BREAKING THE SILENCE...
Reminiscences of a Hidden Child
by
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“Farewell, my Paulinka. I love you!” “Goodbye, my dearest Papa... I love you so!” I kiss my father’s face and hands, separated from him by the wrought iron rungs of the police courtyard gate in
That very morning we had awakened to pandemonium in the streets below, people rushing about every which way. Huge crowds, sheer and utter chaos. Black dots in the sky. Men being called up to rejoin their regiments. WAR: THE “BOCHES” ARE COMING! Later that morning, a persistent and loud knocking on our combination bedroom-living room door. Belgian police, gleaming white helmets and black capes. Some plainclothesmen too. Papers, sheaves of paper. “Friedrich Schwarzbart! In the name of the King, you are under arrest, as a potential enemy of the
Papa softly admonishes me not to worry, that he will return as soon as this “gross mistake” is discovered, for a gross mistake it must indeed turn out to be; in the meantime, however, I am the man of the family and have to take good care of Mutti until he can, once again, resume his rightful responsibilities as head of our family. The little man he is thus addressing had just turned seven, not quite a month ago, but I should most assuredly protect my mother. So much love in his beautiful dark eyes, so much courage in his handsome face. And so much disbelief. No visible tears. The enormity of the occurrence undoubtedly escapes all of us, for who can truly comprehend what is actually happening here? We have been temporarily separated before, but no one in his right mind could have anticipated or even imagined the ramifications of this particular nightmare. No true precedent exists. We are Jews fleeing the Germans, fleeing for our lives. How can my dear father be arrested for anything, let alone as an anti-Belgian Germanophile, possibly even a fifth columnist? And untold thousands along with him, victims of the same horrible and irrevocable blunder. Sheer madness! It’s all a terrible, terrible mistake, and the Belgian authorities will realize it presently, won’t they? No indeed! They will not. Instead, they will compound the atrocity, in close complicity with their more-than-willing neighbors, the French.
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About the Book
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.
About the Author
Paul Schwarzbart, husband, father, respected teacher, survivor of the Holocaust, was born in Vienna. He fled with his parents when Austria was annexed. He and his mother eventually came to the United States, where he received his undergraduate and graduate degrees at UC Berkeley. His teaching career spanned 45 years. He has spoken over 200 times in various venues recounting his life experiences as a hidden child. In 1988 Schwarzbart’s life became the central theme of an award-winning Ken Swartz documentary, SHATTERED DREAMS, A Child of the Holocaust.