Hidden

Of the Rosenbluth family, only the older children, Faiga and Luzer, had gone into hiding before the SS rounded up the Jews of Kanczuga, Poland. ""Hidden"" is Faiga and Luzer's story. In alternating first-person narratives, Faiga (Fay) and Luzer (Leo) take readers into their very different but inextricably linked experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland. Faiga, the once-dignified young lady from a good home with servants and a seat by the eastern wall of the synagogue, spends two years wandering the perilous countryside, hoping to be taken for a peasant. Mere miles away, knowing nothing of his sister's fate, Luzer, the leather wholesaler's only son, lies silent all day in the stifling dark corner of a barn, where the smell of the cows' warm hides are a piquant reminder of his lost world. ""Hidden"" summons up that world, as the familiar comforts and squabbles of life in a well-to-do, religious Jewish family are slowly overwhelmed by the grim news coming out of Germany. We follow Faiga and Luzer through the early forebodings and deprivations of the war, into hiding among the righteous Poles and erstwhile neighbours-turned-betrayers, and finally, at the war's end, back once more into the world - but not necessarily into safety. This is a story of heroism and tragedy, of two young people coming of age in a world in chaos and then trying to return to ""normal"" after experiences as unimaginable as they are unforgettable.