Spiro Ark proudly presents Francine Lazarus author of A Hidden Jewish Child from Belgium:

Francine will talk about overcoming trauma, emigration and how founding a family and integrating in a welcoming community in Australia helped her find voice.

Francine Lazarus survived the Second World War in Belgium, hidden with strangers, isolated from her family. A witness to murder. With her father murdered in Auschwitz her story continues post-war with the young Francine put into foster-care. Like most child Survivors, she was told to forget about her war experiences and so, still plagued by secrecy, guilt and shame, the author explains how silence affected her life and how she started to share her story.  Completing high school, university and her work were also part of her reconstruction.

The author shares her memories, emotions and introspection, and relates them to the existing literature on Hidden Children. 

The issue of reconstruction is what makes her book a considerable addition to current literature by filling the gap between the intimacy of individual memoirs, and the past ten years’ academic research conducted on elderly hidden Jewish children by historians, psychologists and other professionals.