The Hidden Child, the Foundation's Publication, Vol. XXV 2017
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The Hidden Child VOL. XXV 2017 PUBLISHED BY HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION®/ADL THE OBLIGATIONS, BURDENS AND GIFTS OF MEMORY: TESTAMENT, ANGUISH, AND SOLACE THE OBLIGATIONS, BURDENS AND GIFTS OF MEMORY STILL SEARCHING FOR THE HIDDEN CHILD 1991 AND COUNTING … 3 t a festive 25th anniversary luncheon, on December 14, 2016, the Hidden Child Foundation/ADL presented its Founder Award to its five most significant creators I WAS AN INFANT SURVIVOR A— Abraham Foxman, Myriam Abramowicz, Eva Fogelman, Ann Shore, and Nicole IN GREECE David. (The first three founders were handed their awards at the event; Ann and Nicole, 7 who were unable to attend, received theirs at a later time.) The focus of the celebration was on the remarkable 1991 gathering that gave birth to our self-discovery and forma- tion. Until then, most Hidden Children had spent decades in silence, never talking about FOR A FEW CRUMBS OF MATZO what we had experienced in our childhood. That initial contact with others — just like 10 us — proved to be life-altering, productive, and, thankfully, long-lasting. EXPLAINING THE SUCCESS OF MOST CHILD SURVIVORS OF THE SHOAH 13 FROM HIDDEN CHILD TO YAD VASHEM 16 A TURN IN FORTUNE 18 Left, Ann Shore, founder and first president of the Hidden Child Foundation, 1991 to 2013. Center, From left to right: Founders, Dr. Eva Fogelman, Second Generation, noted social psychologist, psycho- therapist, author and filmmaker; Myriam Abramowicz, Second Generation, creator of the film, “As If It Were I WOULD RATHER HAVE THE PAIN Yesterday”; and Abraham H. Foxman, National Director, Emeritus, ADL. OF MEMORY THAN TO FORGET Right, Nicole David, founder of the Hidden Child Foundation, in 1991. 22 We celebrated our endurance with joyful music, nostalgic reminiscences, and DANCING AFRAID reflections on current and future paths. If there was a common thread among the three attending honorees’ speeches, it is that their own connection to the Shoah always 26 called out to them, eventually influencing their professional lives. Revealing this human tragedy and its aftermath became a solemn obligation that each founder fulfilled with HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ dedication, passion and grace. Hence, all Child Survivors and their descendants will ADL HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATION forever be indebted to them. We dedicate this issue to the obligations, burdens and gifts of memories that have 28 impelled, tormented and comforted Child Survivors throughout the years. Despite the odds we have faced, we have triumphed beyond all expectations — from others and HISTORIC INHERITANCE OF from ourselves. Let this victory be our lasting legacy! HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS IN UKRAINE Rachelle Goldstein, Editor 31 THE MAN WITH TWO DAUGHTERS HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ADL 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-3560, 38 © 2017Anti-Defamation League (212) 885-7900 Fax 212-885-5869 Vol. XXIIV E-mail: [email protected], BOOKS EDITOR Rachelle Goldstein 40 ADVISOR Dr. Eva Fogelman CO-DIRECTOR Rachelle Goldstein CO-DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL SERVICES Carla Lessing DIRECTOR, FAMILY TRACING SERVICES Evelyne Haendel Cover photo: Rachel Silberman, age 2, Brussels, late 1941. THE OBLIGATIONS, BURDENS AND GIFTS OF MEMORY THE OBLIGATIONS, BURDENS AND GIFTS OF MEMORY STILL SEARCHING FOR THE HIDDEN CHILD By Andrew Griffel Of the Holocaust survivors remaining on father’s employees. They told her to fol- this earth, I am among the youngest. I was low. Together, they walked the two miles born in Radom, Poland, in October 1942. from the ghetto to the factory, taking care My January 1942 conception coincided with not to be seen. Once there, they climbed the Wannsee Conference, where the Nazi a back staircase. high leadership signed off on the Final In the building’s attic, my mother found Solution. Seventy-five years ago, I came a midwife waiting. The midwife induced into a world primed for my destruction. labor while my mother bit down on a piece When my father died, shortly after I first of wood against the pain. Below and ter- moved to Israel in 1968, I found a small slip rifyingly near, Gestapo guards watched over of paper among his possessions. It bore a the factory’s workers; for my mother to cry single line of Yiddish, in the hand of the out would have cost everyone in the room Belzer Rebbe, a man my father revered for their lives. When I emerged, my first cries his wisdom. It read: “Wait until the salva- were also stifled, with a cloth to my mouth. tion — geulah — to circumcise