by Thom Quine

René Goldman was a remarkable man who led a remarkable life – a “hidden child” during the Holocaust in France who lost both parents to the Nazis, shunted from orphanage to orphanage as a child, he nevertheless went on to lead a fascinating life in several countries, including Poland and China in the Stalinist era, before finding success as a professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Goldman showed resilience in the face of adversity and trauma that was admirable, and not unique, among the “hidden children.” Unfortunately, not all child survivors of the Holocaust recovered so well – some suffered lifetime emotional and psychological damage. This contribution will enquire into the factors that gave René Goldman the strength and resilience he needed to emerge from “a childhood adrift” and lead a successful life, and suggest ways in which these factors might be useful in addressing the trauma of contemporary childhood refugees.

At the time of this writing in the spring of 2022, it is impossible to discuss children traumatized by war without mentioning the more than one million children displaced by the war in Ukraine, some of whom find themselves, as René did in the 1940’s, out of school, without a permanent home, living in different cultures, where people speak foreign languages – and some of whose homes have been destroyed and who may never see one or more of their parents or relatives again. Are there lessons we can learn from the life of René Goldman that can help these children regain a balanced life?

German Occupation

René Goldman was born in Luxembourg in 1934, and grew up speaking Luxembourgish in the home, in an environment in which Yiddish and German were also spoken. The Jewish population of Luxembourg, dating back at least to the 13th century, was before the war approximately 3,500, but swelled by more than a thousand as German Jewish refugees sought shelter in the run-up to the war. When the Germans invaded Luxembourg in 1940, and introduced the Nuremburg laws, René’s family fled to Brussels, where he was placed in a Flemish school for two years – introducing him to yet another language of the 10 or so in which he eventually achieved some level of fluency.

Thousands of other Jewish families fled Luxembourg, mostly to France, where sadly many of them were later arrested and deported to concentration camps. By October 1942, there were only about 750 Jews left in Luxembourg, most of them elderly. Almost all were rounded up and deported to Treblinka and Auschwitz. Of the original 3,500 Jews from Luxembourg, 1,555 survived by fleeing or hiding. 1,945 were murdered in the camps or elsewhere. Only 36 are known to have survived the camps.[1]

In 1942, as the German noose began to tighten on the Jewish community in Belgium, Goldman’s family decided to flee to South America via Switzerland. Unfortunately, only a few miles from the Swiss border, they were arrested by French authorities, and interned in the south of France. But two weeks later there was a round-up of Jews for deportation, with more than 13,000 arrested overnight – René and his mother among them. René’s father escaped, and joined the underground Communist Resistance.

The most heart-breaking moment in René’s memoirs came at the rail station in Lons-le-Saunier, the small town in which they had been held. Among a large crowd of Jews, Goldman and his mother were herded to the station for deportation. By some miracle of chance, René’s aunt Fella, a French citizen and the sister of his mother, arrived at the station at the same time, and distraught by the sight of her sister and nephew about to be deported, she intervened and attempted to take the boy away. She was slapped and driven from the station by the police chief, who then sought to force René and his mother onto the train.

But somehow, Aunt Fella returned with two French Gendarmes, who waded into the crowd, took possession of the boy, and turned him over to his aunt.

Goldman’s last image of his mother was of her waving from the window of the train as the Gendarmes took him to his aunt outside the station. René learned from historical records much later in life that his mother was sent to an internment camp, then a few months later to Auschwitz, where she was almost certainly gassed on arrival.

After his rescue, Goldman was sent into hiding in a variety of locations. It was common for French families in cities to send children to live in the countryside to escape bombing, soldiers, and German occupation, and farm families were willing to house city children for room and board. René lived with such a family for a time, a family willing to shelter Jewish children, and there he attended school and came to speak French without an accent.

At age nine, Goldman was sent to a rural Catholic school for boys, where his name was changed to René Garnier. For a time he embraced Catholicism, finding it a comfort in his homesickness. He had only sporadic letters from his father, but in 1944 he was picked up and taken by an agent to see his father in Lyon, where he was able to spend a few glorious weeks feeling again that he was not an orphan. However, this feeling was short-lived, as he was sent back to the countryside to live with a different farm family, where he remained until the liberation of France.

Liberation

After Liberation, Goldman lived with some relatives in Lyon for a time. He believed his father to be away fighting Germans with the Free French Forces. He would later learn that his father had been arrested in one of the last round-ups of Jews and resistance fighters by the forces of the infamous Klaus Barbie[2]. He had been sent to a concentration camp, and died on one of the death marches led from the camps as the Russians approached.

At his aunt’s house there was little space for René, and he slept in the same bed with his cousin. At the time there was a well-financed organisation of communist “children’s houses”, or orphanages, some of them Jewish and funded by Jewish charities. Because of Goldman’s father’s connections, his family was able to obtain a space for him at one such house in Paris.

