THE A PUBLICATION OF HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ADL HIDDEN VOLUME XXIV 2016 CHILD 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE INFANT SURVIVORS Photo: Vesna Domany, age 10 months, OF THE when separated from her mother. Zagreb, 1942. HOLOCAUST THE LAST WITNESSES INFANT SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST, e are dedicating this 25th anniver- alone, and they did and I think throughout THE HOLOCAUST CONTINUES sary issue to the youngest among most of my life… events just happened.” 3 Wus—the last witnesses—because When discussing their experiences, hid- time now weighs heavily upon all survivors, den children will often speak of fears and and because the lot of the infants, ignored confusions that seem unique to them. Our LIZZI, WAR AND MY FAMILY or dismissed for decades by older survivors, readers will gain great insight from the historians, scholars and psychologists, has study of infant survivors, written by Elisheva 7 been given its due only recently. van der Hal and Danny Brom, which deals We’re pleased to bring you articles from, with topics such as “Attachment, Loss and PORTRAIT OF A HIDDEN CHILD: and about, infant survivors in this year’s Coping” and “Remembering and Identity.” RENEE SACHS publication of The Hidden Child. The con- If there is one passage in this issue that tributors range from distinguished Israeli best encapsulates the state of infant survi- 10 psychologists, Elisheva van der Hal (born vors, it is the one expressed by Rabbi Joseph in Amersfoort, Holland, in 1944) and Danny Polak on page 5, and abbreviated here: Brom (also born in Holland), to prominent What then does it mean to be a witness A MOTHER AND DAUGHTER scholar and rabbi, Joseph Polak (born in to such an event which you don’t remember, IN WARTIME CROATIA The Hague, in October 1942), to remark- especially amidst the urgency that you may 14 able survivors, Renée Sachs (a teacher, born be its last witness (shades of Job’s servants: in Paris in March 1940) and Vesna Domany “and I alone have escaped to tell thee...”)? Hardy (a teacher, translator and journalist, What does it mean to witness an event EDUCATION OF HIDDEN JEWISH born in Zagreb in May 1941). Each had to which, when someone describes it, is not believ- CHILDREN DURING THE SHOAH overcome a lifetime of thoughtless taunts, able? What does it mean to witness an event “What can you remember?” and careless which, when you inquire about it during 19 comments, “You’re so lucky not to remember!” your early years, no one hurries to describe? Meaning, so lucky “not to have suffered.” What does it mean to witness an event MY WORK IN CLANDESTINE EDUCATION Most survivors, including the infants, which by your very survival, you negate? IN THE PIOTRKOW GHETTO succeeded, professionally and personally, The answer to these questions is that one in most surprising ways. Yet many still feel experiences one’s self as an utter fraud, and 22 that life’s gifts are ephemeral, mere shad- this sense of fraudulence carries its own ows that can be taken away from them in apparatus of destructive corollaries. It is INFANT SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST one catastrophic instant. As Joseph Polak to experience the utter de-legitimization of says in his recently published book, After one’s childhood; it is to be penalized as 24 the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring, “You can no other child for the normal amnesia of lead a reasonably healthy and productive pre-verbal childhood; it is to be discouraged life, while constantly feeling that it can into probing too deeply into one’s past, out of AN EMOTIONAL HANDICAP happen again, at any moment.” fear that whatever is unearthed will by defini- 33 There is a separateness that inhabits all tion be illegitimate; it is to join the hapless hidden children, the youngest most par- roster of other self-invalidated witnesses – ticularly. Renée Sachs expresses it best: they for their madness, you for your infancy. TREASURED MEMENTOS “…you’re just watching the world around you. We hope you will enjoy all the articles You’re never really a part of it. So every- in this special issue. 