Guest Speaker Walter Reed - November 5,2013

Almost 75 years ago Nazi Germany brutally murdered more than 6 million European Jews, more than 1 million of them innocent children. Many Holocaust stories and books have told these atrocities but little is known, even today, about the horrible fate and experiences of young children who were saved because their parents gave them away to strangers in order to save their lives.

 

"Out of Chaos - Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust” is a new book, published by Northwestern University Press, which tells the individual stories of 24 Chicago area residents who survived the Holocaust because strangers and religious groups were willing to risk punishment and death by harboring and hiding them.

 

Each story - told by the 24 survivors - is different, yet all illustrate graphically the persecution, unimaginable fear and trauma suffered by innocent children because Nazi criminals had decided to hunt and exterminate them. All in their 70’s and 80’s today - and members of the “Hidden Children of Chicago” organization – the authors have vivid recollections of being separated from their parents who gave them up in order to save their lives.

 

They were hidden in the following countries: Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, and France. Each writer recalls being on the run between different countries, escaping over mountains, hiding and even forgetting their Jewish identities in convents and rescuers’ homes and in hovels, basements and attics.  Some were left to survive on their own; others found themselves embroiled in rescuer family conflicts.

 

The project was initiated and coordinated by Elaine Saphier Fox, a Chicago attorney and Jewish leader, assisted by scholar Phyllis Lassner of Northwestern University.

 

Elaine S. Fox is of counsel at the Chicago office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and president of the Jewish Vocational Service, and has more than thirty-five years experience in labor and employment law. She has served as chair of the 2010 conference of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and vice president of the American Jewish Congress, among many other offices. She received her J.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, with honors, and her B.S. from Northwestern University.

 

Phyllis Lassner is a professor in the Writing, Gender Studies and Jewish Studies programs at Northwestern University. Her previous books include Anglo-Jewish Women Writing the Holocaust: Displaced Witnesses (2009), Colonial Strangers: Women Writing the End of the British Empire (2004), British Women Writers of World War II: Battlegrounds of their Own (1998), Elizabeth Bowen: A Study of the Novels (1990), and The Short Fiction of Elizabeth Bowen (1991). She is the editor of the series Cultural Expressions of World War II and the Holocaust: Preludes, Responses, Memory" for Northwestern University Press.

 

The mission of Northwestern University Press is the publication of books that disseminate knowledge and further understanding of cultural, political, social, and community issues. Since its inception in 1893, Northwestern University Press has produced important scholarly works in various disciplines as well as quality regional and Chicago books, fiction, poetry, literature in translation, literary criticism, and books on drama and the performing arts. Northwestern University Press authors have been the recipients of numerous prizes, including the Nobel Prize for Literature, the National Book Award, and the Tony Award. For more information and a complete list of Northwestern University Press titles, please visit www.nupress.northwestern.edu.