Ewish Survivors- Experience of Hiding

Ewish Survivors- Experience of Hiding

In this paper I will discuss the psychological effects of hiding during World War II for Jewish women in Holland and in Poland. The survivors contribute first-hand narratives of the horrors that hiding inherently inflicted upon both those who did it and those who had to endure the results of such hiding. Moreover, the testimonies indicate that there actually were very few benefits of hiding. In many cases, it only postponed the inevitable. However, these testimonies demonstrate the fact that it is simply human nature for people to do all that they can to attempt to prolong their lives, even if it means adopting a new way of life that was previously foreign to them.

The testimonies examined within this document actually do not present a unified story regarding the nature and the chances of success of hiding. Virtually the only commonality between them is that all of the people who had to resort to hiding were hiding from the same source -- the totalitarian Nazi regime that was looking to exterminate Jewish people, along with other types of people who were at variance with the Aryan race as propagated by Adolf Hitler. However, there is another similarity that is manifest from considering the testimonies of women in Poland and Holland who had to hide (or had family members who had to hide) from Nazi authorities. In more than one instance, these people had not yet perceived the severity of the situation that the Nazi government represented.

For instance, one of the women whose testimony plays a considerable role in this subject recounted the fact that her parents had to flee from a suburb in Holland to Amsterdam because they were Jewish people living in a time of Nazi anti-Semitic sentiment. Her father owned a furniture store in the former location, and actually was imprisoned before he chose to hide by fleeing to Amsterdam for clothing Dutch soldiers in civilian accoutrements after the Nazis invaded. The woman, Cornelia Aaron, recounted the fact that her father actually believed that by relocating to Amsterdam, and effectively evading and hiding from the Nazis in the process, that he could open up another clothing store and that things would be fine, because no one at that particular point in time realized how deadly Hitler's intentions were. This fact is underscored by the notion that they believed that Jews who were not able to hide and who were relocated to camps were merely going to work camps, instead of concentration or extermination camps.

Another source, Frieda Aaron, who was born in Warsaw and existed near it during the duration of the time leading up to World War II, emphasized the fact that her father chose to hide from Nazis by sojourning to Russia. Again, due to a lack of perception of the austerity of the threat that the Nazi's represented at that time, he chose to return to Poland to be with his wife and family. In doing so he only postponed a gruesome murder at the hands of the Nazi, which visibly affected Aaron while recounting this episode.

The principle differences in the selected group pertain to the method and the effects of hiding. Cornelia Aaron recollected the fact that approximately 20 times her mother and her hid in a folding bed when Nazis would enter looking for Jews. The most psychologically traumatic occurrence for her, however, was when -- as a young girl -- her parents chose to hide in one location while she elected to go to a shelter for harboring children. The emotional currents of her memory of the last time seeing her parents, as they cried and she was led away from them never to see them again, was heart-wrenching and makes viewers wondering about the efficacy of hiding. This doubt as to the use of hiding (when there are really no other options) emerges more fully when one realizes that Frieda Aaron's cousins hid in the Soviet Union, only to be killed when the pact between Germany and the Soviet Union dissolved. The trauma the young woman endured after having lost her two favorite cousins was apparent on camera

In this respect, the futility of hiding (for most people) underscores the lack of options and the desolation that the Nazi's extermination wrought. The inadequacies of hiding merely reinforce how bleak a situation those in hiding actually were. It was difficult not to watch these testimonies without being emotionally affected by them. Seeing the women cry while recounting these various episodes of their childhood hammered home the loss and the magnitude of the travesty that was incurred by the Nazis. It also made the stories of the holocaust real -- as opposed to seemingly distant historical memories.