Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland

5. “I Came Home, but I Was Homesick”: When Both Parents Returned

In this chapter I will examine and analyze the beginnings of the postwar family experience for hidden children who had both parents return. We will look at the postwar reunion of parents and children, paying attention to the age of the children and their relationships with their foster family. We will then explore the dynamics and relationships of postwar family life. Among my respondents, twenty-three hidden children (32 percent) found their natal family intact after the Shoah. These children were and still are considered lucky by many of their peers, although their postwar family lives do not reflect such good fortune. The data strongly suggest that in general, regardless of a child’s age at the time of hiding, postwar relationships between children and their parents , particularly their mothers, were not close. Indeed, it is striking, although perhaps understandable, that so many in this group, still envied today by their peers for not having lost either parent, describe their relationships with their parents after the Shoah as distant, cold, and de5 “I Came Home, but I Was Homesick” WHEN BOTH PARENTS RETURNED 163 tached. Interestingly, this is true regardless of the relationship between the hidden child and his or her foster family. Gender plays a role in this dynamic, since the males in this group do not seem to experience the high degree of dissatisfaction in their relationships with their parents that the females do, especially with their mothers. That females are brought up to be more relationship-oriented and emotionally aware may explain this difference in experience. In this chapter we will hear a great deal from the former hidden children ’s point of view. While reading about the distanced behavior of parents , particularly mothers, we need to keep in mind that, in general, hidden children as a group tend to have developed strong feelings of distrust during their wartime experience. Many felt abandoned by their parents and can still call up those feelings, even though as adults they understand the reasoning behind their parents’ decisions. While in hiding , many of them learned to repress their feelings and to maintain silence about them. As psychologist Eva Fogelman points out, since they had to be “good children,” many adapted by not being seen or heard. While “continual distrust of the outside world, of new acquaintances, and of new situations actually protected the child in extreme danger,” such feelings may have played a detrimental role in children’s ability to reestablish close and trusting relationships with their parents after the war (Fogelman 1993: 295). Almost half of those whose parents returned went into hiding under the age of 3, while two-thirds were under the age of 5. This group consists of fourteen females and nine males. The number of places in which they hid also fits the general pattern. One-quarter of them were in one home for the duration of the hiding experience, about four years on average . Another quarter were in two hiding places, while most of the remainder ended up in four to six hiding places. In one case, a newborn baby who was taken into hiding when only a few hours old was told that he had been in at least fifteen hiding places. Another former hidden child who also went into hiding as a young infant simply did not know his hiding history. After Liberation, how did parents find their children? And how did these children, having spent several years in hiding, react to their par164 w h e n b o t h pa r e n t s r e t u r n e d ents’ return? These are some of the questions I will examine in the sections below. liberation Several interviewees recalled Liberation and the excitement that ensued. For many hidden children, it was a celebration of the end of fear and of near-starvation much more than it was a celebration of a renewed life with their parents. The obvious reason is that most hidden children I interviewed had forgotten their parents. In effect, because of the length of the war, young children’s memories of their parents had been temporarily repressed, if not completely erased. For most hidden children, family memory reflected the present constellation of their foster family, not of their past family. Rita, who was 7 at the time, describes her experience of Liberation: It was very exciting. It was late at night...