finally it was my grandmother who insisted on going. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,’ she said, setting out. That night she was betrayed by the Polish landlady and then arrested and subsequently taken to a camp, where she was killed."
Clem and his mother relocated to another town, but the landlady checked him, and asked his mother if it really was her son. Smart and quick, the mother told her he was adopted - she was blond. She subsequently hid him in a convent where the nuns and bishop protected him.
"“I had several close calls. One time I was outside playing in the sandbox when a nun rushed over to me, grabbed me, and dragged me inside. She slid me under a bed, whispering, ‘The Gestapo are coming to search for Jews.’ I lay there terrified until the coast was clear. Another time the Gestapo did find me. The officers were actually dragging me away! One was yanking me out the door when a retired bishop living in the convent hobbled down the wide steps and yelled, ‘If you take him, then you have to take me too.’ He put his life on the line for me! The Nazis could easily have taken both of us, but for whatever reason they left me alone."
After the war, parents began arriving for the kids. Clem worried about what if his mother never came.
"I felt like my entire existence depended on my mother coming back for me. Luckily she did! She walked a hundred miles. When I saw her, I ran to her and we both cried. I just held on to her, and it was wonderful.
"“My father, on the other hand, was gone. We heard that he died in a concentration camp. He actually broke out of a train en route to the camp. He and another man jumped off the train at high speed and they survived the fall, but then they went to see a friend, who subsequently betrayed them, and so they were sent back to the camp and killed."
They came to U.S. after living in Munich for a while. Clem talks about effects of his past into his adulthood.
"One day I was in New Jersey. A Jewish organization had invited me to teach the Holocaust in public schools. As I was telling the kids about my experiences, there was this knock on the door.
"“I was startled! I associated that knock with the Nazis coming to look for me. It was fleeting, it was a flash, and of course right away I told myself, Nazis aren’t here, I’m safe. The children and the teacher would never have that kind of reaction. Of course there was no real danger, and yet my heart was pounding."
"“I also tend to be a little paranoid. I get a chip on my shoulder when I feel the remotest possibility that someone might be taking advantage of me. If I ask about a car rental and they quote the wrong price, I tend to take it personally as if they did it on purpose because I’m a Jew. I often overreact. I have a sensitive, raw spot about being mistreated, being lied to, not being accepted."
"“We were just kids, but we had the pain! Nowadays if you’re a cop and you kill somebody, you go for counseling, to be debriefed psychologically—and you should. On the other hand, we went through hell, and nobody provided any psychological counseling. We just had to deal with it. Children were ignored, and as a result a lot of us pushed our feelings under the rug. Maybe this is one reason why it’s taken so long to ‘come out’ with those feelings in a public way.
"“About six years ago I went to my first gathering of child Holocaust survivors. I walked in and sat down there in a very arrogant way. I felt above the others, convinced that I had more money and more professional credentials. I also felt I was more emotionally intact. I was putting up a wall of superiority to distance myself from the others. Then, as they started talking, I felt that wall come down. Suddenly I was with brothers and sisters! It was a powerful connection. Since then I’ve been to several similar gatherings, and I’ve even run workshops."
"“I may never get through mourning my father. I’ve been to all kinds of workshops about saying good-bye to him and so on—but I still have this magical faith he may still be alive. I don’t think I want to lose that! At these child-survivor meetings there’s a bulletin board of missing people. I put up a notice about my father. Sure, I know it’s probably futile, but I still do it, and I want to do it, because you just never know.”"
................................................................................................
"JOSEPH VLES"
"“I was born in Holland in 1939. By the time I was three and a half years old, the Germans were coming in the middle of the night and taking Jews away. My parents were grateful to be offered a hiding place. There was no room for the children, so very quickly they had to find other places for my brother and me. I was taken to a family named Dagnelie, who owned a plant nursery in a small farm community called Amerongen. My parents didn’t know where I was and vice versa. But the family treated me well, and several events stand out."
Since Dagnelie was in resistance, Gestapo and German soldiers visited frequently. Dagnelie hid him, but he was discovered. They let him be. He learned to deal with the dangerous visits. Then there were bombings, and finally liberation.
"“Finally we were liberated. Canadian troops were throwing loaves of bread and chocolate bars right out of their tanks. I had never seen bread that white before. It seemed so special. Not long after that my parents came to pick me up. That was very upsetting for me, because I didn’t even know who they were. Why were these two strangers telling me that we were going home? I didn’t understand. I thought I was home. They said, ‘No, we are your parents.’ I didn’t like it. I was wearing a short little brown pair of pants and a blue sweater. Holding my hand, they walked me out to somebody’s car, an old Citroën. I felt very strange, sitting between these people who claimed they were my parents as we drove away from what I’d always believed was home. I cried, and my mother cried too—but for totally opposite reasons.
