Hidden Childhood ëShadowsí Shows Horrors Experienced by Jewish Children During WWII by Gary Tischler The two newest exhibitions at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are full of words and information, though they contain very few physical artifacts to look at. They require reading on the part of the visitor, and are in a sense required reading themselves. But they do have one important visual element: the faces of children. Of all the horrors of the Holocaust, the murder of Jewish children is a horror that resists denial and is immune to any statistical blandishments. It is a shock that has never lost its power. ìLife in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaustî is an accumulatively powerful exhibition that documents the fate of those Jewish children from all over Europe who escaped annihilation, how they survived, and what their lives were like when the nightmare ended. ìAnne Frank the Writer: An Unfinished Storyî is also being presented to add to the story of arguably the most famous hidden child of the Holocaust. Both exhibitions speak to what life in hiding for years was like for these children. ìLife in Shadow sî has as its starting point a number of undeniably wrenching statistics. In 1939, there were about 1.6 million Jewish children in the territories that were soon to be controlled by Nazi Germany or its allies. When the war ended in 1945, only 6 percent to 11 percent of Europeís prewar Jewish population of children survived. Among the Jewish victims, children and the elderly suffered the highest mortality rates. In the ghettos and camps, actions specifically targeting children were carried out, aimed at eliminating what the Nazis called ìuseless eaters.î Nearly 1 million Jewish children were living in Poland before the war, for example. Only 5,000 survived. Most of these children in Poland and other countries survived by hiding. The story of how the children were hidden, who hid them, the kind of life they had and what separation meant for Jewish families is the story behind ìLife in Shadows.î The parents of Jewish children often went into hiding with their children, and when that option was not available, they gave their children up to families of Christians who either helped voluntarily or kept the children for remuneration. Often, the children moved from place to place in a kind of underground network. Their homes were barns, attics, cellars, hideaways, fields and forests. Those children who could pass for ìAryanî could live more or less out in the open, although the danger of betrayal and exposure was a constant fear. Male Jewish children were especially vulnerable because circumcision identified them immediately. For pre-teen and teen-agers, this meant hiding who they were: ìI missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, my Zionist idealism,î wrote a Belgian child. Often, the children had to participate in Christian religious ceremonies and for years were raised as Christians. The lives these children ledóseparated from parents and siblings, living in a foreign country, or never being able to go outside, as was the case with Anne Frank and her familyóaged them prematurely. One observer said they were like ìold people with childrenís faces, without a trace of joy, happiness or childish innocence.î There was always fear, calibrated equally among those living in the open and those in almost complete hiding. ìThey are listening for us, the dog sniffs and sniffs and even sticks its head in, so that we live through hours of terror,î wrote one child in 1942. The stories in the different writings and videos of children who have now grown truly old are one thing. The faces and the few remaining artifacts are quite another. The clothes, fake identity cards, drawings, self-made toys that somehow allowed them to play, and the faces in fading photographs make you immediately think of the vast majority of children who did not survive but who disappeared in the dark ashes. The destruction of the Third Reich and the end of the war did not mean the end of suffering for the children who survived or for their loved ones. Parents often spent months and years looking for their lost children, and children in turn would often emerge to find all of their relatives dead. The story of the children who spent their lives during the war in hiding was a story of continuing trauma in post-war Europe. Often, the people who hid Jewish children became attached to them and raised them as their own. Custody battles would ensue. Many of the children made a crude art out of their lives. Others wrote in diaries or journals. The most famous of these diaries is, of course, the diary of Anne Frank. On display in ìAnne Frank the Writerî are selections of her original and amended writings, never before seen in the United States. Also included are her photo album, three diary notebooks and pages of her writings later edited by her. ìThe Diary of Anne Frankî has been perhaps the most vivid, popular and most widely read document of the Holocaust. Her story is also one of a child in hiding, albeit not alone. Her entire family went into hiding in 1942 once it became clear that the Nazis intended to round up all of the Jews in the Netherlands. The Franks remained in the annex with several others for just over two years without ever emerging. After they were found and deported to the concentration camps, only the father, Otto, survived. Anne and her sister Margot died. Anne was not quite 15 years old. Anneís ambitions to become a writer shine throughout her diary entries. During her plight, she was remarkably clear-headed, unromantic and undefeated in her hopes, ideals and love of life. What endured about her is the vividness with which she embraced life in the confines and constrictions of her situation. Among her last entries, in a mix of hope and despair, Anne wrote, ìI see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness. I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will come right, that this cruelty too will end and that peace and tranquility will return again. In the meantime, I must uphold my ideals for perhaps the time will come when I shall be able to carry them out.î ìLife in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaustî runs through May 12 and ìAnne Frank the Writer: An Unfinished Storyî runs through Dec. 12 at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW. For more information, please call (202) 488-0400 or visit www.ushmm.org. Gary Tischler is a contributing writer for The Washington Diplomat.