''A Hidden Life'' is a memoir by Dutch-American author

Johanna Reiss Johanna Reiss ( ; born 4 April 1932) is a Dutch-American writer whose work focuses on her experiences as a Jewish child during the Second World War. Her books have been compared to the writing of Anne Frank. Early life Johanna Reiss was born ...

. Reiss won the

Newbery Medal The John Newbery Medal, frequently shortened to the Newbery, is a literary award given by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association (ALA), to the author of "the most distinguished cont ...

for her account of her experiences as a child during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

, '' The Upstairs Room'', which was followed by the sequel '' The Journey Back'', both published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News ...

Background

In ''A Hidden Life'', Reiss recounts her visit to the home of her youth and the tragedy that followed. She had been 10 years old at the beginning of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, and spent nearly three years hiding from the Nazis with a family in

Usselo Usselo ʏsəloːis a Dutch village in the municipality of Enschede in the eastern Netherlands region of Twente. It is located just west of Enschede and east of Boekelo. It has existed for over 800 years. Archaeology shows that the region was in ...

in a rural part of the Netherlands. In the postwar period, she immigrated to the United States. After living there for several years, she decided to visit the family that aided her during the harrowing Nazi years. She made this journey in the summer of 1969, spending nearly two months in the Netherlands with her husband and her two young children. While there, she had to confront her painful memories. But during that time, a worse and more immediate tragedy befell her: her husband returned to America early and committed suicide. ''A Hidden Life'', which Lucy Kavaler calls "one of the most moving books" she has ever read, is the story of one woman's perseverance through past and present tragedy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hidden Life American memoirs 2009 non-fiction books Children in the Holocaust HarperCollins books Works about children in war