"“My parents told me that my aunt and my grandfather had died in the war and that many other relatives had suffered horribly in the camps. They also told me that my brother, who had been hidden not far from where I was, had died of some illness because there was no medical attention at all and certainly not for a little Jewish kid who was in hiding. This was all news to me. I didn’t even remember that I had a brother! After that I never went back to see the Dagnelies. I don’t know why. I was only a child, but I don’t know why I didn’t at least ask to see them again. Now of course they are dead."
He didn't stay long with parents, and was on his own at sixteen.
"“Today I’m still on guard, protecting myself. As a Jew I don’t think I could ever get involved with the spontaneous, backslapping male bonding that goes on in bars where guys get together to watch football games. I wouldn’t be able to let down my guard enough to have that kind of fun. I always need to know exactly what’s going on. I have to be in control. Sometimes I think that’s why it took me three marriages before I could feel at all relaxed or trusting."
"“It’s been hard for me to develop a real, real intimate relationship. I’ve been married to Deborah, my third wife, for eighteen years now. I have the feeling that, yes, I can be myself. It’s the first time! Deborah, by the way, is not Jewish. She is black. Sometimes I wonder if that was what I was unconsciously looking for. My first two wives were white Anglo-Saxons. Deborah is the only woman who has ever really understood me. She and I are extremely close. When I tell her what I went through, she often says, ‘I understand that because I’ve gone through similar things.’ She grew up fast also. In another sense we’ve grown up together. If you compare us now to, let’s say, ten years ago, there’s quite a difference."
"“Now I’m fifty-two. I really wish I had a Ph.D. It’s like a badge that gives you immediate recognition so that you don’t have to keep proving that you’re bright or that you know things. Still, I’ve done okay without even a high school diploma! I got into the computer field twenty years ago when it was new and nobody knew anything. There was no such thing as computer science and no school that taught it. I knew what I was doing. I even wrote a book on computers for the American Management Association."
His father died, they were never close, but he had a relationship with the mother who lived in Holland.
"CLEM LOEW, PH.D."
"“I was born in Stanislawów, which is Russia now, but was part of Poland in 1937. The war broke out in 1939 when the Russians invaded our country. However, things were still fine for us. My father was a bank manager, so we were comfortable. I was an only child. When my father carried me on his shoulders, I held on to his straight blond hair and I felt like I was on top of the world. My father seemed so very tall!
"“But those innocent days were soon over. In 1941 the Germans invaded Poland, took away our house, and put us in a ghetto. To me that was a drastic change, much as if a hurricane had struck. As a four-year-old I felt naked, exposed, vulnerable, deprived, angry, and confused. I’d just been literally stripped of all my toys and possessions. My room, my things, my order, and my friends were all gone! The most painful part of all, though, was seeing how helpless my father had become. Up to that point my dad, and my grandfather, too, had seemed so powerful and protective. But the Germans didn’t respect them. Now suddenly life seemed dangerous.
"“My father got hold of some false papers certified by the church, which was the best kind. There were only three sets: for my mother, my grandmother, and me. We three would go to another town and live as Christians, while my father and my grandfather stayed in the ghetto. Of course I would have liked it better if we’d all been together, but I wasn’t worried when we said good-bye. I understood that this was only a temporary separation. It never crossed my mind that I might never see my dad again."
While they were in that house, Gestapo came. His grandmother took him out through a back exit and they warned his mother, on her way back from work.
"“My mother and my grandmother had a more immediate concern: whatever jewelry or money that remained was in our rented room. There was a lot of discussion then about who would sneak back to get our valuables and who would stay with me. Finally it was my grandmother who insisted on going. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be fine,’ she said, setting out. That night she was betrayed by the Polish landlady and then arrested and subsequently taken to a camp, where she was killed."
Clem and his mother relocated to another town, but the landlady checked him, and asked his mother if it really was her son. Smart and quick, the mother told her he was adopted - she was blond. She subsequently hid him in a convent where the nuns and bishop protected him.
"“I had several close calls. One time I was outside playing in the sandbox when a nun rushed over to me, grabbed me, and dragged me inside. She slid me under a bed, whispering, ‘The Gestapo are coming to search for Jews.’ I lay there terrified until the coast was clear. Another time the Gestapo did find me. The officers were actually dragging me away! One was yanking me out the door when a retired bishop living in the convent hobbled down the wide steps and yelled, ‘If you take him, then you have to take me too.’ He put his life on the line for me! The Nazis could easily have taken both of us, but for whatever reason they left me alone."
After the war, parents began arriving for the kids. Clem worried about what if his mother never came.
"I felt like my entire existence depended on my mother coming back for me. Luckily she did! She walked a hundred miles. When I saw her, I ran to her and we both cried. I just held on to her, and it was wonderful.
"“My father, on the other hand, was gone. We heard that he died in a concentration camp. He actually broke out of a train en route to the camp. He and another man jumped off the train at high speed and they survived the fall, but then they went to see a friend, who subsequently betrayed them, and so they were sent back to the camp and killed."
