07/07/2014
Of the 1–1.5 million Jewish children living in Nazi-occupied Europe, only 6–11% survived the Holocaust, many of them in hiding. Veteran writer Rosen (Psychobabble) devotes the first half of this book to telling the stories of three girls—one Polish, one French, and one Dutch—who endured sudden name changes, loss of Jewish identity, fear of being denounced, and frequent relocation. He also relates what happened after all three resettled in the U.S. after the war. In the book’s second half, Rosen addresses hidden children’s lingering emotional wounds, their issues with religious and ethnic identity, and their attempts to find each other, which began in the late 1970s. Rosen also discusses issues the few other authors who have previously written about this population have neglected, such as sexual abuse in hiding. A fine writer with a good sense of pacing and drama, Rosen sometimes tries to cover too much too quickly and, near the book’s end, he errs in maintaining that child survivors “are like the victims of a rare, incurable, ambulatory disease with no visible symptoms.” Yet these are relatively minor flaws in an otherwise valuable contribution to the literature of one of the less-discussed aspects of the Shoah. 16-page b&w photo insert. (Sept.)
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.
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.
2014-06-12
Through the stories of three fortunate Jewish girls—one Polish, one French, one Dutch—the author reveals “hidden children” as an unexplored facet of Holocaust research.A versatile writer known for his Harvey Blissberg mysteries and other offbeat works (A Buffalo in the House: A True Story of a Man, an Animal and the American West, 2007, etc.), Rosen enters the lives of these three girls and others hidden at enormous peril during World War II. The three made their getaway from Nazi persecution with the help of Christians, and they were instructed in how to be quiet, obedient and confused about their identities. Five-year-old Selma Schwarzwald and her mother, Laura, were able to escape the Lvov ghetto in 1942 after husband Daniel bought them Christian identification papers before he was taken away and never heard from again. The resourceful mother grilled her fair-haired daughter on their new identities, as well as on the Catholic catechism, and fled to Krakow, then to Leming, where Laura, with her fluent German, found work translating for an SS man. Six-year-old Flora Hillel, at school in Nice, France, did not raise her hand in class in September 1943 when the teacher asked which children were Jews. Her fearful mother promptly deposited her in a Catholic monastery, where she received rigorous religious training and later lived with and was adopted by a French-Swedish couple and became Flora Hogman; she never heard from her mother again. Carla Heijmans moved around from one safe house to another with some of the remaining family members, much like the family of Anne Frank—except the Heijmans were not found out, and thus Carla carried the guilt of surviving when two-thirds of Europe’s Jewry did not. Rosen examines how the lives of these hidden children turned out; many survivors went into “helping professions” and never spoke of their experiences.The emotional toll of silence and victimhood, rendered through intimate detail and rich historical context.
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
“I was completely hooked. A superb book. Rosen writes beautifully. I wish it could be read by everyone.” — Jeffrey Masson, author of When Elephants Weep
"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." — Inside Higher Ed
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.
"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."
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.
