Such Good Girls (32 page)

I got my name from another bear owned by a Jewish girl named Selma. As a child in Poland, Selma lived during the Holocaust. Her father died during World War II. Selma and her mother had to hide from people who wanted to harm them. She even had to change her name.

It’s not a lot to go on, but there is only so much a child of five or six or seven can understand.

Sophie’s parents, Daniel and Laura Schwarzwald, on a beach in Zaleszczyki, Poland.

(United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Nazi reprisal execution of members of the Lvov ghetto Judenrat in September 1942, on the day that Daniel Schwarzwald disappeared.

(United States Holocaust Museum)

Document identifying Bronislawa Tymejko (the Christian alias of Laura Schwarzwald) as an employee of the Regional Agricultural Mercantile Cooperative in Busko-Zdrój.

(United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Herr Leming, the Nazi who hired Laura as his bookkeeper at the cooperative.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Sophie and her mother hiding in plain sight in Busko-Zdrój.

(United States Holocaust Museum)

Sophie and her mother at her first communion in Busko-Zdrój, 1944.

(United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

The agricultural cooperative where Laura worked.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Laura, Sophie, and Aunt Putzi in Busko-Zdrój, 1945.

(United States Holocaust Museum)

Sophie’s bear, Refugee, today, still wearing the coat made for him by Aunt Putzi.

(United States Holocaust Museum)

Sophie in the tutu Aunt Putzi had made for her out of tissue paper.

(United States Holocaust Museum)

Zofia Tymejko, the future Dr. Sophie Turner-Zaretsky.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Laura in London with her aunt Rosa Hoenig.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Emil Hoenig in front of his candy and tobacco store in London.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Sophie with her son, Jeffrey, husband, David, and mother, Laura, at Jeffrey’s bar mitzvah.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Sophie and David with their two sons, Jeffrey and Daniel, at Jeffrey’s wedding to Andrea Weinstock. Seated are Sophie’s brother-in-law, Kazimierz Rozycki, and sister, Putzi.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Sophie and her husband, David.

(Courtesy of Sophie Turner-Zaretsky)

Flora Hillel and her parents in San Remo, Italy.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Flora and her mother, Stefanie, near Nice, shortly before Stefanie was taken by the Nazis.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Dr. Odette Rosenstock and Moussa Abadi, who rescued more than 500 Jewish children in the south of France, Flora among them.

(United States Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Julien Engel)

Flora with her adoptive parents, Andrée Karpeles and Adalrik Hogman, with whom she lived until she was twenty-three.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Flora toasting with shipboard companions en route to New York in 1959.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Flora in America, age twenty-six.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Flora at home in New York City today.

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Two of Flora’s photographs, using reflections to express what she calls her “double life.”

(Courtesy of Flora Hogman)

Carla Heijmans as a schoolgirl in The Hague

(Courtesy of Carla Lessing)

A watercolor of Carla as a teenager in hiding in Delft, painted by her husband, Ed Lessing.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

Ed Lessing (left) as a Resistance fighter in a forest hideaway near De Lage Vuurse, Holland.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

One of Ed’s earliest drawings, of the Resistance fighters’ hut.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

Corrie and Walter van Geenen, who hid Carla, her mother, and brother in their Delft home. In 1979 Israel granted them status of the Righteous Among the Nations.

(Courtesy of Carla Lessing)

The van Geenens’ house, where Carla and her family hid on the third floor.

Ed’s mother, Engeline, whose resourcefulness helped her entire family survive the war.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

Margrethus Oskam, the small-town Dutch police chief who secretly headed the local Dutch Resistance and was instrumental in keeping the Lessing family safe from the Nazis.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

The Lessing clan. Left to right: Son-in-law, Richard Fusco; daughter, Noa Lessing Fusco; son, Dan Lessing; grandsons Peter Fusco, Aaron Fusco, and Jesse Lessing; daughter-in-law, Stephanie Lessing; granddaughter Kim Lessing.

(Courtesy of Ed and Carla Lessing)

Carla today at the offices of the Hidden Child Foundation in New York City.

(Courtesy of Carla Lessing)

Ed Lessing today.