They came to U.S. after living in Munich for a while. Clem talks about effects of his past into his adulthood.
"One day I was in New Jersey. A Jewish organization had invited me to teach the Holocaust in public schools. As I was telling the kids about my experiences, there was this knock on the door.
"“I was startled! I associated that knock with the Nazis coming to look for me. It was fleeting, it was a flash, and of course right away I told myself, Nazis aren’t here, I’m safe. The children and the teacher would never have that kind of reaction. Of course there was no real danger, and yet my heart was pounding."
"“I also tend to be a little paranoid. I get a chip on my shoulder when I feel the remotest possibility that someone might be taking advantage of me. If I ask about a car rental and they quote the wrong price, I tend to take it personally as if they did it on purpose because I’m a Jew. I often overreact. I have a sensitive, raw spot about being mistreated, being lied to, not being accepted."
"“We were just kids, but we had the pain! Nowadays if you’re a cop and you kill somebody, you go for counseling, to be debriefed psychologically—and you should. On the other hand, we went through hell, and nobody provided any psychological counseling. We just had to deal with it. Children were ignored, and as a result a lot of us pushed our feelings under the rug. Maybe this is one reason why it’s taken so long to ‘come out’ with those feelings in a public way.
"“About six years ago I went to my first gathering of child Holocaust survivors. I walked in and sat down there in a very arrogant way. I felt above the others, convinced that I had more money and more professional credentials. I also felt I was more emotionally intact. I was putting up a wall of superiority to distance myself from the others. Then, as they started talking, I felt that wall come down. Suddenly I was with brothers and sisters! It was a powerful connection. Since then I’ve been to several similar gatherings, and I’ve even run workshops."
"“I may never get through mourning my father. I’ve been to all kinds of workshops about saying good-bye to him and so on—but I still have this magical faith he may still be alive. I don’t think I want to lose that! At these child-survivor meetings there’s a bulletin board of missing people. I put up a notice about my father. Sure, I know it’s probably futile, but I still do it, and I want to do it, because you just never know.”"
................................................................................................
"JOSEPH VLES"
"“I was born in Holland in 1939. By the time I was three and a half years old, the Germans were coming in the middle of the night and taking Jews away. My parents were grateful to be offered a hiding place. There was no room for the children, so very quickly they had to find other places for my brother and me. I was taken to a family named Dagnelie, who owned a plant nursery in a small farm community called Amerongen. My parents didn’t know where I was and vice versa. But the family treated me well, and several events stand out."
Since Dagnelie was in resistance, Gestapo and German soldiers visited frequently. Dagnelie hid him, but he was discovered. They let him be. He learned to deal with the dangerous visits. Then there were bombings, and finally liberation.
"“Finally we were liberated. Canadian troops were throwing loaves of bread and chocolate bars right out of their tanks. I had never seen bread that white before. It seemed so special. Not long after that my parents came to pick me up. That was very upsetting for me, because I didn’t even know who they were. Why were these two strangers telling me that we were going home? I didn’t understand. I thought I was home. They said, ‘No, we are your parents.’ I didn’t like it. I was wearing a short little brown pair of pants and a blue sweater. Holding my hand, they walked me out to somebody’s car, an old Citroën. I felt very strange, sitting between these people who claimed they were my parents as we drove away from what I’d always believed was home. I cried, and my mother cried too—but for totally opposite reasons.
"“My parents told me that my aunt and my grandfather had died in the war and that many other relatives had suffered horribly in the camps. They also told me that my brother, who had been hidden not far from where I was, had died of some illness because there was no medical attention at all and certainly not for a little Jewish kid who was in hiding. This was all news to me. I didn’t even remember that I had a brother! After that I never went back to see the Dagnelies. I don’t know why. I was only a child, but I don’t know why I didn’t at least ask to see them again. Now of course they are dead."
He didn't stay long with parents, and was on his own at sixteen.
"“Today I’m still on guard, protecting myself. As a Jew I don’t think I could ever get involved with the spontaneous, backslapping male bonding that goes on in bars where guys get together to watch football games. I wouldn’t be able to let down my guard enough to have that kind of fun. I always need to know exactly what’s going on. I have to be in control. Sometimes I think that’s why it took me three marriages before I could feel at all relaxed or trusting."
"“It’s been hard for me to develop a real, real intimate relationship. I’ve been married to Deborah, my third wife, for eighteen years now. I have the feeling that, yes, I can be myself. It’s the first time! Deborah, by the way, is not Jewish. She is black. Sometimes I wonder if that was what I was unconsciously looking for. My first two wives were white Anglo-Saxons. Deborah is the only woman who has ever really understood me. She and I are extremely close. When I tell her what I went through, she often says, ‘I understand that because I’ve gone through similar things.’ She grew up fast also. In another sense we’ve grown up together. If you compare us now to, let’s say, ten years ago, there’s quite a difference."
