NEWS
Synopsis

SECRET LIVES: Hidden Children & their Rescuers During WW II, tells the complex and emotional story of a small number of Jewish children who were saved from the Nazis by non-Jews who, at great personal risk, took them into their homes as an extraordinary act of human decency. Whether hidden for months or years, the experience affected both the hidden children and their rescuers profoundly and forever and is the focus of a new documentary produced, directed and narrated by Academy Award winner Aviva Slesin, herself a former hidden child.
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Director's Note



Click here for a large photo of Aviva .		 SECRET LIVES has its origins in my own story. When I was 9 months old, I was smuggled out of a Lithuanian ghetto and hidden with a Christian couple, passing as one of their children. They kept me for two and a half years until my mother, the only member of my immediate family to survive, returned from a concentration camp to claim me. My rescuers, who were not paid to take me in, did so at great risk to their own lives.

For most of my life I did not focus on this early chapter of my history, but after the Iron Curtain was lifted, I found out that my rescue mother was still alive, and I went back to Lithuania to thank her for saving my life. Fifty years had gone by, and even though I did not recognize her and had no memories of my time in hiding, the feelings between us were so powerful that I was moved to make this film. I wanted to find out about the emotional connection between other hidden children and their rescuers and I wanted to explore the small pockets of goodness that flourished even in the midst of the evils of the Holocaust. SECRET LIVES is a tribute to my rescuers and others like them who transcended fear, politics, and religious beliefs to save children. They did so not knowing how long the war would last, and not knowing which side would win. I would like the film to stand as an irrefutable memorial to their courage and their humanity.
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Credits

Produced and Directed by Aviva Slesin

Co-Producer and Writer: Toby Appleton Perl

Executive Producer: Ann Rubenstein Tisch

Edited by Ken Eluto, A.C.E.

Music by John Zorn
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Quotes

JULIA MELCER: (Mother of hidden child Alice Sondike, Poland)
I said to the lady who took her in, you can punish her, you can Christen her, you can do what ever you want -- only keep her alive.
ALICE SONDIKE: (Hidden at age 3, Poland)
I remember a long train ride, I don't know where I was going, and I wound up on a farm in the country. I knew that I didn't belong there, that I wasn't a member of the family, but it was never explained to me who I was.


EPHRAIM GAT: (Hidden in a closet at age 5, Poland)
I was never sick, I never coughed, never sneezed. I was quiet so no one knew that I was there.
GENOWEFA NOWAK: (Ephraim's Rescuer, Poland)
If they had caught us, first they would have shot my children right before my eyes, then the child we were hiding, and then they would have killed us. But we didn't think about the danger. We just wanted to save the child.


ERICA POLAK: (Age 2 at war's end)
When I met my rescuer again, I was so happy. It was one of the best feelings I had in my life. I understood that she felt more mother for me than my own mother. But then came also this angriness that she left me.
MARION PRITCHARD: (Erica's rescuer, Holland)
I thought they could pick up and be a happy family again. Now I know that what happens to us in the first two years is what we remember better than anything else, though not always in words.
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Images from the Movie

Please click on the images above
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