(Courtesy of Ed Lessing)

I am indebted to many books, memoirs, articles, movies, and documentaries for enriching my understanding of the Holocaust. The following list contains some of the most helpful and memorable sources and background materials.

Appleman-Jurman, Alicia. Alicia: My Story. New York: Bantam Books, 1988.

Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press, 1963.

Borowski, Tadeusz. This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen. New York: Viking Penguin, 1967.

Breznitz, Shlomo. Memory Fields: The Legacy of a Wartime Childhood in Czechoslovakia. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: HarperCollins, 1992.

Cahill, Thomas. The Gift of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels. New York: Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books, 1999.

Carroll, James. “Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meanings of News Coverage of the Holocaust.” Cambridge, Mass.: Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1997.

Cohen, Roger. “For a Priest and for Poland, a Tangled Identity.” New York Times, October 10, 1999.

Coleman, Fred. The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 Children from the Holocaust. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2013.

Friedländer, Saul. When Memory Comes. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979.

Gruener, Ruth. Destined to Live: A True Story of a Child in the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic, 2007.

Gutenbaum, Jakub, and Agnieszka Latala, eds. The Last Witness: Children of the Holocaust Speak, vol. 2. Translated from the Polish by Julian Bussgang, Fay Bussgang, and Simon Cygielski. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2005.

Hallie, Philip. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

The Hidden Child. Various issues of a newsletter published by Hidden Child Foundation/ADL, New York.

Hogman, Flora. “Adaptive Mechanisms of Displaced Jewish Children During World War II and Their Later Adult Adjustment.” A paper presented at the Second International Conference on Psychological Stress and Adjustment in Time of War and Peace, Jerusalem, 1977.

———. “Displaced Jewish Children During World War II: How They Coped.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 23 (1983).

———. “Role of Memories in Lives of World War II Orphans.” Journal of the American Academy of Child Psychiatry 24 (1985).

———. “The Press and the Hidden Children of the Holocaust—Reflections on Resilience.” New York State Psychological Association, 1991.

———. “The South of France—Summer of 1988.” Jewish Currents, a publication of Congregation Emunath Israel (April 1994).

———. “Memory of the Holocaust.” In Echoes of the Holocaust. N.p., Israel: 1995.

———. “The Double Edged Sword of Memory: Issues and Conflicts Faced by Survivors Remembering Their Holocaust Experiences.” Hidden Child Foundation/ADL Newsletter (2007).

Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures. Lincolnwood, Ill.: Legacy Publishing, 2009.

Kaufman, Lola Rein, and Lois Metzger. The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust. New York: Scholastic, 2008.

Kestenberg, Judith S., M.D., and Ira Brenner, M.D. The Last Witness: The Child Survivor of the Holocaust. Washington and London: American Psychiatric Press, 1996.

Klukowski, Zygmunt. Diary from the Years of Occupation. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Konner, Melvin. Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews. New York: Viking Compass, 2003.

Lanzmann, Claude. Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust. New York: Pantheon, 1985.

Lessing, Carla. “The Vanished Communal Heritage of Holocaust Survivors: Its Impact on Survivors and Their Children.” Journal of Jewish Communal Service (1999).

———. “Aging Child Holocaust Survivors of Sexual Abuse.” In Kavod: Honoring Aging Survivors, an online publication of the Claims Conference, 2012.

Lev-Wiesel, Rachel, and Marianne Amir. “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms, Psychological Distress, Personal Resources and Quality of Life in Four Groups of Holocaust Child Survivors.” Family Process 39 (2000).

———. “Holocaust Child Survivors and Child Sexual Abuse.” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 14 (2) (2005).

Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust 1933–1945. New York: The Free Press, 1986.

Marks, Jane. The Hidden Children: The Secret Survivors of the Holocaust. New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993.

Millen, Rochelle L., ed. New Perspectives on the Holocaust. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Mogilanski, Roman. The Ghetto Anthology. Los Angeles: American Congress of Jews from Poland and Survivors of Concentration Camps, 1985.