"“Now I’m fifty-two. I really wish I had a Ph.D. It’s like a badge that gives you immediate recognition so that you don’t have to keep proving that you’re bright or that you know things. Still, I’ve done okay without even a high school diploma! I got into the computer field twenty years ago when it was new and nobody knew anything. There was no such thing as computer science and no school that taught it. I knew what I was doing. I even wrote a book on computers for the American Management Association."
His father died, they were never close, but he had a relationship with the mother who lived in Holland.
................................................................................................
"RINA KANTOR, PH.D."
"“I was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1934. When I was five, my father was beaten to death in a concentration camp. Almost immediately after that my mother sent my sister, Tova, and me away to Belgium to stay with some of my father’s relatives. She told us that she would join us there later. I’m not sure that I understood then that my father was dead, but I was frightened and very upset to be going away without either parent for the first time in my life. What’s more, these relatives were total strangers. The first day there I held on to my sister for dear life and tried not to mind the scratchy wool knee socks my mother had put on me the morning we left Berlin."
Rina and Tova were taken away by the mother who arrived a while later and thought it wasn't safe being in a large crowd of relatives. She had saved money and bought papers for non Jewish identities, and the children memorised them.
"“Shortly before we left the relatives, the Germans decreed that all Jews must wear yellow stars for easy identification. My mother received a number of these stars to sew on our coats. One afternoon she was sitting with our coats bunched up at her feet, ready to begin the sewing. Suddenly she dropped the needle and the whole sewing kit. In a quietly determined voice, she declared, ‘I cannot do this.’ She told us that wearing stars for all to see was like walking into the enemy’s fire, asking to be deported!
"“She said, ‘Your father would not leave Berlin because he did not believe the Germans would ever harm us. Because of that misplaced trust, he was picked up as sure as if he had given himself up to the Gestapo of his own free will.’ My mother continued, ‘This must never happen to us again. We will never give ourselves up willingly. Instead we’ll live like the goyim, talk like them, walk like them, and live in their midst. Only between ourselves will we know who we are, you hear me?’ Yes, I had heard her. I was impressed by her determination, but I also felt a keen sense of loss.
"“By accident, or so it seemed, we moved into a house occupied by German soldiers of the Wehrmacht. My mother saw this as a real advantage. She said that if we behaved properly, the soldiers could make us safer. First the Wehrmacht was not involved in the roundups of Jews, and second wasn’t it unthinkable that Jews would look for safety so close to German soldiers?"
They went to school and learned the two languages of Belgium, Flemish and French.
"“That same year my mother was remarried to a man named Leon. Just as I was trying to adjust to that big change, the roundup of Jews intensified. It was no longer safe for us to remain in Belgium. My mother and Leon decided that we must flee to France. In preparation for leaving, my mother made us memorize all the information on each other’s false identity cards and passports, including parents’ and grandparents’ false names, dates, and places of birth, addresses, dates of entry, and so on. As the youngest I had to learn the information especially well. The theory was that if anyone was taken in for questioning, it would be the little child. If the adults were lying, a child could be counted on to trip herself up."
It worked, and Rina was taken alone for questioning, which ended in the officer winking at her as he let them all go. She was deemed heroic by the family and others, but knew that the officer had not been fooled. They went to live in Nice, but later it was occupied by Vichy after Italians withdrew, and Rina's stepfather was taken away, although she was let go. Rina's mother and others decided to cross mountains inyo Italy, but having done that, a premonition had Rina and Tova taken back up the mountain by their mother; next morning thry saw Germans round up everyone they had crossed with. They went finally in spring to Rome after hiding in mountains in winter, and the girls were admitted to a convent with new identities.
After the war the mother sent them to Palestine while she went to Belgium to search for relatives and more, before taking them back to Belgium.
"STANLEY TURECKI, M.D."
Stanley's family moved in Poland to Vilna from German border as the war started. When Germans arrived in Vilna his father was rounded up, but offered a gold watch to a guard and was gone before they started shooting. He came home, took the yellow stars out of clothing of everybody and they walked out. They survived in a house facing the forest where Jews were shot every day, by Stanley's father working for Gestapo and informing partisans. But his mother was deep green eyed, and there were rumours she was Jewish. Stanley's father boldly told his boss that they were all Jewish; he gave them a day before blowing the whistle, which helped them hide in the forest for the rest of the war. They moved to Sweden, then South Africa at onset of cold war, and finally Stanley moved to U.S. since he couldn't settle in the South African system.
"RINA KANTOR, PH.D."
