Hidden Children [Paperback]

Jane Marks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 14, 1995

They hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war -- Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, even years, they faced the constant danger of discovery, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. These secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories for decades. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences -- some for the first time.

There is Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who lived in a closet with his family for thirteen months. Their personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life-affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled document of witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Here are the stories of 22 Holocaust survivors who, as children, hid from the Nazis. Contrary to popular belief, Marks insists, the hiding experience "was less of a safe harbor than a violent sea of constant menace, uncertainty, and fear." Some were hidden in Catholic convents, some in sewers or underground caves, some in hay lofts, in huts, in closets, in barns, and in attics. Says one survivor of hiding in a Catholic convent, "We were in plain sight, but we were hiding our Jewishness." Another survivor tells of hiding in the sewers of Lvov for 14 months in stench and darkness with very little food or clean water. In some cases, the Nazis took away their parents, leaving the young children on their own, always staying one jump ahead of the Nazi sympathizers eager to denounce them. These first-person accounts are powerful and gripping stories of how Hitler's war against the Jews included little children. In the literature of the Holocaust, Marks has added a remarkable contribution. George Cohen

From Kirkus Reviews

Twenty-two powerful stories, recorded by Marks (a family- therapy columnist for Parents magazine), of Jewish men and women who hid from the Nazis as children--and of how this experience shaped their later lives. During the war, these Holocaust survivors tried to shed their identities by living illegally in the forbidden Christian world. In 1991, Marks, on assignment for New York magazine, attended a weekend conference in which 1600 ``hidden children'' from all over the world met for the first time. In Nazi-occupied Europe, there were about 1.6 million Jewish children, she tells us. By 1945, about 1.5 million had been killed--a death rate that runs ahead of that of Jews in general, probably because, as is generally believed, the Nazis considered the annihilation of Jewish children to be of primary importance. Some children, however, survived by disguising themselves as Christians and hiding--often without their families, and often forced to live in sewers, huts, barns, and woods. ``We had a common bond. We had grown up, but we had lost our childhood,'' remembers one survivor. ``To this day, I don't know how to ride a bike, and I'm not the only one,'' says another. Forced to be endlessly adaptable, the children found as adults that the same resources that had allowed them to survive as children had now become liabilities: ``Adaptability became alienation and a loss of identity. The ability to live with homelessness became an inability to feel safe, or close to loved ones.'' Or: ``I am never myself because I spent all those years being someone else: peroxide hair and genuflecting every time I passed a church.'' Nearly all the survivors, we learn, have been silent about the past: ``Whenever the subject of the war came up, I minimized what I'd gone through...nobody wanted to listen.'' A painstaking record of atrocities, the will to survive no matter what, and the price paid for that survival. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (March 14, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449906868
• ISBN-13: 978-0449906866
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brief encounter with a few hidden children., April 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Hidden Children (Paperback)

