Breaking the Silence...: Reminiscences of a Hidden Child

By Paul A. Schwarzbart

Book Overview

Can one predict what a child will remember? Paul Schwarzbart vividly recalls looking out his window daily at the Austrian flag atop a school nearby; one day, without warning, the Nazi flag replaced it. "From that moment on," he remembers, "everything deteriorated rapidly." During World War II, Paul Schwarzbart lived a life of secrecy. In the spring of 1943, young Schwarzbart was hidden in the Ardennes by the Jewish underground at the Home Reine Elizabeth, a Catholic boys' school near Luxembourg. There, for two years he assumed the role of a Belgian Catholic under the name of Paul Exsteen. The model student soon became an altar boy and Cub Scout leader and was eventually baptized in secret. Unable to divulge his real identity, he felt a painful loneliness gnawing at his heart. And all the while, he suffered from the agony and uncertainty of not knowing his parents' whereabouts. This book is his story. It is a story of love and hope, as well as man's terrible inhumanity to man.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1418407119
• ISBN13: 9781418407117
• Release Date: August 2004
• Publisher: Authorhouse
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Extraordinary love of family

Schwarzbart's poignant memoir is an ode to his parents and the 'strangers' who helped him survive. THe memoir stresses the love he bears his mother and father, and the great love they beswtowed on him. This book is a MUST read.

Breaking his own silence, healing the hidden child.

In this moving book, Paul Schwarzbart tells of his childhood as a Jewish boy trapped in the horrors of the Holocaust. It is a lively narrative, surprisingly full of vivid memories. Schwarzbart has not forgotten a thing. He was an intelligent child who imprinted in him every detail of every situation. Like many others, he tells us of the cruelty of absurdity: his father, a Jewish Austrian refugee in Belgium is arrested at the onset of the war because, as an Austrian, he has become an enemy of Belgium. What seems to be a haven becomes dangerous territory overnight. Like many others, he tells of the despair and bottomless pain of separation from a parent. He tells of the unbearable injustices and crimes committed against the Jews. But there is something different in this book. Schwarzbart talks about gratitude. His book is full of reminiscences of gratitude. First and foremost, is the gratitude for his mother and her superb strengths during the endless hardship of the war years. There is gratitude toward all the teachers, school staff and director, simple people who had the courage to rescue young children. This book is full of love and hope. In the middle of dire darkness, multiple sparks of light appear to sustain and affirm life. They are all the brave people that Paul Schwarzbart is honoring in his book.

A Poignant Story of Love

Paul Schwarzbart writes a poignant love story, a story of love of life, of love of family, of survival in a most treacherous time. We all "know" the story of the holocaust; but do we really? Paul was a five year old at its beginning. He lived it; he survived it all while suffering the greatest of loss and receiving unbounded love. He brings to the printed page a detailed and vibrant recollection of a gifted child denied his childhood, protected, guided and hidden by strangers of a different faith risking their own lives. Paul's story lives as a reminder of a world we must never allow to again exist. No other child should ever be subjected to the irrational trauma depicted in Paul's narrative.

A Different Slant on the Holocaust

Most autobiographies about the Holocaust are full of hopelessness and despair. This one is a true celebration of the human spirit. In 1940, Paul was 7 years old, living with his family in Brussels, when his father was arrested and interned simply for being a Jew. During the ensuing German occupation, for him and his family, life became a new routine of quiet desperation until there was a knock on the door. His mother opened the door to an unknown man who told her that if she wanted to save her son's life, she must let him hide him from the Nazi's, but she must not ask him where Paul was being taken. A neighboring couple offered to let the boy use their surname, and with a new identity, Paul embarked on an overnight train to a distant town where he entered a Catholic boys' school as Paul Exsteen. In this school of 125 boys between the ages of 5 and 14, Paul quickly absorbed this new role as a Catholic, learning the Catechism, going to confession and eventually becoming an alter boy, always under the constant fear that he would be discovered. There were mornings of waking to searches by German soldiers, but Paul's hidden identity was never discovered. Only 45 years later does he learn that 60 of the 125 boys in the school were hidden Jewish children, each sponsored by someone who would have probably been tortured or worse if their involvement had been discovered. Eventually, Paul was reunited with his mother and they finally made it to the United States, an impossibility but for the kind assistance of many people at each step of their progress. This book is a bittersweet recollection of the Holocaust - the horror of it and the endless sacrifice of people who quietly and with steadfast dedication helped those who might have otherwise been victims of this violent period of history.

The silence is broken indeed...

This is my very best first autobiography, an ode to my dear parents and the righteous gentiles who helped save my life. It is a tale of light and hope amid darkness, which I share directly with my readers in my very own voice. The book is superbly illustrated with photographs of the principals.