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Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII is a 2002 documentary directed by Aviva Slesin. [1] It deals with the complicated associations involving two groups of guardians and the children who are grateful to each pair.
The term "Hidden Children" or "Hidden Children of the Holocaust" refers to children, mainly Jewish, who were "hidden" in some way to prevent them from being caught and most likely murdered by the Nazis. Many such children survived by being placed within non-Jewish family, and then raised as-if a member of that family.
This film brings up the issue of kinship and allegiance, and raises concerns of continued existence. After non-Jewish households throughout the Holocaust rescued Jewish youngsters, these children had to resolve an important matter: "Who are my true family? my actual original Jewish parents who initially nurtured me, or the parents who took me in and nurtured me later?"
No individual among Europe’s general population could have expected the terror that the Nazi regime would inflict on Jewish children. Many gentiles worked with the members of Hitler’s army and even more disregarded the carnage so that they could evade the watchful eye of the government. However a small number of courageous persons endangered themselves to save Jewish lives.
The film looks at how the Holocaust shattered and formed two separate but overlapping family units; herself a “hidden child,” documentarian Aviva Slesin ventures to discover the result of the encounter that others like her lived through. Both sets of parents and the youth they had in common have an opportunity to voice their opinions. All three sides occupied a role during wartime conflict. They are the: former hidden Jewish youngster(s), now adult, the Jewish parents who decided to sacrifice their offspring in the desire to protect them and the compassionate gentile households who ran the risk of being imprisoned or put to death by protecting Jewish children. Decades after World War II, they are free to reflect on this event in their lives and their emotions regarding one another, with varying responses.
The individuals of Secret Lives tell what this psychologically draining ordeal was like for everyone concerned. One Jewish parent involved recalls reasoning that the gentile family could bring up her daughter in whichever manner they pleased, provided that her child could live. Nevertheless, the brave deed of sheltering a Jewish youth did have its opponents.
Following years in concealment, shielding their true selves and at times their physical being, the conclusion of World War II led the hidden Jewish children to individual freedom. However, for a majority of the children, the end of the war produced even more sorrow. Although most of the world's population rejoiced in the downfall of Hitler and the Nazi domination, the “hidden children” had to cope with the unpleasant reality that their parents were dead and that they would not be reunited as a family. Other Jewish children faced distress of a different sort. Now they were confronted by the awareness that they would be separated from the various locations which they had known as their residences for an extended period of time and the folks who had cared for them. This would enable them to re-familiarize themselves with tattered and starved parents who resembled strangers and felt unfamiliar.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
The Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–1939 during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, 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, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country.
Henri Reynders (Dom Bruno) (24 October 1903 – 26 October 1981) was a Belgian priest credited with saving 400 Jews during the Holocaust.
Irene Gut Opdyke was a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for risking her life to save twelve Jews.
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 considered Holocaust survivors as well. The definition has evolved over time.
Holocaust victims were people targeted by the government of Nazi Germany based on their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, and/or sexual orientation. The institutionalized practice by the Nazis of singling out and persecuting people resulted in the Holocaust, which began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of persons considered physically or mentally unfit for society. The vast majority of the Nazi regime's victims were Jews, Sinti-Roma peoples, and Slavs but victims also encompassed people identified as social outsiders in the Nazi worldview, such as homosexuals, and political enemies. Nazi persecution escalated during World War II and included: non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, death through overwork, human experimentation, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods. For specified groups like the Jews, genocide was the Nazis' primary goal.
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.
During the Holocaust, children were especially vulnerable to death under the Nazi regime. An estimated 1.5 million children, nearly all Jewish, were murdered during the Holocaust, either directly by or as a direct consequence of Nazi actions.
Filmworks XI: Secret Lives features a score for film by John Zorn performed by the Masada String Trio with guest appearances from Vanessa Saft on vocals and Jamie Saft on piano. The album was released on Zorn's own label, Tzadik Records, in 2002 and contains music that Zorn wrote and recorded for Secret Lives: Hidden Children and Their Rescuers During WWII, a documentary on Jewish children hidden during the Second World War directed by Aviva Slesin. The documentary was originally to be titled Under the Wing and several sources still refer to the soundtrack under this name.
Adolf Althoff (German:[ˈaːdɔlfˈʔalthɔf] ; 25 June 1913 in Sonsbeck – 14 October 1998 in Stolberg was a German circus owner, animal tamer and performer who saved several people from the Holocaust by having them work and travel in his circus.
Polish Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi Germany-organized Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, Jews were rescued from the Holocaust by Polish people, at risk to their lives and the lives of their families. According to Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons identified as rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. By January 2022, 7,232 people in Poland have been recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
Johan Willem van Hulst was a Dutch school director, university professor, author, politician, chess player and centenarian. In 1943, with the help of the Dutch resistance and students of the nearby University of Amsterdam, he was instrumental in saving over 600 Jewish children from the nursery of the Hollandsche Schouwburg who were destined for deportation to Nazi concentration camps. For his humanitarian actions he received the Yad Vashem distinction Righteous Among the Nations from the State of Israel in 1973.
Aviva Slesin is a documentary film-maker.
During the Holocaust, the Catholic Church played a role in the rescue of hundreds of thousands of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis. Members of the Church, through lobbying of Axis officials, provision of false documents, and the hiding of people in monasteries, convents, schools, among families and the institutions of the Vatican itself, saved hundreds of thousands of Jews. The Israeli diplomat and historian Pinchas Lapide estimated the figure at between 700,000 and 860,000, although the figure is contested.
Children were hidden in various different ways during the Holocaust in order to save them from the Nazis. Most were hidden in Poland, though some were hidden in Western Europe. Not all attempts to save them were successful; for instance, Anne Frank was eventually captured in Amsterdam.
My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes is a 2014 documentary film, directed and written by Oren Jacoby, that tells the story of the rescue of thousands of Italian Jews during World War II by ordinary and prominent Italians, including the champion cyclist Gino Bartali. The film had its U.S. premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2014, and opened at theaters in Los Angeles and New York in March 2015.
Emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe started after Adolf Hitler came into power in 1933.
Henriëtte ("Hetty") Voûte was a Dutch Resistance fighter who was declared Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem on 24 March 1988 for her work rescuing Dutch Jewish children whose parents had been deported to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
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.
Aviva Bar-On is a Czechoslovakian-Israeli Holocaust survivor.
