Hiding Edith: A True Story

Dave Jenkinson is a professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba and the author of the “Portraits” section of Emergency Librarian.

Spanning May 1938 to September 1944, Hiding Edith readably relates Edith
Schwalb’s Holocaust survival odyssey during World War II.

Born in Vienna in 1932, Edith is just six when her father, Chaim,
decides the family of four must abandon their home in German-occupied
Austria because of increasing mistreatment of Jews. Following two years
in Brussels, Belgium, which see Chaim arrested and released, the Schwalb
family, now numbering five, relocates to Vichy France. In February 1943,
after Chaim is again arrested, Edith’s mother, Magdalena, decides that
the family must split up for safety reasons. Magdalena and her older
daughter, Therese, become domestics in French homes, while Edith and
younger brother Gaston are placed in a house in Moissac run by the
Jewish Scouts of France. What makes this latter situation so unusual is
that Moissac’s inhabitants all know the house contains only Jewish
children, but instead of betraying them, the community warns them of
German raids, thereby allowing the children to escape into the
countryside on extended camping trips. When even the house becomes
unsafe, Edith must pass herself off as a Catholic girl, first in another
community’s boarding school and then as the niece of a farming couple.
An epilogue updates readers on the family’s postwar life. In addition
to an appended four-page photo section, black-and-white wartime shots
are scattered throughout the book.

While the book’s basic facts are correct, Kacer acknowledges creating
people’s names when Edith’s memory failed. As well, to make the book
more appealing to middle-school readers, Kacer invents dialogue and
ascribes emotions. Recommended.