"“I was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1934. When I was five, my father was beaten to death in a concentration camp. Almost immediately after that my mother sent my sister, Tova, and me away to Belgium to stay with some of my father’s relatives. She told us that she would join us there later. I’m not sure that I understood then that my father was dead, but I was frightened and very upset to be going away without either parent for the first time in my life. What’s more, these relatives were total strangers. The first day there I held on to my sister for dear life and tried not to mind the scratchy wool knee socks my mother had put on me the morning we left Berlin."
Rina and Tova were taken away by the mother who arrived a while later and thought it wasn't safe being in a large crowd of relatives. She had saved money and bought papers for non Jewish identities, and the children memorised them.
"“Shortly before we left the relatives, the Germans decreed that all Jews must wear yellow stars for easy identification. My mother received a number of these stars to sew on our coats. One afternoon she was sitting with our coats bunched up at her feet, ready to begin the sewing. Suddenly she dropped the needle and the whole sewing kit. In a quietly determined voice, she declared, ‘I cannot do this.’ She told us that wearing stars for all to see was like walking into the enemy’s fire, asking to be deported!
"“She said, ‘Your father would not leave Berlin because he did not believe the Germans would ever harm us. Because of that misplaced trust, he was picked up as sure as if he had given himself up to the Gestapo of his own free will.’ My mother continued, ‘This must never happen to us again. We will never give ourselves up willingly. Instead we’ll live like the goyim, talk like them, walk like them, and live in their midst. Only between ourselves will we know who we are, you hear me?’ Yes, I had heard her. I was impressed by her determination, but I also felt a keen sense of loss.
"“By accident, or so it seemed, we moved into a house occupied by German soldiers of the Wehrmacht. My mother saw this as a real advantage. She said that if we behaved properly, the soldiers could make us safer. First the Wehrmacht was not involved in the roundups of Jews, and second wasn’t it unthinkable that Jews would look for safety so close to German soldiers?"
They went to school and learned the two languages of Belgium, Flemish and French.
"“That same year my mother was remarried to a man named Leon. Just as I was trying to adjust to that big change, the roundup of Jews intensified. It was no longer safe for us to remain in Belgium. My mother and Leon decided that we must flee to France. In preparation for leaving, my mother made us memorize all the information on each other’s false identity cards and passports, including parents’ and grandparents’ false names, dates, and places of birth, addresses, dates of entry, and so on. As the youngest I had to learn the information especially well. The theory was that if anyone was taken in for questioning, it would be the little child. If the adults were lying, a child could be counted on to trip herself up."
It worked, and Rina was taken alone for questioning, which ended in the officer winking at her as he let them all go. She was deemed heroic by the family and others, but knew that the officer had not been fooled. They went to live in Nice, but later it was occupied by Vichy after Italians withdrew, and Rina's stepfather was taken away, although she was let go. Rina's mother and others decided to cross mountains inyo Italy, but having done that, a premonition had Rina and Tova taken back up the mountain by their mother; next morning thry saw Germans round up everyone they had crossed with. They went finally in spring to Rome after hiding in mountains in winter, and the girls were admitted to a convent with new identities.
After the war the mother sent them to Palestine while she went to Belgium to search for relatives and more, before taking them back to Belgium.
................................................................................................
"STANLEY TURECKI, M.D."
Stanley's family moved in Poland to Vilna from German border as the war started. When Germans arrived in Vilna his father was rounded up, but offered a gold watch to a guard and was gone before they started shooting. He came home, took the yellow stars out of clothing of everybody and they walked out. They survived in a house facing the forest where Jews were shot every day, by Stanley's father working for Gestapo and informing partisans. But his mother was deep green eyed, and there were rumours she was Jewish. Stanley's father boldly told his boss that they were all Jewish; he gave them a day before blowing the whistle, which helped them hide in the forest for the rest of the war. They moved to Sweden, then South Africa at onset of cold war, and finally Stanley moved to U.S. since he couldn't settle in the South African system.
................................................................................................
"AVA LANDY"
Ava's father was taken as the family watched, by Germans who threatened her mother they'd take the children instead, and Ava was hidden in various places as were her older and younger sister, and her mother, often separately.
"“There were very few hiding places where we could all stay together. Poor Alice, the youngest of us, had the worst of it. When she was only one and a half, my mother left her with a couple who abused her terribly. They got her drunk on beer and wine, just to amuse themselves. They would lock her in the bathroom and leave her there crying for hours. She even had to steal food from the dogs because they didn’t feed her. My mother was heartbroken, but she had no other option. She needed a hiding place for Alice. It just shows how desperate the situation was: My mother knew what was going on, but she still had to leave Alice there. As cruel as those people were, my mother felt that they wouldn’t hand Alice over to the Nazis.
"“Six months after we left home, we found a woman named Madame Louise, who was willing to hide my mother in her attic. Madame Louise also made arrangements for my sister, Celine, and me to go to a convent called Institut Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs, in Weezenbeek outside Brussels. Only the Mother Superior knew we were Jewish. The nuns didn’t know, and we had to use false names. Mine was complicated, and I kept forgetting it. Still, I kept up the pose. I knew it would be the end if I didn’t. Sometimes Madame Louise would visit us and she’d bring my mother. Because my mother looked very Jewish, we were instructed to run and kiss Madame Louise and call her Mama while our mother sat on a bench in the shadows watching.