him.” He And then, knowing this was the only way to had kept this note in his wallet for over a save me, knowing she might never again quarter century. lay eyes on the child for whom she had My father had regarded the words of put her own life in jeopardy, she handed the Belzer Rebbe, smuggled to him in 1942 me, by previous arrangement, to a chem- from Krakow, as prophecy, nevuah. He had ical engineer at the factory named Jan wanted to know, if my mother should Szczepanski. give birth to a son, whether he needed to “Hidden children” is the term that has observe Jewish law and have him circum- been given to those, like me, who were of cised eight days after entering a world tender years during the Holocaust, who turned upside down. He had read the managed to survive because good, brave Rebbe’s response and what he had seen people took us in. Sometimes the “hidden” was the absence of qualifying words: he part was literal, the child kept out of sight. Polish rescuers and foster parents, Jan and Alexandra would have a son, and the salvation would In other cases, such as mine, identity was Szczepanski, with their daughter, Helena. come to him, my mother and me. the hidden element. I was given a birth I have wondered all my life why Henryk certificate with a new last name and taken and Sura Perl Werchaizer Griffel persist- in by a Polish Catholic family. For me, ed in having a child in the midst of the though, there has always been another Holocaust. Nazi soldiers targeted pregnant dimension to the label — the experience Jewish women. They stripped them bare itself is hidden from me, beyond the reach and thrust bayonets into their wombs. of memory. Whatever it feels like to be a There are stories of the Nazis hurling Holocaust survivor, I’m not sure I’ve ever Jewish infants into the air and shooting really felt it. Throughout the world there them for target practice. are gatherings of hidden children, all of us In an unimaginably dangerous time, preg- now long in years. I have never been able nancy put my parents’ lives at even great- to identify with the label, never felt as if I er risk. For three years, they had been belonged in such company. imprisoned in the Radom ghetto, which the What I did feel, as I grew up in the United Nazis had begun to liquidate, sending its States, was the pervasive sense that I should denizens to concentration camps. Shortly consider myself a victim. My parents before I was born, my mother saw the instilled this in me directly and indirectly. Gestapo drag her brothers and her father What they had endured during the war into the courtyard of the leather factory he had left them broken, and I was stranded owned and shoot each of them in the head. on an uneasy bridge between two shores The Nazis took over the factory, directing of Holocaust experiences, a first- and second- its output to the boots that were trampling generation survivor alike. Their unspoken Europe underfoot. message was that I must in some way Just before her due date, my mother was be broken too — that I was, at the least, approached on the street by two of her Contined on next page 3 THE OBLIGATIONS, BURDENS AND GIFTS OF MEMORY fragile and should be treated accordingly. baby whom we named Tali. Five years get to the waiting area outside. There was I rebelled against this sense of self, much later, I moved back to Washington to Tali, in the arms of a close friend, a big smile as I wrestled with the feeling that I did take a job at a prestigious international radiating from her face when she saw me. not fully belong in my own family. My par- economic consulting firm. This was a pro- When I saw her, something clicked deep inside ents had spent the remainder of the war, fessional opportunity I could not pass up. me, a certainty that, somehow, I would find the after my birth, hidden by another Polish I knew I had to leave Israel. Just as firmly, emotional wherewithal to help my daugh- Catholic family in Warsaw, some 65 miles Anita knew she wanted to stay. ter deal with what she had just endured. north of Radom. What we might call clarity has eluded Tali’s physical wounds were minor — In 1945, when Russian tanks beat back me for the better part of my life. The scratches and scrapes, really. Her psycho- the Germans, my parents returned to long shadow cast by my earliest years, logical wounds, however, were unknowable reclaim their then three-year-old child. In something I now struggle with conscious- and my primary concern. She had given my mother’s version of our reunion, the ly, was, until my forties, an unconscious clear and precise testimony to the Israeli one I heard growing up, I had run to my fight played out in self-doubt, wavering police; she seemed to remember the inci- mother as if guided by instinct.