Description
Book SynopsisIn the terrifying summer of 1942 in Belgium, when the Nazis began the brutal roundup of Jewish families, parents searched desperately for safe haven for their children. As Suzanne Vromen reveals in Hidden Children of the Holocaust , these children found sanctuary with other families and schools-but especially in Roman Catholic convents and orphanages.Vromen has interviewed not only those who were hidden as children, but also the Christian women who rescued them, and the nuns who gave the children shelter, all of whose voices are heard in this powerfully moving book. Indeed, here are numerous first-hand memoirs of life in a wartime convent-the secrecy, the humor, the admiration, the anger, the deprivation, the cruelty, and the kindness-all with the backdrop of the terror of the Nazi occupation. We read the stories of the women of the Resistance who risked their lives in placing Jewish children in the care of the Church, and of the Mothers Superior and nuns who sheltered these children a
Trade ReviewA sober and moving addition to our knowledge. Well written... fascinating... a very detailed portrait of a unique World War II and Holocaust experience. * Jerusalem Post *
[Vromen] analyses both intelligently and succinctly the whole issue of the hidden children ... Vromen succeeds in providing a synthesis of this hitherto unwritten aspect of the war, and bringing it to the attention of a wide Anglophone readership. * José Gotovitch, English Historical Review *
Table of ContentsACKNOWLEDGEMENTS; INTRODUCTION; EPILOGUE; APPENDIX: NUNS HONORED AS RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS; NOTES; REFERENCES; INDEX