"“We stayed at the convent for about a year. In 1944 my mother made arrangements with the Belgian underground to get us into Switzerland. .... A series of different families took care of us until after the war, when my mother came and took us back to Belgium.
"“We did not receive a warm welcome home. Madame Louise, who had helped us so much during the war, was bitter over having lost a daughter. Jealous of my mother for having three children, Madame Louise was now deeply anti-Semitic. Nor was she the only one to betray my mother. Maria, that ‘friend’ who had been holding our possessions in Antwerp (and who had actually denounced my mother to the Germans earlier) was shocked to see my mother return. Maria muttered, ‘What! You survived?’ and then she pretended not to even know my mother!
"“Shaken, my mother said, ‘Just give me the pictures, you can keep the silver and all the rest.’ But Maria wouldn’t budge. As we were leaving, we saw my father’s prayer shawl being used as a tablecloth."
"“I was left with many fears. They don’t show; there’s no way my friends or my colleagues would guess that I had all these problems. But they’re there! For years every time I came home to my apartment, I would search for intruders. And until a few years ago I slept with a knife under my pillow. I’ve put the knife away, but I still get very frightened when I hear a doorbell or the sound of someone knocking, even when I expect friends.
Over the years she did connect with a couple of people, one who had her mother's photograph because she was his mother's best friend, and another who was from the convent they'd been at who had a photograph of Ada and her sister. She's involved with Hidden Child project.
................................................................................................
"ANNETTE BASLAW-FINGER, PH.D."
Annette was ten year old when war broke out.
"“It was decided that my mother, my aunt, my cousin, and I would go to the country, for safety. The men would take us to stay at a farm; then they would return to Paris to make a living. At that time there were lines of refugees stretching for miles and miles, all trying to leave Paris. Vehicles were packed with mattresses, children, and dogs. Though these were obviously families seeking safety, they became the target of German planes, which would swoop down and machine-gun the lines of refugees.
"“One plane came down so low, I could see the pilot’s face and helmet. I realized that if I could see him, he could see us. My aunt was pregnant at the time, so my uncle would throw himself on top of her to protect her. We all had to lie low on the ground. My first experience with genuine terror was realizing that one of my parents might get killed. Many people were wounded that day, and it was a dramatic rite of passage from peace into war."
The two sets of parents decided that the father's would work in Paris while families were off on a farm, then the mother's joined them and the two cousins were taken care of by the farmers. Later the parents picked them up.
"“We left for Nice. I was able to go to school there, but the teacher was anti-Semitic. I wrote a composition, and I knew it was good. I had put my genuine feelings into it, and I could tell it came out right. Then I saw my grade, which was terrible. In France you’re graded on the basis of twenty. I was used to getting eighteen or nineteen, but this time I received just one quarter of a point! Apparently I’d written something that revealed my Jewishness. The teacher’s comments conveyed the idea that anyone who was not pure French—like the German pure-race kind of thing—wasn’t capable of much."
But the Shanghai route was closed, so they crossed Pyrenees into Spain.
"“I was hungry to the point of dizziness. The mountains were steep, and sometimes I had to hold my doll, Becky (she was Becky by then) in my teeth. I remember saying to my father, ‘I can’t climb this mountain, I just can’t do it.’
"“He said something to me that has been useful all my life. He said, ‘You really don’t have to. The only thing you have to do is take one step, and I know you can take one step.’ He said, ‘You don’t look down, you don’t look up. The only thing you’re responsible for is one step. That’s all you do: just take one step, and then another. One step at a time.’ That concept has seen me through a lot—including the four and a half years when I was getting my doctorate. Many fellow students had a rough time, but I remembered what my father told me on the mountain, and I took one step at a time."
They had no way to stay, so they hid, and walked to Portugal, where they could join a refugee camp. They finally arrived in U.S., and Annette had problems at school due to no help with learning English. She learned by herself and managed to finish school before she was eighteen, and earned a doctorate by the time she was forty.
"“I think I chose to become a teacher, at least in part because my grandfather was a teacher and my aunts had Ph.D.s sixty years ago when very few women did. I came from a family of highly educated people who were all annihilated, so I thought I’d carry on the profession in their name."
Her first husband helped, morally by encouraging and otherwise by helping with home and children. She was devastated when he died after a daughter's wedding, and mourned for ten years, before meeting Max, the second husband.
"AVA LANDY"
Ava's father was taken as the family watched, by Germans who threatened her mother they'd take the children instead, and Ava was hidden in various places as were her older and younger sister, and her mother, often separately.