On Memorial Day weekend,1991, 1600 people from around the world gathered together. They flooded the rooms of the Marriot Marquis Hotel in New York City, not only with their bodies but with their stories as well. For over fifty years they remained hidden, first from Hitler and then from the public. They kept their feelings and experiences to themselves because they were afraid. They were afraid of the pain and suffering it might bring to them or their loved ones if they revealed themselves. "For years and years I never wanted to talk or think about my experience during the war," states Ann Shore, a hidden Jewish child during World War II "Just thinking about it brought such pain!" Finally, the once frightened, hidden Jewish children of the war (now old men and women) overcame their fears and discussed their experiences during the Holocaust. Many realized for the first time that there were others like themselves, and there were people who cared about what had happened to them. One women, Jane Marks, cared a great deal and devoted her time to writing The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust a book filled with twenty-two inspiring stories. During the conference that weekend and during the months that followed, Jane Marks interviewed more than 60 former hidden children. She became committed to writing a book to record these children's experiences. "I wanted to write a book to make the world aware of the exceptional courage and goodness that emerged in the midst of unspeakable tragedy and destruction." She surely let the world know. By using twenty-two of the stories and continuously interviewing the same children over and over again, she was able to capture the ordeal, the legacy, the aftermath and the healing that these children went through. She used all the information available to establish a unique, truthful and emotional retelling of the Holocaust. In the first part of the book, the ordeal is revealed to the reader: tear jerking stories of how they survived for months in sewers, barns, cellars, closets, fields, anywhere they could, to escape being captured by the Nazis. Some lost their families and friends, but they all lost their childhood. It was the price to pay in exchange for their lives. Rosa Sirota said the following about being a hidden child: "None of the people who went through what I went through had the luxury of being children." Eight stories of courage fill this section of the book, and each one has its own miracle of survival. Sanne Spetter and Marie-Claire Rakowski tell their stories of the aftermath of the war. Both women were born during the war and because their parents feared their safety, they were placed with families. For the first years of their lives, they felt safe and secure and did not know their true identity. After the war, they were returned to families that had suffered more than they could ever imagine. The time after the war was just as painful for them, as it had been for many others during it. Thinking back on the time after the war, Sanne said, "That was when I really started hiding, as I hid my real feelings." The other twelve stories are probably the most interesting to read. They're stories of the legacy and healing involved with the war. Many of the children held the legacy of what they had gone through for many years. It existed in their minds and haunted them. Some remember every minute of what happened to them, while others remember only what was told to them. The healing that some children have gone through is immense. They suffered just like every other Jew, but because they were children at the time, their feelings were discarded as unimportant in their families. They were taught to conceal their feeling and keep them to themselves. They sought healing in trying to hide pain, but the true healing came many years later when they finally shared their stories. Ever since I read Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, in fourth grade, I have had an interest in the Holocaust. I have often wondered what it would have really been like to hide. By reading this book, I now understand that it wasn't easy. The Hidden Children is a truthful document and there does not appear to be any bias in it. It is a well written book for any teenager or adult who, like me, has ever wondered about the Holocaust. Jane Marks recorded what was told to her simply to reveal the truth to the world. The former hidden children that she interviewed, had no reason to lie or make the Nazis soldiers look monstrous. They told what they remembered and what they knew, so they could finally be healed. There are one or two comments, though, that do show some bias. "I admit that my normally nonjudgmental approach has a limit," said Stanley Turecki, M.D., "Especially when it comes to Germans. I can't accept them! Even the younger ones make my skin crawl!" In this case, over the years a bias has developed, but there were not many stories in this book that showed this. Because she picked unbiased stories, Jane Marks created an almost unbiased and very truthful book. The pages of The Hidden Children are filled with painful, but inspiring experiences that have been hidden inside of these children. Now they are out for the world to discover.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An unforgettable account of children's struggle for survival, October 25, 2000

By 

Little (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hidden Children (Paperback)

I have read and re-read this book. Never before did I realize what hidden children went through to survive. It is assumed that they were safe in homes, attics, or barns and far removed from the fears of other children in worse circumstances. However, this is untrue. These children had to, in many cases, hide their identity, learn whole new life stories and names, and sometimes even religions. They had to worry about family they may never see again, and their own possible discovery or betrayal. It is a testament to their courage that they survived and have gone on to live honorable lives, even while still struggling to deal with all the psychological ramifications of such a life in their formative years. A wonderful read that would be good for young people as it does not bog down in technicalities.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unforgettable, February 8, 2006

By 

Inger Watts (Trondheim, Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Children (Paperback)

This is an unforgettable book about the fate of many Jewish children who survived during World War II all over Europe. From a very young age they had to learn to hide the truth about their origin.
Many among the very youngest could not hide with their families because the risk was too big (they could be noisy, cry or tell the truth). Many were placed in foster care, and the toddlers would grow up believing that their foster parents were their real parents. After the war many children in this category were traumatized when they were given back to their real parents.

One of the really interesting aspects of this book is that it follows the hidden children from pre-war era until the 1990s. In this way we are told also about the problems and benefits they 'harvested' after those hidden years.

I also found it very interesting to read the two last chapters:
one puts the Hidden Child's experience into a historical perspective and one telling us about the psychology behind being a Hidden child. These two chapters are written by Nechama Tec, Ph.D. and Eva Fogelman, Ph.D.

This is an easy and very interesting book to read. It is well written and highly recommendable.