Some one and a half million of the victims of the Holocaust were children. A small number survived on their own, but most were saved by programs like Kindertransport and One Thousand Children that removed them from their homeland and transported them to safer countries. Others became part of a group known as the Hidden Children. Their Jewish parents secretly gave them to non-Jewish families, and they assumed false identities. 

One of the best nonfiction accounts of the subject is The Hidden Children: Secret Survivors of the Holocaust by psychologist Jane Marks. For a different sort of view into this dark story, there is now Zipora Klein Jakob’s biographical novel, The Forbidden Daughter, the True Story of a Holocaust Survivor, which chronicles the life of one hidden child, Elida Friedman. The novel’s central character, she has dark hair and eyes, which bodes ill for her.