Hidden Letters (Hardcover)

by Deborah Slier & Ian Shine (Adapter), Marion Pritchard (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Discovered hidden in a bathroom ceiling in Amsterdam in 1997, this collection of letters from Philip Flip Slier, a Dutch Jew killed in the Holocaust, displays a spirit as indomitable as that of Anne Frank's. Slier was 18 when he was sent to a Dutch labor camp in April 1942. Described by friends as good-natured and gregarious, he maintained an optimistic air in the letters to his parents, asserting that he and his fellow laborers were better off in the labor camp than at a concentration camp. One also gets the sense that his constant references to food and fun are part of his expressed message to his parents: Be strong, you hear! Don't despair. I don't either. Deborah Slier, Flip's cousin, and her co-editors add documents, other recollections and a general history of the war, making this book more than the story of one young man, but an addition to the history of the Holocaust in Holland that could be particularly effective as educational material. Slier escaped from the camp but was rearrested, and as with all Holocaust tales, this one is devastating. Photos. (Oct.)
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Review
A cloud is hanging above the letters of Flip Slier. He is aware of it, but we, readers sixty years after the Holocaust, are certainly aware of the clouds of destruction. We experience it with reading the diary of Anne Frank; we experience it with the letters of Flip Slier, letters from the heart, letters to cheer up his parents still living in Amsterdam, letters with hope, and letters with fear for the future. Hidden Letters is a salute to a destroyed youth, full of life and spirit.
David Barnouw
Author: The Definitive & Critical Edition of Anne Frank ; Who Betrayed Anne Frank? --email

Much has been written about the Holocaust, but rarely has the destruction of life in a civilized country been documented with such intimacy as in these letters. They are almost unbearable to read, and yet it is essential that we do so.
Ian Buruma
Author: Murder in Amsterdam; The Wages of Guilt --E-mail

Personal narratives and testimony help us to piece together the stories and events of the Holocaust, whose lethal fingers reached into almost every corner of Europe. However, diaries and letters have an immediacy that is shocking in their honesty, suspense, and irony. Hidden Letters, originally published in Dutch in 1999, is a treasure trove of 86 letters ad postcards that a young Jewish man, Flip (Philip) Slier, wrote from April 25 to Sept. 14, 1942, in the labor camp of Molengoot in northeastern Netherlands. In a letter dated June 3, 1942, Flip wrote: Pa, you can safely keep the letters. Put them in a corner somewhere, nobody will notice. He was very much mistaken. Because Flip was still a teenager while in Molengoot, his early letters read rather like letters from summer camp. He writes about pranks, like playing ghost or throwing water on someone s bed. Underneath the light tone, however, one can sense a young man who worked terrible hard, who was provided with inadequate food and clothing, who was trying to stay cheerful for his parents sakes. Little did he know that these camps were holding pens for Westerbork transit camp, and ultimately to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Sobibor. Hidden Letters is not only a collection of letters written by Flip Slier, as heartrending as they are. The editors accompany their extensive annotations with over 200 photographs, maps, documents, realia (like stamps, ration cards, coins, stickers), posters, a family tree, lists of people mentioned, as well as thorough bibliographical references and an illustrated index. All this detailed information reflects the anguish and courage of the people of occupied Holland. Flip s ordeal is placed in a broader historical context through relevant articles, for example, the Jewish Council in Amsterdam, Mauthausen concentration camp, and Sobibor. The design of this book is stunning. The layout of letters, photos, and other documents is logical and attractive; the margins, generous; the fonts, clear and readable. This one is a fascinating documentary...heartbreaking and inspiring. --Jewish Book World

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Star Bright Books (February 28, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887734880
• ISBN-13: 978-1887734882
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 10.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #655,575 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Voice Of Lost Innocence, April 21, 2008

By	Mel Odom (Moore, OK USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

When you read HIDDEN LETTERS, the book is going to leave a mark. It's going to hurt down deep and leave you thinking about things long after you've finished the book. After receiving the book, I admit to approaching the book warily. The subject matter is brutal, and it's devastating to anyone who's a parent.

First, a little history on the book. The letters that comprise the human narrative within the pages were discovered in Amsterdam in 1997. They were written by an eighteen year old Dutch Jew named Philip "Flip" Slier. He was sent to a Dutch labor camp in 1942. When first sent there, Slier believed he was going to be treated humanely, though restricted. He didn't know the horror that awaited him, or that he would soon be dead.

At the time Slier first went to the work camps, letters shipped regularly between the families and the restricted men. As I read the letters, I was stunned by the naïve manner that Slier exhibited. He honestly thought he was only going to be there for a short time, and that his experiences there would be nothing more than what he would endure during some summer camp.

As a father of five, I know how innocent kids can be. They think they know so much, but they're blind to so many things. They often don't know they're in over their heads until it's much too late.

And that's what happened with Slier.

I felt somewhat guilty while reading his letters, almost voyeuristic into a world of pain and innocence. The letters are inane and even cheerful. At times Slier obviously felt he was on some grand adventure. At other times I could see that he was putting on a front for his parents, acting brave while he was scared to death, or at least mightily confused by what was going on around him.

That human element, and that innocence, is what is going to haunt me about the book. Slier also took a camera with him. He took several pictures and sent them back home to his parents and friends, and those people managed to hang onto them throughout the blackest days of World War II. I saw his face, and I saw how much of a kid he still was. He aged decades in months, and he finally got killed.

That's one side of the story, but the authors added a tremendous amount of history materials to further the reader's understanding of what was going on in this area at this time. More pictures and maps fill the book. On one hand, HIDDEN LETTERS is a short journal of tumultuous times in a young man's life, but on the other hand the book is a great historical record. I love history, and I equate it with the story of people rather than names and dates. But Philip Slier's story truly brings home the fact that history is made up of people more than dates or events.

HIDDEN LETTERS is going to satisfy the armchair historian's perusal of the time period, and will give some sense of people and what was going on to genealogists that have discovered they've got family members that were in this camps at the same time. For either of those groups, I'm sure the book would be a beneficial addition.

The parents saved those letters all those years. I can't imagine what it must have been like to pull them out every so often and read the last words of their lost son.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling, disturbing, and heartbreakingly great read, September 9, 2007

By	Kathleen A. Baxter (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hidden Letters is impossible to put down. Philip "Flip" Slier was interned in a Nazi labor camp in the Netherlands, but wrote loving, optimistic letters home--and took many photographs. Then he, and virtually all of his extended family, disappeared into the Holocaust.
When the letters were discovered in Amsterdam in 1997, a search was made for Flip's closest relative, who turned out to be his first cousin Deborah, whose father had moved his family to South Africa and thus enabled them all to live through the war.
Deborah and her husband, Ian Shine, spent ten years having the letters translated and researching the places and the people they described. They interviewed many survivors of the Holocaust and the war, and include information about almost all--including their photographs and ultimate fates. Over 300 photographs are included.
Flip could write and you fall in love with him as you read. When the letters stop, it is devastating.
This is a compelling, disturbing, and heartbreaking great read.
Kathleen Baxter, columnist, School Library Journal

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Valuable Addition, August 11, 2008

By	Adam Cohen (Brooklyn, New York USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

So much has been written about the Holocaust that its difficult to add anything of value, but now we actually do have something that does just that; Deborah Slier & Ian Shine's new book "Hidden Letters".
Thanks in particular to the extraordinary layout and design, we move naturally and effortlessly between the specifics of Flip's life and letters to the wider context of the Final Solution as it was implemented all over Europe and the entire Soviet Union. The usual numbing statistics come to life....the effect is at once informative and deeply emotional.