Not having been raised in the Jewish tradition and uneasy in the gentile world I had come to embrace, I found at the conference -- for the first time in my life -- a sense of truly belonging.  Some 1,600 people, who had been total strangers to me and to each other, suddenly became family.  I could now proudly proclaim my heritage.  I could say "I am Jewish" without having the word somehow getting stuck in my throat.

In our group of 22 people who came to the gathering from Poland was a woman who, as a baby, had been thrown out of a (transport) train, wrapped in a pillow -- carefully, delicately -- so that she would not be hurt.  The child was found and taken care of by a good man.  Today, she is a mother and a grandmother but of her past she knew only that her mother's name was Ida (Aida).  During the Gathering, a man who once lived in her town of Zamosc approached her.  He had been a friend of her mother's father and knew all the family. . . her older brothers.  He recognized her out of the thousands of people at the Gathering because, he said, she resembles her mother.

There are moments in one's life that rise above all others, branded in one's memory forever.  This conference was one of those moments.

At one luncheon, a woman at my table turned out to be from my hometown in France and her parents were friends of mine.  At a workshop for French Hidden Children, my sister and I met several people who had stayed in the same home for orphan children as we did after the war.  We went back together in time. . . there was so much to talk about.  Meeting these people was very moving.  I also met a woman whose best friend in Paris was a cousin of mine, with whom I had lost contact many years ago.

For me, the afternoon workshops were the highlight of this unique gathering.  What does it mean to be a Hidden Child?  It means that the 1,600 people who came for these two days had thousands of heroic stories to tell.  The emotional excitement filled the rooms.  I was an infant during the war.  My mother died two years after my birth in the ghetto of Lukov, Poland.  About a year-and-a-half later, my father and grandfather felt it was no longer safe for me in the ghetto and hid me with a Christian family in the town.  I was three-and-a-half when the war ended and they returned me to my father, unwillingly.  Because that ended my relationship with the family who sheltered me, I have no memories of them.  This gathering was a discovery for me of how other children survived and how it affected their lives.

The conference was a testament to an often unspoken victim of the Holocaust -- the world of feelings and emotions.  Many who were fortunate to survive Hitler's ovens physically have never stopped mourning the loss of childhood, the loss of a sibling's kiss, the warmth of a family's interaction of sharing and caring.  Pieces of their shattered childhoods remained hidden in repressed memories.  For 50 years, these bits and pieces have been scattered over the world.  This meeting provided the first opportunity for many to confront the Hidden Children within themselves.

At the conference, I met a woman who was holding a photograph of me as an infant which had been taken while I was hiding in Lvov during the war.  When I asked her what she was doing with my picture, she told me that she works for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC.  She explained that photographs of babies in hiding were very rare.  Apparently, the picture will be used in the museum's permanent exhibition.  (Little did I think that one day my picture would hang in a museum!)

 The gathering was a rare experience of witnessing a discovery or the recollection of a precious memory assumed to have been irrevocably lost.  For me, it was a treasure.  I hope it will be the basis on which we, the Hidden Children, will build our shared future.

 While looking at the Memorabilia exhibit about Belgium, I noticed an item about Namur, the town near where I was hidden.  I remarked about this to a man standing next to me and he said he had also been hidden nearby but did not know how he got there.  He told me he had lost all his family and wanted to meet a person he knew as "Mademoiselle Andree," who he remembered had taken him to a nearby castle.

Just at that moment, one of the Belgian rescuers came into the room.  I introduced them and she told him she had his name in her wartime diaries.  He broke down with happiness at finally having found someone who could give him clues to his past.

While organizing the Gathering, I had met a Hidden Child who always seemed sad and talked about the terrible time of the war when her father had been deported.  As the date of the conference approached, she became more and more tearful and nervous and even thought of therapy.  When we met two days after the Gathering, she was laughing and relaxed.  She told me for the first time in 46 years she felt truly liberated.

Another woman, who had been hidden in Belgium, told me that the Gathering was one of the three most important events of her life:  the first, when she was taken in by the foster parents who sheltered her, the second, the day of Liberation, and now, the Hidden Child Gathering.

Until this conference, my older brother and sister and I had never discussed our childhood wartime experiences of being hidden.  That day, we sat down together and cried.  It was the first time we felt free enough to begin discussing it.

This conference was probably the most emotional couple of days I have ever spent.  It was bittersweet. . . there was pain but there was relief.  In a way, I did not want to leave.

We who were children then are the last generation, in effect, still alive to attest to the fact that the Holocaust did occur.

What stands out above all else are the stories, the incredible tales we shared:  the horror, the fear, the sadness, the luck, the love, the hatred, the loss of innocence, the pain, the memories.  In the workshops especially, there was the space and time and trust to really tell and hear our stories.  I could not get enough.  As a workshop leader, I hated to say that we were out of time.  I wanted to stay and continue for a week or more.

Contrary to my expectations (because there are no Righteous Christians in my story), the Monday luncheon tribute to the rescuers moved me the most.  Not only the goodness and courage and simplicity of these people, but the fact that they are not Jewish, that all the good things that they express and symbolize belong not to the religious but to all of us as fellow travelers on this earth.  This theme of human brother and sisterhood, of ecumenicism, of the family of man -- this theme touches my heart.

The conference is over.  I feel a wholeness I never felt before.  I want to hold on to the vision of these two special days.  I see before me an endless procession of people going up and down the escalators, in and out of elevators.

There is so much energy around me. . . everyone is transported to another world, another time, another place, trying to recapture our lost childhoods.  The smallest clue to our past brings so much joy.  The photographs bring such moments of happiness.  Maybe, just maybe, I will see someone from my past, my town, my orphanage or my convent.  What a joy to meet beloved friends.  We embrace, hold hands and cling to each other. . . little girls again.

There is so much pain and sorrow.  If only I could find a way out of this inner inferno.  Such a need to touch the deep, painful part of myself that was locked up for so long.  Now all those memories are flooding out.  How sad.  How young and little I was.  So lonely, no one to love me, so scared.

I must reclaim my childhood and become whole again.  I must put together the puzzle of my life in spite of so much suffering.  Looking into the eyes of the people around me is looking into my own soul, my own past.  A past with no language to express its anguish and loneliness.  In the eyes of others, I finally experience healing.  Just a quick glance or a long gaze, a gentle touch or a long embrace bring so much happiness.  A time to heal, a time to finally become whole again.

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