The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust by Jane Marks

Author:Jane Marks [Marks, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Holocaust, Military, World War II, Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780804181464
Google: G6PSCQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2015-06-17T00:12:34.129523+00:00

RINA KANTOR, PH.D.

Rina Kantor, Ph.D., fifty-seven, looks more like forty-seven, with intense black eyes, a straight nose, and wavy, dark hair framing her round face. Tall and slim and wearing a turtleneck and slacks, Rina practices therapy and teaches social science at a prestigious midwestern university. Awaiting a student, Rina sits in her office at a huge desk with books and piles of what she calls her ‘organized papers’ and her ‘not-so-organized papers.’ At first glance the office seems devoid of personal items, but this is not so. Rina points out a little Indian box, a cowl from Barbados, a huge seashell from Israel, and large, colorful prints of a sunset and flowers. “These are all personal items,” she explains with a smile. “But I’m the only one who knows that they are!”

—

“I was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1934. When I was five, my father was beaten to death in a concentration camp. Almost immediately after that my mother sent my sister, Tova, and me away to Belgium to stay with some of my father’s relatives. She told us that she would join us there later. I’m not sure that I understood then that my father was dead, but I was frightened and very upset to be going away without either parent for the first time in my life. What’s more, these relatives were total strangers. The first day there I held on to my sister for dear life and tried not to mind the scratchy wool knee socks my mother had put on me the morning we left Berlin.

“I felt timid, but my father’s relatives were so warm and caring that I adapted quickly. They responded with even more affection. For example, they loved to hug, so I went around hugging everyone. I even taught them how to kiss ‘properly,’ which meant on the lips, as I had learned at home. To the outside world I was a cheerful child, avidly receptive to the loving kindness our relatives showered on me. In reality the double loss of my father and then my mother was more than I could deal with, so I buried my feelings so well that not even I knew how sad and bewildered I really was.

“Tova, four years older, was more reserved. I’m sure that she was suffering deeply, but the relatives soon tired of her reticence in the face of their attempts to draw her out. Sometimes Tova looked over at me, and I could see she was disgusted. Here I was, an adorable child getting all this attention when I was supposed to be the scared little younger sister, not the star of the show.

“A few months later our mother, Hanna, joined us in Belgium, just three weeks before the Germans invaded. My mother was savvy and realized that we had no time to lose, that one had to flee or go under cover. By nature a resourceful woman, she had saved some money. With it she was able to get us false papers.

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