"“There were very few hiding places where we could all stay together. Poor Alice, the youngest of us, had the worst of it. When she was only one and a half, my mother left her with a couple who abused her terribly. They got her drunk on beer and wine, just to amuse themselves. They would lock her in the bathroom and leave her there crying for hours. She even had to steal food from the dogs because they didn’t feed her. My mother was heartbroken, but she had no other option. She needed a hiding place for Alice. It just shows how desperate the situation was: My mother knew what was going on, but she still had to leave Alice there. As cruel as those people were, my mother felt that they wouldn’t hand Alice over to the Nazis.
"“Six months after we left home, we found a woman named Madame Louise, who was willing to hide my mother in her attic. Madame Louise also made arrangements for my sister, Celine, and me to go to a convent called Institut Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs, in Weezenbeek outside Brussels. Only the Mother Superior knew we were Jewish. The nuns didn’t know, and we had to use false names. Mine was complicated, and I kept forgetting it. Still, I kept up the pose. I knew it would be the end if I didn’t. Sometimes Madame Louise would visit us and she’d bring my mother. Because my mother looked very Jewish, we were instructed to run and kiss Madame Louise and call her Mama while our mother sat on a bench in the shadows watching.
"“We stayed at the convent for about a year. In 1944 my mother made arrangements with the Belgian underground to get us into Switzerland. .... A series of different families took care of us until after the war, when my mother came and took us back to Belgium.
"“We did not receive a warm welcome home. Madame Louise, who had helped us so much during the war, was bitter over having lost a daughter. Jealous of my mother for having three children, Madame Louise was now deeply anti-Semitic. Nor was she the only one to betray my mother. Maria, that ‘friend’ who had been holding our possessions in Antwerp (and who had actually denounced my mother to the Germans earlier) was shocked to see my mother return. Maria muttered, ‘What! You survived?’ and then she pretended not to even know my mother!
"“Shaken, my mother said, ‘Just give me the pictures, you can keep the silver and all the rest.’ But Maria wouldn’t budge. As we were leaving, we saw my father’s prayer shawl being used as a tablecloth."
"“I was left with many fears. They don’t show; there’s no way my friends or my colleagues would guess that I had all these problems. But they’re there! For years every time I came home to my apartment, I would search for intruders. And until a few years ago I slept with a knife under my pillow. I’ve put the knife away, but I still get very frightened when I hear a doorbell or the sound of someone knocking, even when I expect friends.
Over the years she did connect with a couple of people, one who had her mother's photograph because she was his mother's best friend, and another who was from the convent they'd been at who had a photograph of Ada and her sister. She's involved with Hidden Child project.
................................................................................................
"ANNETTE BASLAW-FINGER, PH.D."
Annette was ten year old when war broke out.
"“It was decided that my mother, my aunt, my cousin, and I would go to the country, for safety. The men would take us to stay at a farm; then they would return to Paris to make a living. At that time there were lines of refugees stretching for miles and miles, all trying to leave Paris. Vehicles were packed with mattresses, children, and dogs. Though these were obviously families seeking safety, they became the target of German planes, which would swoop down and machine-gun the lines of refugees.
"“One plane came down so low, I could see the pilot’s face and helmet. I realized that if I could see him, he could see us. My aunt was pregnant at the time, so my uncle would throw himself on top of her to protect her. We all had to lie low on the ground. My first experience with genuine terror was realizing that one of my parents might get killed. Many people were wounded that day, and it was a dramatic rite of passage from peace into war."
The two sets of parents decided that the father's would work in Paris while families were off on a farm, then the mother's joined them and the two cousins were taken care of by the farmers. Later the parents picked them up.
"“We left for Nice. I was able to go to school there, but the teacher was anti-Semitic. I wrote a composition, and I knew it was good. I had put my genuine feelings into it, and I could tell it came out right. Then I saw my grade, which was terrible. In France you’re graded on the basis of twenty. I was used to getting eighteen or nineteen, but this time I received just one quarter of a point! Apparently I’d written something that revealed my Jewishness. The teacher’s comments conveyed the idea that anyone who was not pure French—like the German pure-race kind of thing—wasn’t capable of much."
But the Shanghai route was closed, so they crossed Pyrenees into Spain.
"“I was hungry to the point of dizziness. The mountains were steep, and sometimes I had to hold my doll, Becky (she was Becky by then) in my teeth. I remember saying to my father, ‘I can’t climb this mountain, I just can’t do it.’
"“He said something to me that has been useful all my life. He said, ‘You really don’t have to. The only thing you have to do is take one step, and I know you can take one step.’ He said, ‘You don’t look down, you don’t look up. The only thing you’re responsible for is one step. That’s all you do: just take one step, and then another. One step at a time.’ That concept has seen me through a lot—including the four and a half years when I was getting my doctorate. Many fellow students had a rough time, but I remembered what my father told me on the mountain, and I took one step at a time."
