The word Holocaust, to many people, brings images of concentration camps. Indeed much has been written and documented about those brutal places.
Less documented however, are the thousands of Jews who escaped the death camps and hid from Nazi tormentors in the hills, riverbanks, sheds, sewers and holes they dug in the earth of forests. They were forced to seek help from people they hoped would not betray them.
In Poland, well known for its fierce anti-Semitism even before Hitler’s rhetoric, many Jews sentenced themselves to death by believing they could trust their neighbors, friends or even strangers.
David Symchowicz, born in Krakow, Poland, had traveled to Berlin and other European cities during these turbulent times. He understood from scenes in those conurbations that the train of virulent hatred was speeding eastward.
Determined to keep his family together, David, his wife Hela and his daughter, Hania hid in a lean-to for two and a half years. This book tells of their harrowing existence, deprivations and dangers and of the courage and peril faced by the people who hid them.
Of course, anti-Semitism, hammered into the soul for so long cannot be turned off like a stream of water from a faucet. After the war, the Symchowicz family tried to start anew in a small Polish town only to be saved again from a pogrom that killed dozens of Jewish families. They made their way to a Displaced Person camp and eventually to America.
