Acts of vio­lent anti­semitism have plagued Jews for mil­len­nia, but only dur­ing World War II did hatred reach such vehe­mence as to tar­get and imper­il all Jew­ish chil­dren. What do young peo­ple today know about chil­dren and babies being thrown into the gas cham­bers along­side the adults? The Claims Con­fer­ence, an inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that secures com­pen­sa­tion on behalf of sur­vivors, recent­ly con­duct­ed two stud­ies on aware­ness of the Holo­caust amongst young adults. The first study occurred in 2020 in the US; the sec­ond study took place ear­li­er this year in sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries. Both reports demon­strate that mil­len­ni­als and Gen­er­a­tion Z in Amer­i­ca and Europe know almost noth­ing about the Holo­caust. In per­haps one of the most dis­turb­ing rev­e­la­tions of this sur­vey, 11%of US mil­len­ni­al and Gen­er­a­tion Z respon­dents believe Jews were the per­pe­tra­tors of all the atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted dur­ing World War II.

How have facts become so dis­tort­ed in the minds of so many peo­ple, even as we sur­vivors are still alive to tell our tales? And where is the repu­di­a­tion of this fal­si­fi­ca­tion of his­to­ry? Appar­ent­ly not in our schools. The lack of edu­ca­tion about the Holo­caust and the find­ings of this report make clear the con­tin­ued need for sur­vivors to doc­u­ment their expe­ri­ences in books. Com­ing out this Novem­ber from Sec­ond Sto­ry Press is Hid­den Lives: Sto­ries from Child Sur­vivors of the Holo­caust, which I edited. 

As mem­o­ries con­tin­ue to fade, we — the last and youngest sur­vivors of the Holo­caust — must remind every­one, every­where, that 1.5 mil­lion Jew­ish chil­dren (from infants to old­er teens) were mur­dered because of their par­ents’ or grand­par­ents’ reli­gion. By war’s end, only 6 to 11% of Europe’s Jew­ish chil­dren had sur­vived, ver­sus 33% of the adults. Yes, nine out of every ten Jew­ish chil­dren were killed. Yet, now, this cat­a­clysm is being dis­tort­ed — or worse — refuted. 

For many years, we, too, tried to for­get our wartime expe­ri­ences. By 1945, 80% of the child sur­vivors were orphaned. Most had suf­fered the heart­break of sep­a­ra­tion from par­ents and mul­ti­ple dis­place­ments, along with the oth­er tri­als of war, includ­ing fear, hunger, pain, ill­ness, and bomb­ings. At war’s end, we felt a strong need to put these sear­ing rec­ol­lec­tions behind us and go on with our lives. And for the most part, we succeeded. 

Being giv­en a sec­ond chance to live cer­tain­ly increased our moti­va­tion to achieve. Jakub Guten­baum, the for­mer leader of the Child Sur­vivor group in Poland, writes in Hid­den Lives, ​“These chil­dren were already so grown-up and knew what they want­ed — to study, to catch up for the lost years.” He quotes Maria Falkows­ka, the post­war direc­tor of The Children’s House, a Jew­ish orphan­age in Helenowku, Lodz: ​“The most star­tling char­ac­ter­is­tic of this group was their thirst for knowl­edge. They stud­ied late into the night and, even in the worst snow­storms, when they had to trudge many kilo­me­ters to the near­est tramway and would not return till dark, it was impos­si­ble to keep them home, away from their goal.” 

Yet, reveal­ing our iden­ti­ty or our back­ground remained dif­fi­cult. In her sto­ry in the col­lec­tion, Renée Roth-Hano writes, ​“The iso­la­tion — the alien­ation, real­ly — con­tin­ued in post­war France. For a long time, I couldn’t look into people’s eyes lest they’d find out I was Jew­ish. Even when I felt safe enough to bring up my Jew­ish back­ground, I would clam up, my throat chok­ing out the words.”

For decades, we were encour­aged to ​“get over it.” Our voic­es were sup­pressed, either by our own voli­tion or that of our elders. Our silence became our way of cop­ing with the incom­pre­hen­si­ble. As Doc­tor Robert Krell states in his intro­duc­tion to Hid­den Lives, ​“Silence served us well while hid­ing in Chris­t­ian homes, in con­vents, in caves, in par­ti­san groups, even in con­cen­tra­tion camps. Sur­vival so often depend­ed on not being noticed, being incon­spic­u­ous; on the abil­i­ty to sup­press tears, ignore pain. Grief was borne in silence; so was rage.”

Rage was inevitable and reached a cli­max in the late 1980s as we found one anoth­er. A renewed focus on our child­hood had been sparked by the doc­u­men­tary As If It Were Yes­ter­day, writ­ten and direct­ed by Myr­i­am Abramow­icz and Esther Hof­fen­berg. The film told the sto­ry of the Jew­ish Bel­gian Resis­tance Net­work, a group that saved more than 4,000 chil­dren dur­ing the war. Nicole David, a child sur­vivor of the Holo­caust, saw the film at the time and was so moved that she con­tact­ed Myr­i­am Abramow­icz. Dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion, Myr­i­am men­tioned that every time the film was shown, peo­ple who had been hid­den as chil­dren dur­ing the Holo­caust came to her with the same remark: they felt they had lost their child­hood and grown up too soon. 

Inspired by the film, Nicole planned a gath­er­ing of hid­den chil­dren with the sup­port of the Anti-Defama­tion League’s direc­tor, Abra­ham Fox­man, a child sur­vivor of the Holo­caust him­self. And so in 1991, with more than 1,600 peo­ple from twen­ty-eight coun­tries packed into a Man­hat­tan hotel, the Hid­den Child Foundation/​ADL was found­ed. And hid­den chil­dren were final­ly giv­en val­i­da­tion that they, too, were sur­vivors of the Holo­caust; only then did many of us attempt to deal with our demons. 

We — some of the last wit­ness­es to this peri­od of ter­ror — now bring our sto­ries to today’s read­ers (high-school­ers and adults) and to future gen­er­a­tions. All these accounts were ini­tial­ly pub­lished by the Hid­den Child Foundation/​ADL, first through annu­al hard-copy newslet­ters, and since 2020 through email com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Hid­den Lives: Sto­ries from Child Sur­vivors of the Holo­caust is a col­lec­tion of some of these pow­er­ful accounts. Our aim is to inform every­one about the threats of anti­semitism and sim­i­lar hatreds. 

After decades of silence, we are ded­i­cat­ed to remem­brance and commemoration.