NJN Broadcasts The Hidden Child – The Story of a Holocaust Survivor
Tuesday, April 25, at 10 pm, and Sunday, April 30 at 4 pm

STATEWIDE – NJN’s latest documentary, The Hidden Child, is the story of Maud Dahme, a six-year-old Dutch girl who survived the Holocaust because of the decency and bravery of complete strangers. Now a prominent New Jersey resident and former president of the New Jersey State Board of Education, Dahme devotes her life to Holocaust and genocide education. Tolerance, mutual respect and understanding are issues explored in the documentary as well as in an accompanying teacher’s guide which is being developed by New Jersey educators.
An hour-long documentary shot in high definition, The Hidden Child will debut on NJN at 10 PM Tuesday, April 25 which is “Yom Hashoah,” or Holocaust Remembrance Day. The program will be rebroadcast Sunday, April 30th at 4 PM. The program is web streamed and archived on the NJN web site at njn.net and can be seen on NJN’s JerseyVision and on Time Warner Cable on channel 750 in New York. The Hidden Child is closed captioned.

The Hidden Child is Dahme’s own story of courage and hope in the face of evil and death. Of the 1,600,000 Jewish children who lived in Europe before World War II, only 100,000 survived the Holocaust. Most were hidden children, shut away in attics, cellars, convents or in villages or farms. Dahme was one of the estimated 3,000 to 8,000 Jewish children in the Netherlands who were hidden and saved from Nazi death camps by Christians who felt a moral obligation to do the right thing, even at the risk of their own lives. Dahme recalls dodging bullets and being forced to lie in order to survive, as well as the compassion of the strangers who risked their own lives to save Jewish children. Unlike Anne Frank, who hid with her family in Amsterdam, Dahme was separated from her parents. She and her younger sister Rita were raised as Christians and grew up under assumed names, first in Dutch farm country, and then in a fishing village. After the war the Dahme girls were reunited with their parents.

The Hidden Child is an outgrowth of a July 2004 trip to the Netherlands with Dahme and a contingent of twenty New Jersey school teachers. Chronicled by an award-winning production team, NJN captured Dahme’s return to the Dutch farmhouse and countryside where she had been hidden as a child. NJN also documented her emotional reunion with one of the Christian women who saved her life.

This riveting documentary also follows Dahme and the teachers to Vught, a Nazi concentration camp, and to the Anne Frank house as well as to the old Jewish quarters of Amsterdam, recording reactions to both the Maude Dahme story and the Nazi’s systematic destruction of Jewish life in the Netherlands.

The Hidden Child features interviews with Pieter Meerburg, an 83-year-old Dutch rescuer whose Amsterdam student group saved hundreds of Jewish children; Max Arpels Lezer, a former hidden child, who is now chairman of the Hidden Child Association of the Netherlands; his Excellency Clifford Sobel, then US Ambassador to the Netherlands; and his Excellency Eitan Margalit, Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands.

The award-winning production team includes Sara Lee Kessler, host, senior producer and writer; Lisa Bair Miller, producer and editor; and Ron Wagner as principal photographer. Original music was scored by Robert Sands. Steve Oleszek created the graphics. Executive producers are Janice Selinger and Elizabeth Christopherson. Funding for this program was made possible by Educational Testing Service (ETS) with additional funding provided by Novo Nordisk, Wal-Mart, Organon USA, Inc., New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), Wallerstein Foundation for Geriatric Life Improvement and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Grassroots support has been provided by a number of individuals who were so moved by Dahme’s story that they contributed anywhere from $18, the numerical equivalent of the word “chai,” which means life in Hebrew, to multiples of “chai” and up. The Hidden Child is a must-see documentary that imparts important lessons about courage, struggle, survival and tolerance.