Such Good Girls : The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors
Author(s): R. D. Rosen
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.
Review(s):
“Rosen…tells the story of these women and the varied community of survivors with sensitivity and genuine affection.”
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.
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I was completely hooked. A superb book. Rosen writes beautifully. I wish it could be read by everyone.”
"There is a mystery at the heart of this First Steps—why we walk on two legs? The reader is hugely rewarded for the time spent with Jerry DeSilva in untangling the answers to that big and challenging question."
ISBN: 9780062297105