Breaking The Silence...: Reminiscences Of A Hidden Child

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.

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.