HIDDEN LIVES

The littlest survivors.

It is remarkable that, during the Holocaust, any children survived trains and camps, hideouts and harassment, loss and longing. But many lived to tell their tales. This book collects previously published memoirs from those young survivors. Children were hidden by a village, cloistered in a convent, smuggled into changed names and changed cultures. Many were converted to Catholicism. Many only came to understand their Jewish origins late in life. It is miraculous that some could witness epic brutality and report it. Writes Zula Hass, “Armed with pitchforks, knives, and axes, the Ukrainians dragged Jews out of their homes, and a vicious pogrom erupted right in front of my eyes! Terror-stricken, I stood behind the curtains of our second-floor windows and watched. A drunken peasant pulled down Stalin’s statue from its pedestal, then dragging a Jewish toddler, he smashed his little head against the statue. Other Ukrainians brutally hacked to death the howling mother and father who were hugging the body of their child.” There are tales of hairbreadth escapes: One girl gets out of Tarnopol, in Ukraine, just 11 days before the city’s Jewish population was gassed. There are tales of reunions. Salomea Kape-Jay recalls meeting a friend from Auschwitz, years later, barely recognizing her out of her rags. She remembers the friend telling her in the camp: “Have hope against hope.” Kape-Jay adds: “The alchemy of her words gave me strength.” This is a book of alchemy, a set of stories of young people who turned fear into faith. This is, nevertheless, a hard book to read cover to cover. It is a book to read selectively, finding a memory here and there, gaining hope for difficult times.

Memoirs of the youngest Holocaust survivors, recorded as lessons of hope and faith.