34 thing around you just happens. And if you don’t make waves… they’ll leave you Rachelle Goldstein, Editor HISTORY IN A BOTTLE 38 HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION/ADL 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-3560, BOOKS © 2016 Anti-Defamation League (212) 885-7900 Fax 212-885-5869 Vol. XXIV E-mail: [email protected], 42 EDITOR Rachelle Goldstein ADVISOR Dr. Eva Fogelman CO-DIRECTOR Rachelle Goldstein CO-DIRECTOR, DIRECTOR, SOCIAL SERVICES Carla Lessing DIRECTOR, FAMILY TRACING SERVICES Evelyne Haendel 2 INFANT25TH ANNIVERSARY SURVIVORS ISSUEOF THE HOLOCAUST INFANT SURVIVORS 25TH ANNIVERSARYOF THE HOLOCAUST ISSUE AFTER THE HOLOCAUST, THE HOLOCAUST CONTINUES By Joseph A. Polak Joseph A. Polak survived two concentration camps, Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, as an infant. With permission of the author and Urim Publications, the following article has been excerpted from After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring, Rabbi Polak’s prize-winning mem- oir. (The book received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award; Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir.) This passage appears in the book as Chapter 8. (See also the Books section, page 41.) Below the proscenium of my childhood, children. somewhere in my third year, a massive Yet the population numbers, the death curtain starts to rise. Some gray corduroy counts, yield another story. Belgium lost of exceptional heft is rolling up perfectly, 50% of its Jews, even Germany too lost as if onto a bale for the first time. I alone “only” 50% of its Jews. The Netherlands, am on the stage, looking out into the on the other hand, lost 90% of its Jews. Of world. With the hiss of the curtain’s rise, 135,000 Dutch Jews, fully a 108,000 were the darkness of the stage is no more. From sent off to their deaths: 80% of Dutch Jewry. here on in, I am privy to all experience, in In his book, Hitler’s Bounty Hunters, Ad Technicolor. The amnesias of childhood Van Liempt (Berg Publishers, Oxford/NY, are finally over. I am not very self-aware. 2005), describes the particular zealotry I am old enough to retain memory. No exhibited by bounty hunters delivering Jews more deleted scenes of Westerbork or Ber- to the SS. In the years directly after the gen-Belsen. I am able to take in (“appre- war, these bounty hunters were indeed hend” the philosophers say) the world as prosecuted and sometimes executed, but my own. The curtain rises to a streaked, the picture emerging from these legal flawed dawn. depositions is in stark contrast to the world of the Resistance, and to the Dutch ••• as a humanitarian nation. To understand, though, the times in In fact, when the surviving Jews emerged which my mind finally opened up so that from hiding after the war, or limped home memory could form in a coherent, recov- from the camps, and they encountered erable way, to understand the times, the their old gentile neighbors, they had little culture, the background in which Mother certainty as to whether they were meet- and I, but especially Mother, found our- ing friend or foe, hero or villain, supporter Joseph and his mother, reunited. The Hague, Netherlands, selves facing in those immediate post-war or betrayer. circa 1946. years, allow me to depict in a few lines, As Judith Miller has pointed out,* the COURTESY, URIM PUBLICATIONS. the sheer headiness, corruptness, madness Dutch poured millions into the Anne Frank and – yes – joyous exhilaration of those days. house to give the impression that every Remember that no country in Europe Dutchman had been hiding a Jew in his – certainly Western Europe – bore within attic, when this was tragically very far from it such deep and enigmatic contradictions the truth. in its politics and ethics, its sadness and Returning Jews, moreover, encountered joy, and in its guilt and innocence, as did a Dutch community that in addition to its the Netherlands. overall grievous war experience had also Time and again, certainly early in the faced a massive food shortage in the last Nazi occupation, the courageous Dutch year of the war. Thousands had died of stood up to their conquerors. Serious pub- hunger, and so, not unlike the Poles, the lic marches and vigorous protests were Dutch saw themselves as victims of the organized. An effective Resistance was Nazis and not as bystanders – certainly developed that engaged in all kinds of sub- not as perpetrators. terfuge against the German military and The treatment of returning Jews was the SS, and managed to hide hundreds of awful – some were placed in concentration Jewish families and close to 5,000 Jewish Contined on next page 3 INFANT SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST 25TH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE camps on the Dutch border. Their fellow Was it cruelty beyond cruelty? You come sipation of the plague. It is also surprising- inmates often included Nazi perpetrators back from Bergen-Belsen, and Theresien- ly well depicted in Paul Verhoeven’s film awaiting trial. The Jews were detained until stadt, physically and emotionally decimat- (2007) Black Book. they could prove their Dutch nationality. ed, having no certainty that anyone in Others, upon reaching their homes, found your family is left alive — not even your ••• their houses occupied by strangers and children. You then engage in what must It must be April 1947, and although the were permitted only the partial return of be history’s most desperate, harrowing sun is shining, the Dutch spring still feels their confiscated effects.