The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is no longer offering May Family National Art & Writing Contest.
Holocaust Related Art and Writing Contests
Hidden children quickly grasped the need for security and adopted strategies to avoid discovery. Twelve-year-old Lida Kleinman, in hiding at a Catholic orphanage, scratched her face out of this photograph after one of the Catholic nuns warned that she looked "too Jewish." Lomna, Poland, circa 1942.
— USHMM, gift of Lidia Siciarz
In the face of the terror and brutality of the Holocaust, many Jewish parents sought to save their children by placing them with friends, strangers, or institutions. In making such a decision, they had to surmount immense difficulties and not all efforts were successful. Finding an individual willing to take in a Jewish child, when the penalty for such an undertaking in German-occupied Europe often meant death for both rescuer and Jew, was far from easy, and children frequently had to move from home to home in search of safe refuge from the police, informers, and blackmailers.
With the risks high, and the danger of discovery ever present, hidden children, whether physically in hiding or passing as non-Jews, endured great hardships, ranging from the painful separation from their parents and siblings to the anxiety of living under an assumed identity to the fear of being cast out by their foster families. Some were able to record their experiences in diaries and art; many others had to remain silent.
Explore the Museumís Web site and the online exhibition Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust. Select one or more of the individuals (parents, children, or rescuers) associated with this history.
What were the challenges they faced and how did they respond to these challenges?