From the age of 11 until later in his teens, René lived in a series of such institutions, the most significant of these being the manoir de Denouval, in a Paris suburb. Although Goldman’s time there was peaceful, the increasingly upsetting news of the horrors of the Holocaust were beginning to emerge, unsettling the children at the manoir. Some of the children there had been freed from the camps, and René describes the emotional damage endured by some of of them, who, he said, “…had ceased to be children.”[3]

Occasionally a strange adult would appear, a parent or relative, to pick up one of the children and take them to a new life. Unaware of the fate of his parents, Goldman dreamed that one day they might arrive and take him away as well, and he spent many nights crying in his bed, wondering where his parents could be and why they had not come to bring him home.

But Goldman had no home. His life became inseparable from the Communist youth organisations he was exposed to, and he became a young teen dedicated to Communist and Stalinist ideals. At one point some of the children were sent to a lovely summer camp in Poland, and at the age of 16, René was given the opportunity to study in Poland, he eagerly volunteered.

We must admire the courage and resilience of an adolescent boy willing to leave all he had known to take up residence alone in a new country with a wholly new culture and language. But Goldman was still in a phase of youthful infatuation with the promise of socialism, an infatuation that evaporated under the reality of life in “socialist” Poland, and later at university in “communist” China. It was at least partly this ideological resolve, which he inherited from the French Communist Party, and from respect for the memory of his father, that gave him the courage to take such bold steps alone.

The Trauma of the Hidden Children

Not all hidden children fared as well in life as René Goldman. The Dutch child psychiatrist Hans Keilson studied 2,000 Jewish children who had survived in hiding. He found that in orphans separated from their mothers before 18 months of age, there was “…a high percentage of character-neurotic problems, disability, emotional disturbance, and problems of personal isolation, insecurity and identity.”[4]

One French study of Jewish children hidden in France during the war, as was René Goldman, found the following:

“Through these narratives, we can detect identity and affiliation disruption on a considerable scale. Thus, hidden children present specific symptoms related to psychological breakdown, to the fact of being survivors, to the damage to affiliation links, and to losses and impossible mourning. These symptoms are reinforced by silence. Certain disturbances are probably linked to a psychic breach. […] We also observed hypervigilance, sleep disorders, repression of emotions, splitting, and hyperactivity. Those symptoms are aggravated by loss, impossible mourning, and mutism reflecting their mental distress. Another impression that emerged was that of never feeling in their right place. In addition to isolation, there was the feeling of never being understood, of always lacking something. These pathological signs can be linked to damaged filiation and affiliation. Loss, impossible mourning, and mutism reflecting their mental distress have aggravated filiation and affiliation.” [5]

The mental torment of many of the hidden children may never be brought to light. In his memoir, Goldman remembers at least one fellow orphan at the manoir de Denouval, Marcel Dorembus, who many years later, as an adult, returned to the then unoccupied manoir de Denouval, and committed suicide on the grounds.[6]

Robert Krell, a Vancouver Holocaust survivor and former hidden child, became a psychiatrist and university professor who treated former hidden children, Holocaust survivors, as well as Dutch survivors of Japanese concentration camps. He mentions that all survivors whom he helped showed various symptoms associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In applying for compensation from the Dutch government, Krell was required to undergo a psychiatric assessment. A psychiatrist himself, Krell felt he was mentally prepared to present an account of his life and the effects of his childhood – instead, the moment he began to speak about his story, he broke into tears and “…cried uncontrollably for two hours.” He subsequently required three years of therapy to work through his anguish.[7]

Resilience

Nevertheless, a surprising number of hidden children, René Goldman and Robert Krell among them, emerged from traumatic childhoods to become highly successful citizens. What can help explain the resilience of some in the face of childhood adversity?

One study reported:

“Researchers have also studied personality characteristics that contributed to resilience and better adaptation. Sociologist William Helmreich, who wrote Against All Odds, (1992), proposed ten assets that supported survivors in adapting to their new lives after liberation: flexibility, assertiveness, tenacity, optimism, intelligence, distancing ability, group consciousness, assimilating the knowledge of survival, finding meaning in one’s life, and courage.”[8]

Certainly Goldman displayed many or all of these qualities throughout his childhood and later life.

Lessons for Today’s Refugee Children

Unfortunately, the suffering of children did not end with World War II, and has continued through the decades and across the world. Around the world, tens of thousands of children are being raised in refugee camps. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more than five million Ukrainians were forced to flee their homeland, among them more than a million children. What can we learn from the history of René Goldman that can help us to care for the refugee children of today?

Firstly, I think it is important to note that Goldman was deeply loved by his family. He was not abandoned, rather the choices made by his family were meant to keep him safe, while his father fought for his country, similar to what many Ukrainian fathers are doing today. Refugee children need to know that they have not been discarded or forgotten, but are loved and valued.

Secondly, his curiosity about the world, his love of languages and other cultures, and a fascination with maps and geography since early childhood helped him to adapt to new environments. One of the great losses faced by refugee children is loss of education while in flight or setbacks in a foreign land, culture, and language. Efforts must be made to minimize the disruption to the education of refugee children.

