Through 23 extraordinary interviews of hidden children, Jane Marks has skillfully compiled a book about human miracles. Despite terrifying accounts of mortal danger and unspeakable hardship during the war, and inordinate continuing difficulties after the war -- economic deprivation, health complications and psychic scars -- we are witness to the victorious mastery of childhood terror, separations, loss of loved ones, loss of identity, trust and homeland. The reader can only join with Jane Marks who exults in the later achievement of normal lives. And the reader unites with the survivors in the moving revelations of how they became spouses -- with strong and enduring marriages -- parents and grandparents, and of how they entered and succeeded in professions such as law, medicine, social work, education, business and the creative and performing arts.

This rare collection of interviews is essential reading for all who care to know how it is possible to move beyond irreversible early trauma. It individualizes the Holocaust and permits one to have more understanding of the child's perspective. The reader is riveted and gripped by remarkable first-person narratives from those who as children endured and survived concealment in convents, orphanages, Christian homes, basements and sewers. Some were in hiding with their parents, others were placed with strangers, families or in institutions. Still others, lost and separated from parents, existed alone, concealed in forests, hay lofts and caves. Some joined resistance fighter groups, some were protected by Christian rescuers and some were betrayed or exploited.

The final two chapters of this inspiring text are by Professor Nechama Tec and Dr. Eva Fogelman. Here, the history of the eternal drama of parents trying to save their children is explored, from the biblical Moses to the Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Europe, and the psychology and life-long effects -- unto the next generation -- are examined academically and experientially.

Despite the loss of childhood, the guilt of survival, the life-long anxiety and fearfulness, the identity crisis -- in some cases the surrender of Jewishness -- the adherence to silence and invisibility, these accounts reveal how mourning and healing are possible.

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