Such Good Girls LP: The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors - Softcover

Rosen, R D

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062344188 ISBN 13: 9780062344182

Publisher: Harper Large Print, 2014

Synopsis

The story of the generation of hidden child survivors told through the true experiences of three Jewish girls--from Poland, Holland, and France--who transcended their traumatic childhoods to lead remarkable lives in America.

Only one in ten Jewish children in Europe survived the Holocaust, many in hiding. In Such Good Girls, R. D. Rosen tells the story of these survivors through the true experiences of three girls.

Sophie Turner-Zaretsky, who spent the war years believing she was an anti-Semitic Catholic schoolgirl, eventually became an esteemed radiation oncologist. Flora Hogman, protected by a succession of Christians, emerged from the war a lonely, lost orphan, but became a psychologist who pioneered the study of hidden child survivors. Unlike Anne Frank, Carla Lessing made it through the war concealed with her family in the home of Dutch strangers before becoming a psychotherapist and key player in the creation of an international organization of hidden child survivors.

In braiding the stories of three women who defied death by learning to be "such good girls," Rosen examines a silent and silenced generation--the last living cohort of Holocaust survivors. He provides rich, memorable portraits of a handful of hunted children who, as adults, were determined to deny Hitler any more victories, and he recreates the extraordinary event that lured so many hidden child survivors out of their grown-up "hiding places" and finally brought them together.

About this title

Review:

"Rosen...tells the story of these women and the varied community of survivors with sensitivity and genuine affection."--Library Journal

R.D. Rosen has performed an essential service to both memory and understanding. The three women at the heart of Such Good Girls have lived remarkable lives, and Rosen has limned them with both empathy and grace.--Daniel Orkent, author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition

"In the always harrowing and inspiring literature of Survival, R.D. Rosen's Such Good Girls makes a poignant and well-told contribution...The 'good girls' of this riveting tale pulled off the improbable, which he conveys with talent, warmth, and great humanity."--Thane Rosenbaum, author of The Golems of Gotham and Second Hand Smoke

"The first book that delves into the lesser-known aspect of children in hiding and the aftermath of the war years. Richly anecdotal, it reveals what it was like to become someone else-for a while-and then back again to whom one was meant to be."--Myriam Abramowicz, co-director of As If It Were Yesterday

"R.D. Rosen has written about Jewish girls hidden in plain sight during the holocaust with such compassion and precision that his beautifully crafted words give a new voice to an unspeakable time. Such Good Girls is a story you will not forget."--Betsy Carter, author of The Puzzle King

"R.D. Rosen proves a deft chronicler of the uncertainty, upheaval and turmoil experienced by his subjects...Most powerful of all, he makes us see how the Holocaust's hidden children succeeded against the odds not just once, by surviving, but twice, through the resonant new lives they subsequently forged."--Wall Street Journal

From the Back Cover:

Sophie survived the Holocaust without even knowing she was Jewish, while her terrified, widowed mother worked for the Nazis in Poland as a "Christian" bookkeeper.

Flora, orphaned by Final Solution, was shuttled through southern France, from convents to one Christian family after another, unsure of who she really was.

Carla hid with her family in the apartment of a Dutch barber, while, on the floor below, the man who hid them would cut Nazi soldiers' hair.

Sophie Turner-Zaretsky, Flora Hogman, and Carla Lessing (and her husband, Ed) survived not only the Holocaust--among the mere 10 percent of European Jewish children who did--but their own survival. Each of them ended up in New York, where they slowly emerged from the traumas of their childhoods, devoted their careers to helping others, and played important roles in the groundbreaking 1991 event that, for the first time, brought together hidden child survivors around the world.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Large Print
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0062344188
• ISBN 13: 9780062344182
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416