Thursday, Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. — LUDLOW — On Feb. 4 at 7 p.m. in the Ludlow Town Hall auditorium, Jane Marks Hart will present a discussion on her book, “The Hidden Children.” The book is the story of many Jewish children who, in order to survive the Nazi Holocaust, were sheltered by other families, often having to adopt the religion of the family and constantly at risk of being discovered by Nazi officials. Hart indicated she would like to open her presentation up to a group discussion about the consequences the survivors encountered as they matured.
“The Hidden Children” explores the lives of 23 men and women whose courage and ingenuity as little children, and extraordinary luck, allowed them to survive when the odds were entirely against them. It recounts the unusual and often horrific ordeal of the children living secretly in forests, under barns, and even a Polish sewer, the deeply confusing aftermath, the psychological baggage these children carried forward—and most compelling of all—the remarkable healing, sometimes decades after liberation.
Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., professor of psychiatry and psychology at CUNY Graduate Center, noted, “The Hidden Children provides us with previously hidden stories—stories that are as compelling as they are necessary for us to hear. The pain is there, but equally important are the resilience and the healing. The book is an important contribution to Holocaust literature and to the human future.”
This will be an especially interesting event for local students and church goers as they learned the roles played by the various people who risked their own lives protecting the children.
Hart is now a licensed, board-certified art therapist, facilitating the first-ever art therapy group with offenders in a men’s maximum security prison. She is also a portrait artist, specializing in dogs, cats, horses. Pigs, cows—and humans. She is the proud mother of a Proctorsville firefighter and the proud mother-in-law of one Ludlow Elementary School’s finest teachers.
This program is co-sponsored by The Book Nook of Ludlow and FOLA (Friends of Ludlow Auditorium). For information, call 802-228-7239 or visit fola.us.