They had no way to stay, so they hid, and walked to Portugal, where they could join a refugee camp. They finally arrived in U.S., and Annette had problems at school due to no help with learning English. She learned by herself and managed to finish school before she was eighteen, and earned a doctorate by the time she was forty.
"“I think I chose to become a teacher, at least in part because my grandfather was a teacher and my aunts had Ph.D.s sixty years ago when very few women did. I came from a family of highly educated people who were all annihilated, so I thought I’d carry on the profession in their name."
Her first husband helped, morally by encouraging and otherwise by helping with home and children. She was devastated when he died after a daughter's wedding, and mourned for ten years, before meeting Max, the second husband.
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Discussing the Hidden Children, one point made by Eva Fogelman in The Psychology Behind Being A Hidden Child is the following:-
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Discussing the Hidden Children, one point made by Eva Fogelman in The Psychology Behind Being A Hidden Child is the following:-
"Other traumatized groups, such as victims of incest, torture victims, and victims of racial bigotry, do not have this kind of identity conflict."
She's discussing holocaust survivor hidden children with other groups such as survivors of Cambodia or Vietnam or Lebanon, or physically abused children.
So far as she's seen, it's true; however, the immediate analogous similar people are obvious to those for whom they are not invisible - India, and particularly Hindus of India, who have been at the butt of every possible ridicule when not worse by not only the invading and colonising conquistadores but all who were in sympathy with the latter more than with the subjugated, that is, India and more particularly Hindus of India.
When not ridiculed, they were seen as epitomising ills and castigated as everything bad or stupid or evil, although, with the slightest honesty one can see that those qualities are far more evident in those pointing the fingers.
For example, India is castigated for her caste system, with an unspoken assumption to the effect equating the very word caste with India and Hindus. This is fraud, in that the word caste existed in Europe before Europe and arrived in India, and it related to castes of Europe until the Macaulay policy of breaking down India was implemented. It's only that castes elsewhere are based on power, wealth, landed property, royal blood and titles bestowed by royalty, race, and of course, gender. In India, it's about categorised classification of vocation of males, with women not held beneath or less. It seems arbitrary to those used to the primitive castes elsewhere, but so does civilisation to anyone uncivilised every time there is a confrontation, and the bully can always rape the artist or scientist. That's no proof of superiority.
Nor is it obvious why monotheism, another point held against India, should be considered superior, since most religious wars and massacres are due to intolerance by monotheistic perpetrated against everyone else, other monotheists or others. What is obvious in face of such intolerance is the stupidity of monotheistic system when it results in intolerance and wars rather than an automatic assumption that everyone is equal precisely if God is one and unique. Alternative is the existing situation where every monotheist preacher states the certainty of all others going to hell, which, summed up, amounts merely to everyone going to hell because all these Gods of various monotheistic are sending followers of every other God to hell.
She's discussing holocaust survivor hidden children with other groups such as survivors of Cambodia or Vietnam or Lebanon, or physically abused children.
So far as she's seen, it's true; however, the immediate analogous similar people are obvious to those for whom they are not invisible - India, and particularly Hindus of India, who have been at the butt of every possible ridicule when not worse by not only the invading and colonising conquistadores but all who were in sympathy with the latter more than with the subjugated, that is, India and more particularly Hindus of India.
When not ridiculed, they were seen as epitomising ills and castigated as everything bad or stupid or evil, although, with the slightest honesty one can see that those qualities are far more evident in those pointing the fingers.
For example, India is castigated for her caste system, with an unspoken assumption to the effect equating the very word caste with India and Hindus. This is fraud, in that the word caste existed in Europe before Europe and arrived in India, and it related to castes of Europe until the Macaulay policy of breaking down India was implemented. It's only that castes elsewhere are based on power, wealth, landed property, royal blood and titles bestowed by royalty, race, and of course, gender. In India, it's about categorised classification of vocation of males, with women not held beneath or less. It seems arbitrary to those used to the primitive castes elsewhere, but so does civilisation to anyone uncivilised every time there is a confrontation, and the bully can always rape the artist or scientist. That's no proof of superiority.
Nor is it obvious why monotheism, another point held against India, should be considered superior, since most religious wars and massacres are due to intolerance by monotheistic perpetrated against everyone else, other monotheists or others. What is obvious in face of such intolerance is the stupidity of monotheistic system when it results in intolerance and wars rather than an automatic assumption that everyone is equal precisely if God is one and unique. Alternative is the existing situation where every monotheist preacher states the certainty of all others going to hell, which, summed up, amounts merely to everyone going to hell because all these Gods of various monotheistic are sending followers of every other God to hell.
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November 24, 2019 - November 29, 2019..
ISBN 0449906868
Ebook ISBN 9780804181464
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November 24, 2019 - November 29, 2019..
ISBN 0449906868
Ebook ISBN 9780804181464
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