Moskowitz, Sarah, and Robert Krell. “Child Survivors of the Holocaust: Psychological Adaptations to Survival.” Israeli Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences 27 (1990): 81–91.

Muller-Paisner, Vera. Broken Chain: Catholics Uncover the Holocaust’s Hidden Legacy and Discover Their Jewish Roots. Charlottesville, Va.: Pitchstone Publisher, 1995.

Prose, Francine. Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife. New York: HarperCollins, 2009.

Rosenbaum, Ron. Explaining Hitler. New York: Random House, 1998.

Rosenberg, Maxine B. Hiding to Survive: Stories of Jewish Children Rescued from the Holocaust. New York: Clarion Books, 1994.

Sherman, Judith. Say the Name: A Survivor’s Tale in Prose and Poetry. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005.

Sliwowska, Wiktoria, ed. The Last Witness: Children of the Holocaust Speak, vol. 1. Translated from the Polish and annotated by Julian and Fay Bussgang. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1993.

Spiegelman, Art. Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History. New York: Pantheon, 1986.

———. Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began. New York: Pantheon, 1992.

Traverso, Enzo. The Origins of Nazi Violence. New York: The New Press, 2003.

Valent, Paul. “Early Abuse and Its Effects: Anne, a Holocaust and Sexual Abuse Survivor.” Presentation at the Victorian Association of Psychotherapists Annual General Meeting, Melbourne, Australia, 1995.

———. “Resilience in Child Survivors of the Holocaust.” Psychoanalytic Review (August 1998).

Van Gelder, Fredrik. “Anne Frank Was Not Alone: The Hidden Child Congress in Amsterdam.” A paper delivered in 1999.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. Translated by Marion Wiesel. New York: Hill & Wang, 1972.

Wolf, Arnold Jacob. Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993.

LIST OF DOCUMENTARIES AND FEATURE FILMS

Documentaries

All My Loved Ones, directed by Matej Minac, 1999.

As If It Were Yesterday, directed by Myriam Abramowicz and Esther Hoffenberg, 1980.

The Flat, directed by Arnon Goldfinger, 2012.

Four Seasons Lodge, directed by Andrew Jacobs, 2008.

Generation War (Our Mothers, Our Fathers in the original German), directed by Philipp Kadelbach, 2013.

Hidden Children, directed by John Walker, 1994.

Hitler’s Children, directed by Chanoch Ze’evi, 2011.

Image Before My Eyes, directed by Josh Waletzky, 1981.

Imaginary Witness, directed by Daniel Anker, 2004.

Inheritance, directed by James Moll, 2006.

A Life Apart: Hasidism in America, directed by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, 1997.

The Nazi Officer’s Wife, directed by Liz Garbus, 2003.

Torn, directed by Ronit Krown Kertsner, 2011.

Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, 1935.

Features

Defiance, directed by Edward Zwick, 2008.

In Darkness, directed by Agnieszka Holland, 2011.

Inside Hana’s Suitcase, directed by Larry Weinstein, 2002.

The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, 2002.

Sarah’s Key, directed by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010.

Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg, 1993.

A Year of the Quiet Sun, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi, 1984.

My greatest debts of gratitude are to Sophie Turner-Zaretsky, Flora Hogman, and Carla and Ed Lessing for letting me explore the world of the Holocaust’s youngest survivors through their narratives. Obviously, the existence of this book depended entirely on their courage in entrusting their stories to me, as well as their patience in humoring my ignorance and correcting various drafts of this book. I treasured their cooperation and now I cherish their friendship.

At a fairly early stage in the writing of this book, my wonderful agent, Victoria Skurnick—who combines publishing and literary savvy with a love of diners and a beautiful singing voice—made a suggestion that set this book on a far better course. As if that were not enough, when the time came she found it the perfect home.

Editor David Hirshey of HarperCollins was that home. With a degree of attention, brilliance, and diplomacy that is increasingly associated with a forgotten era of book publishing, David pushed me to revise and rethink a manuscript whose flaws I could no longer see. A few years ago, I edited one of David’s books and he much more than returned the favor. He has given fresh meaning to the adage that there’s no such thing as writing, only rewriting.