Hidden Like Anne Frank: Fourteen True Stories of Survival by Marcel Prins (review)

Fourteen Dutch Holocaust survivors, who were hidden by neighbors and strangers throughout World War II, recount their earliest memories of days before the war; the subsequent years of tenuous safety, Nazi threat, and abrupt relocations; and their lives as survivors. Since all fourteen hail from the same general region, overlapping experiences and first-person narration help readers envision the settings in Amsterdam and its environs, the bicycle transport that brought many of the children to safe houses, the converted theater from which so many were sent eastward to labor or death, the kindergarten across from the theater, through which many babies and youngsters were spirited away from desperate parents. Readers who expect happy endings to counter Anne Frank’s tragedy will find that survival did not assure a rosy future. Most of the accounts conclude with an observation that the elation of liberation quickly gave way to darker domestic chapters, as news of family deaths filtered to the survivors, and parents and children reunited as strangers after years of separation. Many young adult readers will sweep through these entries like chapters in a novel, but history educators will find them to be perfectly sized for classroom reading as well. While there’s no information on how these interviews were obtained, end matter does include a glossary, photos of the subjects, and an introduction and acknowledgment that point readers to a website for more stories and information.