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Hidden children were the (mainly Jewish) children who were hidden in various different ways during the Holocaust, in order to save them from the Nazis. Most were in Poland, though some were also in Western Europe. Not all attempts to save them were successful; for instance, Anne Frank was eventually captured in Amsterdam.
Most of the children were hidden in Poland, though some were also in Holland and France, with some in other parts of Western Europe.
Children were hidden in several different ways, each way being traumatic, but those where the child was separated from his or her parents even more traumatic (and see next section). [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
In each of these cases, there had to be at least one non-Jewish, probably Catholic, helper on the outside, who risked their own life to help. Many records about such a person designate and honor them as a "righteous gentile".
Hidden children faced significant trauma during and after World War II. [8] [9]
Most importantly, except when the child was in hiding with at least one parent, the hidden child had "lost" his parents and his parental support during the war. Instead he went into the care, good or bad, of strangers.
Younger hidden children were often too young to remember their parents. Older hidden children knew that if they were discovered by the Nazis their fate was dire.
After the war, as with nearly all child survivors of the Holocaust, the hidden child never regained his parents, who nearly surely had been murdered by the Nazis. Usually some difficult delay, generally he would be truly adopted by a caring new family - but the trauma just mentioned would remain with him.
A notable source-book on hidden children is a book of excerpts of writings by hidden children themselves "Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust". [10]
In 2014, the German government, through the Claims Conference, officially arranged to make an extra restitution payment of 2,500 Euros to each such hidden child, in addition to any other restitution for Holocaust experiences to which they were entitled. This was in recognition that any physical or emotional trauma suffered by a child would be greater than that suffered by an adult in similar circumstances, because the child would not yet have developed fully mature coping skills. Due to budgetary constraints, the amount of the payment (about $3,300 at the time) is only a small token, but with high symbolic value. [11] [12] [13]
A 2002 documentary, Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII , covered the hidden children.
The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government. Importantly the British government waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom.
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accepted definition of the term, and it has been applied variously to Jews who survived the war in German-occupied Europe or other Axis territories, as well as to those who fled to Allied and neutral countries before or during the war. In some cases, non-Jews who also experienced collective persecution under the Nazi regime are also considered Holocaust survivors. The definition has evolved over time.
The One Thousand Children (OTC) is a designation, created in 2000, which is used to refer to the approximately 1,400 Jewish children who were rescued from Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied or threatened European countries, and who were taken directly to the United States during the period 1934–1945. The phrase "One Thousand Children" only refers to those children who came unaccompanied and left their parents behind back in Europe. In nearly all cases, their parents were not able to escape with their children, because they could not get the necessary visas among other reasons. Later, nearly all these parents were murdered by the Nazis.
Abraham Salomon Glück was a French physician and a member of the French Resistance.
Œuvre de secours aux enfants, abbreviated OSE is a French Jewish humanitarian organization which was founded in Russia in 1912 to help Russian Jewish children. Later it moved to France.
Château de Chabannes was an orphanage in the village of Chabannes in Vichy France where about 400 Jewish refugee children were saved from the Holocaust by efforts of its director, Félix Chevrier and other teachers. It was operated by Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE) from 1940 to 1943.
Andrée Geulen-Herscovici was a Belgian teacher and member of the resistance during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. After becoming aware of the persecution of Belgian Jews through her employment, she became involved in the Committee for the Defence of Jews in 1943 and actively assisted with the organisation and protection of "hidden children" amid the Holocaust in Belgium. In the aftermath of the war, she was recognised as Righteous among the Nations by the Israeli institute Yad Vashem and received several other honours in Belgium and Israel.
During the Holocaust, children were especially vulnerable to death under the Nazi regime. According to estimations, 1.5 million children, nearly all Jewish, were murdered during the Holocaust, either directly or as a direct consequence of Nazi actions.
Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII is a 2002 documentary directed by Aviva Slesin. It deals with the complicated associations involving two groups of guardians and the children who are grateful to each pair.
The Jewish orphans controversy was a dispute about the custody of thousands of Jewish children after the end of World War II. Some Jewish children had been baptized while in the care of Catholic institutions or individual Catholics during the war. Such baptisms allowed children to be identified as Catholics to avoid deportation and incarceration in concentration camps, and likely death in the Holocaust. After the end of hostilities, Catholic Church officials, either Pope Pius XII or other prelates, issued instructions for the treatment and disposition of such Jewish children, some but not all of whom were now orphans. The rules they established, the authority that issued those rules, and their application in specific cases is the subject of investigations by journalists and historians.
Eva Fogelman is an American psychologist, writer, filmmaker and a pioneer in the treatment of psychological effects of the Holocaust on survivors and their descendants. She is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust and co-editor of Children During the Nazi Reign: Psychological Perspectives on the Interview Process. She is the writer and co-producer of the award-winning documentary Breaking the Silence: the Generation After the Holocaust and co-author of Children in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath: Historical and Psychological Studies of the Kestenberg Archive (2019).
The effects of genocide on youth include psychological and demographic effects that affect the transition into adulthood. These effects are also seen in future generations of youth.
Judith Ida Kestenberg was a child psychiatrist who worked with Holocaust survivors. She founded the International Study of Organized Persecution of Children (ISOPC) an organization that coordinated the psychologically informed interviews of over 1500 child survivors throughout much of the world. She was also the lead creator of the Kestenberg Movement Profile (KMP), used to create a psychological profile based exclusively on movement patterns.
Judith Hemmendinger is a German-born Israeli researcher and author specializing in child survivors of the Holocaust. During World War II she was a social worker and refugee counselor for the Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE), a French Jewish children's aid organization based in Geneva, and from 1945 to 1947 directed a home for child survivors of Buchenwald in France. She has authored books and papers on the Holocaust experiences and later lives of child survivors. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2003.
Romek “Robbie” Waisman is a Polish-Canadian educator and active member of the Holocaust survivor community in Canada. In 1944, he was interned at the Buchenwald concentration camp and forged strong relationships with the other children imprisoned there. After the war, he briefly lived in France, where he studied and came to terms with his new life as a war orphan.
Odette Abadi was a French physician, and member of the Resistance during World War II (WWII). She was a co-founder of the Réseau Marcel which saved more than 500 Jewish children from death during The Holocaust. Although she was arrested and tortured by the Gestapo, she refused to divulge the locations of the hidden Jewish children and was sent to two concentration camps. After Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was liberated in 1945, Abadi continued her profession as a doctor, with a focus on tuberculosis.
Dora Werzberg Amelan was a French nurse and social worker. In 1942, she rescued Jewish children through Œuvre de secours aux enfants (OSE). She worked in the Camp de Rivesaltes and the Gurs internment camp, and took care of children who had survived the Nazi concentration camps. She died during the COVID-19 pandemic due to complications brought on by COVID-19.
Frida Wattenberg was a member of the French Resistance.
Georges Garel was a Frenchman of Russian Jewish extraction celebrated for his exploits with the French Resistance in World War II. He was also a senior electrical engineer working for the Compagnie Électro-Mécanique. He was a member of the group which rescued 80 adults and 108 children from deportation from a Vichy internment camp at Vénissieux in August 1942. His subsequent efforts resulted in an organisation which became known as the "circuit Garel" which would eventually rehouse some 1,600 Jewish children into places in southern France under false papers, thus saving them from deportation.
Élise Garel née Tager, known as "Lili", was a French Jewish resistance fighter who, with her husband Georges Garel, saved many Jewish children during the Shoah.
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