From HIDDEN LIKE ANNE FRANK, "Number 17"When Friesland was liberated at the end of April, they said, "You can tell us your name now." I didn't say anything. "Go on. Tell us what you're really called. The war's over now." But I'd promised my aunt in Haarlem that I would never say my name. They begged me, they hit me, they tried everything to make me tell them my name. "I don't know," I kept on saying. "I can't remember what my name is." But I thought to myself, "My name's Jacky Eljon. I know that perfectly well." After liberation, the people in Westerbork, where my mother had been taken in February 1945, were given lists of children who had survived the war. But my name was never on those lists, of course, because no one knew what I was really called. The Red Cross knew by then that there was a little boy in Hommerts who couldn't remember his name. So they organized a meeting with women from Westerbork whose children had disappeared. Most of them had been murdered in concentration camps. Two days before my eighth birthday, a Red Cross nurse came to fetch me. She took me to Sneek. It was a really long way. I rode on the back of her bike for about ten miles. She took me to a school gym, where lots of stern-looking men and women were sitting around a table. There was also a line of twenty chairs in the gym, with bald-headed women seated on them. I spotted my mother immediately, but I wasn't allowed to go to her. I had to start at number 1. I walked past all of those women with their bristly scalps. The Germans had shaved their heads and now their hair was starting to grow back. Near the end of the line sat number seventeen: my mother. I jumped onto her lap. Finally, after four years, I was back with her again. Excerpted from Hidden Like Anne Frank by Marcel Prins, Peter Henk Steenhuis All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
