Hidden Child

Isaac Millman was seven when German forces occupied France, and his everyday world collapsed. His father was taken first. Two years later, Isaac and his mother were seized as well. Desperate to keep her son alive, she paid a guard to deliver him to a hospital nearby, where Isaac and a number of other children feigned illness with the cooperation of doctors and nurses. That refuge did not last. Moved from town to countryside, he met both generosity and cruelty from people who took him in, and he had to abandon his Jewish name and become Jean Devolder. Through it all, he kept hold of his true identity and the belief that he would see his parents again once the war ended.

For more than fifty years Millman said nothing about these years. He finally chose to tell them in this book, using plain, restrained prose, detailed composite paintings, and family photographs that made it through the war.