A first-person account of survival as a hidden child
In Don’t Ask My Name: A Hidden Child’s Tale of Survival (East End Press, 2021) Erika Hecht recounts how she, a Jewish child, posed as a Christian and survived the Holocaust in Hungary.
The book begins with Erika’s mother converting from Judaism to Catholicism to try to protect the family from rising antisemitism in Hungary. However, after the German occupation this conversion was not sufficient, and the family fled to a small village with false papers. They endured terrible conditions and survived, only to suffer afterward from the Communist takeover of Hungary. Fleeing again, they arrived in then Occupied Vienna in post-war Austria. As Erika grows up and enters the university, the lies and secrets that she had to keep during the war send her on a lifelong search for her identity. Her book explores her conflicts about Judaism and Catholicism, as well as her strained relationship with her mother. The author later lived in Canada, and then in the United States, and is involved with the movement of hidden children.