The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust Review By: Ayisha Hernandez

The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust (Memoir)

Rein Kaufman, Lola. (2008). The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust. New York, New York:  Scholastic, Inc.

Lola is a young girl who lives in a Polish town named Czortkow. She lives with her parents and her grandparents, her Mother’s parents. The Germans come to Czortkow and isolate all of the Jews in the town to a ghetto. The people in the ghetto are not allowed to leave unless they have working papers and are given very little food. They must wear armbands with Jewish stars. Some of the Jewish people are starting to be taken away from the ghetto. When the Nazi soldiers come to take away the Jews Lola and her family hide in a wall. Their own neighbors betray them and point out where they are hiding, luckily the soldiers do not find them. Her father is taken away, her mother is shot, and she is left with her Grandmother who she calls Babcia, pronounced Bab-cha. The ghetto is getting smaller and smaller and one day her grandmother finds a way to sneak her out of the ghetto to live with a Ukrainian woman. Eventually the Ukrainian woman can no longer keep her and takes her to another woman who hides her in a hole under her barn. There is a woman named Rose, her brother Abraham, and Rose’s daughter Betka are already in the hole. They are not happy when Lola shows up because they have to share what little food they have. After nine months in the hole, Lola is allowed to come out but now she has to go back home to find what family she has left.

The author of this memoir is actually the young girl from the story. She wrote about her time being a hidden child during the Holocaust. She did a wonderful job of bringing the reader into the story. The images you get in you head and emotions Lola felt during her life in the ghettos and then in the hole under the barn grabbed the reader’s attention and hooked you from the very start. Rein Kaufman’s description of her struggles while being a hidden girl, living in a hole for nine months, were both sad and encouraging. She was so young, yet so brave. This memoir would be a wonderful accompaniment to any Holocaust text set. I would recommend this memoir to students aged Fourth Grade to about Eighth Grade due to violence and some mature situations.