Hidden children of Holocaust feature of exhibit

Ilse Loeb says about her life: "It's a story about the Holocaust, but it has a happy ending."

As one of nearly 1.6 million Jewish children in Europe during the Holocaust, Ms. Loeb spent much of her time in hiding from Nazi soldiers as they sought out Jews to send to concentration camps.

She was fortunate enough to have survived the experience, and her story is chronicled as part of "Hidden Children," an exhibit of photos and events depicting the youngest survivors of the Holocaust that runs through Oct. 29 at The College of Saint Rose in Albany.

Into hiding

The story of Ms. Loeb's survival begins in 1938 with Germany's annexation of Austria. She was sent by her parents to Holland to live with a Jewish family.

When the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940, Ms. Loeb, then 15, was one of the first to receive a letter from German authorities telling her to leave for a labor camp. The family with whom she stayed and her friends advised her to ignore the order and go into hiding.

She was taken to a suburb of Amsterdam, where Nicky, the fiancee of her cousin Edi, had rented a house. Her cousin and Nicky posed as a married Christian couple, and Ilse pretended to be their Christian maid. She was given a new name, Jopie Lock, with false identification papers supplied by the Dutch underground. She wouldn't leave the house during the day and could get fresh air only after dark, when she would go into the fenced-in back yard briefly.

Moving on

When it became too dangerous for Ms. Loeb to stay there, she was brought to a new hiding place: Nicky's parents' apartment. A few months later, it was safe for her to return to Nicky and Edi, but there was neither gas nor electricity, and food was scarce. In 1944, the underground notified them that the suburb no longer was safe for Jews.

Fortunately, Nicky learned of a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Vos, who had hidden 32 Jews during the war. They risked their lives to hide her and others, and dug a tunnel beneath their house leading to an outdoor field, where Ms. Loeb and others would sleep if Nazis were coming.

One hope that Ms. Loeb felt during the war was that she would be reunited with her parents. That motivated her to stay alive and remain positive. Unfortunately, her parents did not survive the Holocaust, and her involvement in "Hidden Children" is her tribute to them.

Although some former hidden children have found it difficult to discuss the Holocaust with their own children, Ms. Loeb finds that her talks have been necessary and meaningful.

"I have always been able to talk to them. To suppress this is not good," she said. "It's your duty to remember this, to carry this message to future generations."

Secrets kept

As Joan Dunham, of the Albany diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs Commission, pointed out, two kinds of hidden children are depicted in the exhibit: those in hiding physically and those hidden in a religious sense by assuming Christian identities in order to avoid being discovered.

Ms. Dunham hopes that visitors learn about these Holocaust survivors through "Hidden Children" and also see that there were rescuers who put themselves in danger to protect those who were young and desperate.

"This is a story of people who did help," she said. "It's a positive Holocaust story. Everything about the Holocaust is so devastating and tragic, but this is the one thing that has an upside."

(10-08-98) [[In-content Ad]]