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xv Acknowledgments From the Authors This book speaks in different voices because each of us has different experiences as a witness and a survivor. Yet even as we thank the contributors to this anthology for allowing each of us to speak for ourselves, we recognize that because we have given each other that freedom, we are actually speaking in one voice. We could not have accomplished this task individually or without the support and encouragement of each other as we relive these monumental memories. It is now twenty years since the Hidden Children/Child Survivors Chicago group was founded. When we first started meeting at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, which we thank for its generosity, we shared these stories, which are so painful and difficult to revisit. It took a long time for us to feel comfortable with one another. We discovered that many of us had never told our stories before. Some of us had been told that the events that had happened to Jewish children during the Holocaust were not important enough to tell. Yet as we met and began to trust one another with these dreadful memories, we became stronger and more confident. We began to sense not only the validity of our experiences, but also the obligation to share them beyond our group and beyond our generation. Eventually, we felt that we had to reach out to our children, to other relatives, and to a wider audience. We decided to show that this is about more than just our individual journeys ; it is about values and how people enact them in their lives. Our stories say that people can act with respect for other human beings, they can act negatively, or they can stand by and do nothing, and that each of those choices has consequences for other human beings and themselves. The choices made by ordinary individuals, who stood up for their values under great duress, are what saved us. Thus, what we have done in this book is simply to stand up—for ourselves, for each other, for the millions who were murdered in the Holocaust, and for those honorable individuals who stood up and risked everything for us. We thank our parents, both biological and adoptive, and our rescuers. In telling our stories we are seeking to honor them as we hope we have done with our lives—the lives their sacrifices made possible for us. As the parents of one of us told their daughter as she was saying good-bye just before her successful escape from the Radomsko Ghetto, “If the war ends and we don’t make it, tell the world what happened to us and the Jews.” xvi Acknowledgments From the Editor In addition to the authors’ acknowledging their biological and adoptive parents, and their rescuers, this anthology would never have been possible if it were not for several people. I want to thank my dear friend Chaya Horowitz Roth, with whom I have had a multidecade friendship, for introducing and encouraging me to become involved with the Hidden Children group’s desire to tell and publish their stories in an anthology. I have her to thank for meeting and working with this most incredible group of people whom I now consider friends. I further thank my newfound friends for trusting me with their feelings and emotions. I also thank my friend Judge Carole Bellows for putting me on the right track to getting this book on the road to publication and initiating a new friendship. When I casually mentioned my project to Carole, she immediately said, “You have to meet my friend Professor Phyllis Lassner, who teaches Holocaust literature and film among other topics at Northwestern University.” Through Carole’s initiation, I met Phyllis, who has become my mentor, teacher, and support throughout this entire process. Although I have had professional work published before and have taught legal writing in law school, I had never worked with a group of novice authors to write personal stories suitable for publication. I thank Phyllis for the guidance and professional advice she has given that helped polish the manuscript. I also thank her for the friendship that this relationship has inspired. I realized that if I was interested in creative nonfiction writing, distinct from professional writing, I had to learn not to write like a lawyer. Therefore, I took writing classes at Newberry Library in Chicago and Northwestern University in Evanston. I thank my colleagues in these...

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