Thirdly, having a community that supported him emotionally and financially was critical to Goldman’s wellbeing. His family and extended family, the Communist movement in France, and importantly the international Jewish community, helped Goldman survive, grow, and develop into a caring human being.

Lastly, I believe it was important for Goldman and for any child to have a purpose larger than themselves to believe in and to fight for. Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and psychologist, in his important book Man’s Search for Meaning[9], explains how important it was for victims of the Holocaust to have a logos, a point to their existence, a higher purpose, a reason to go on living and fighting for a better world.

Goldman’s hope that his family would be reunited gave him strength and resilience as a child. Later in life he devoted himself to communism, believing that it held the promise of a better world for all. He became disillusioned with Stalinism, and later placed his hopes in Zionism and the State of Israel. The common thread was his dream of a world of social justice free of racism, prejudice, and oppression.

Let us hope that the children of Ukraine can be sustained by the promise of a bright future in a prosperous homeland free of war, racism, and oppression.

Bibliography

Goldman, René. A Childhood Adrift. Canada: Azrieli Foundation, 2017.

Goldman, René. Survivor Testimony (video). Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre: 1983 https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/objects/840

Feldman, Marion, Taı ̈eb, Olivier, and Moro, Marie Rose. “Jewish Children Hidden in France Between 1940 and 1944: An Analysis of Their Narratives Today,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2010, Vol. 80, No. 4, 547–556. Retrieved April 10, 2022 from https://www.academia.edu/26930620/Jewish_children_hidden_in_France_between_1940_and_1944_An_analysis_of_their_narratives_today .

Frankl, Victor. Man’s Search for Meaning. (Beacon Press, 2006).

Hayes, Peter, ed. How Was it Possible? – A Holocaust Reader. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Holocaust  Education & Archive Research Team. The Destruction of the Jews of Luxembourg. March 5, 2022. http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/luxembourg.html

Holocaust Remembrance Project. Luxembourg. March 5, 2022. https://www.holocaustremembranceproject.com/Countries/Luxembourg

Joseph, Henry. “Henry Joseph on deportations from Luxembourg.” USC Shoah Foundation: March 5, 2022. https://sfi.usc.edu/video/henry-joseph-deportations-luxembourg

Kotz, Gideon. “How Luxembourg is addressing its Holocaust history.” The Jerusalem Post: March 11, 2021. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/how-luxembourg-is-addressing-its-holocaust-history-661645

Krell, Robert. Sounds from Silence. Amsterdam Publishers: 2021.

Lodhi, Nathalie. The deportation of Luxembourg’s Jewish community during WWII. RTL Radio Lëtzebuerg, October 10, 2019.  https://www.rtl.lu/culture/exhibitions/a/1419329.html

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre: René Goldman collection. March 5, 2022. https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/entities/344

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre : Series : Goldman family records. March 5, 2022. https://collections.vhec.org/Detail/collections/843

van der Hal, Elisheva, PhD, and Brom, Danny, PhD. “Infant Survivors of the Holocaust: Consequences of Traumatic Experiences in Very Early Childhood”. The Hidden Child. Hidden Child Foundation, Vol. XXIV, 2016. https://www.adl.org/media/13110/download

Wikimedia Commons. The Holocaust in Luxembourg. March 5, 2022. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:The_Holocaust_in_Luxembourg

[1] “The Destruction of the Jews of Luxembourg”, Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, retrieved April 8, 2022, from http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/nazioccupation/luxembourg.html .

[2] Klaus Barbie, known as “The Butcher of Lyon”, was the head of the Gestapo in Lyon at the end of the Second World War. He was responsible for the deaths of as many as 14,000 people, and personally tortured adult and child prisoners. He was eventually tried and sentenced to life in prison in France, where he died in 1991. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

[3] René Goldman, A Childhood Adrift, (Canada: Azrieli Foundation, 2017), 138.

[4] Elisheva van der Hal, PhD, and Danny Brom, PhD, “Infant Survivors of the Holocaust: Consequences of Traumatic Experiences in Very Early Childhood”, in The Hidden Child, (Hidden Child Foundation, Vol. XXIV, 2016), 25, retrieved April 9, 2022, from: https://www.adl.org/media/13110/download .

[5] Marion Feldman, Olivier Taı ̈eb, and Marie Rose Moro, “Jewish Children Hidden in France Between 1940 and 1944: An Analysis of Their Narratives Today,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 2010, Vol. 80, No. 4, 547–556. Retrieved April 10, 2022 from https://www.academia.edu/26930620/Jewish_children_hidden_in_France_between_1940_and_1944_An_analysis_of_their_narratives_today .

[6] Goldman, 137.

[7] Robert Krell, Sounds from Silence, Amsterdam Publishers: 2021, 249.

[8] Eva Fogelman, PhD, “Resilience in the lives of Traumatized Holocaust Child Survivors”, in The Hidden Child, (Hidden Child Foundation, Vol. XXVII, 2019), 17, retrieved April 9, 2022 from: https://www.adl.org/media/13113/download .

[9] Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning, (Beacon Press, 2006).