Hidden Child

Sonja Dubois is one of our last first­hand links to the Holocaust. She is a mem­ber of a gen­er­a­tion of European Jews that has been called the Hidden Children. These young chil­dren were given up by their par­ents in hope that they would be able to sur­vive, even if their par­ents did not. Many of the hid­den chil­dren assumed new iden­ti­ties; most never saw their par­ents again.

In 1942, Sonja’s par­ents were ordered to report to a train sta­tion for “re-​​settlement” to a hold­ing camp in the Northeastern part of the Netherlands. In real­ity, it was noth­ing more than a stopover on their jour­ney to the gas cham­bers of Auschwitz. Sonja was 21 months old. Sonja: “As hard as it is to say this, I hope for early death; they went to the gas cham­bers some­time between August and December of 1942. So they were gassed in Auschwitz, along with the rest of my fam­ily – I’m the only survivor.”

Sonja’s only link to her lost fam­ily was an oil paint­ing that she’s had since she was hid­den away. It is a dark paint­ing, full of greens, browns and dark hues. This sig­na­ture is in black. Sonja had never known who made the paint­ing, only that it had belonged to her family.

In 2000, she made con­tact with a dis­tant cousin, whom she had never before known existed. When they met, she asked him about the paint­ing. “I asked him if he knew any­thing about this paint­ing; I told him it sup­pos­edly had belonged to my par­ents, and asked if he knew any details. And he told me ‘This is your daddy’s sig­na­ture.’ So, he [her father] had been with me all along.”

Sonja’s father was an ama­teur painter, with ties to the Dutch artis­tic com­mu­nity. When he and his wife were ordered to report to the train sta­tion, they decided to leave their daugh­ter with a fam­ily friend, a painter. At first he tried to find a safe place to hide Sonja; there were many Jewish chil­dren hid­den in farms or coun­try estates. But Sonja’s guardian was uncom­fort­able with the sit­u­a­tions he was able to find and didn’t want to put Sonja in any fur­ther dan­ger. So he began work­ing with an under­ground agency to find fos­ter par­ents for her.

Sonja’s fos­ter mother was a Red Cross vol­un­teer. She and her hus­band were unable to have bio­log­i­cal chil­dren of their own, and had made it known that if there were any chil­dren who needed to be taken care of, they would be will­ing to take them in.

“We were really kind of the answer to each other’s prayers,” Sonja says.

Sonja was raised with no aware­ness of her Jewish her­itage. It wasn’t until her fos­ter fam­ily immi­grated to the U.S. in 1952 that she was told of her par­ents sac­ri­fice and her adop­tion by the only par­ents she’d ever known. “My par­ents died when they were 29 years old,” Sonja says. “They let me go to res­cue me.”

It took a long time for Sonja to fully under­stand her par­ents’ sac­ri­fice. “For years I didn’t think of it that way. I felt they should have taken a chance on life and hid­den, as so many oth­ers did – unsuc­cess­fully. It took my matu­rity to under­stand that this was a sac­ri­fice for them. When I became a grand­mother, when I saw my 2 year old grand­son cry­ing for his mommy – can you imag­ine giv­ing a child up at that age?”

Sonja now under­stands the unreal choice her par­ents faced in 1942. “My par­ents didn’t stand a chance at that time and they new it. They did the bravest thing on earth.”

It’s been only nine years since Sonja began shar­ing her story. “I’ve been try­ing to find myself for my whole life. It took a long time to even attempt to put the puz­zle together. It’s a lon­ley story; and it’s painful.”

She partly made the deci­sion to begin telling her story because she wanted to memo­ri­al­ize her birth fam­ily. “I’m the only way peo­ple know these folks existed; I’m the only per­son that can speak for their brav­ery.” But she also began shar­ing her mes­sage as a warn­ing to be on guard the against racism, hatred and intol­er­ance she sees every day. “The holo­caust isn’t over,” she says. “Racism and prej­u­dice are still real.”

Sonja focusses on reach­ing young peo­ple, and has had many class­room speak­ing engage­ments. “I want to encour­age young peo­ple to take a stand every­day, in what­ever way they can. I focus on what each per­son can do to coun­ter­act intol­er­ant atti­tudes. There are many oppor­tu­ni­ties to make a dif­fer­ence. The Nazis got help every­where they went; and silent bystanders became collaborators.”

And so Sonja tells her story to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of brave souls who will take a stand; who will renounce an atti­tude of apa­thy and impo­tent inac­tion. Her story must be told as part of the strug­gle to erad­i­cate the spirit of Holocaust that threat­ens all peo­ple of good will.