Airs Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 10 pm

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, shuttered away in attics, cellars, convents or in villages or farms. Maud Dahme, a New Jersey resident and former president of the NJ Board of Education, was among those who were hidden and survived. The Hidden Child, a one-hour high-definition documentary, is Dahme’s own story of courage, hope and bravery in the face of evil and death. Dahme was one of the estimated 3,000 to 8,000 Jewish children in the Netherlands who were hidden and saved from the Nazi death camps by courageous Christians.

A gripping tale of survival, The Hidden Child tells the story of a six-year-old girl and her sister, separated from their parents, dodging bullets, lying for survival and relying on the compassion of strangers who risked their own lives to save Jewish children. Today, Dahme devotes her life to the Holocaust and genocide education. Issues such as tolerance, mutual respect and understanding are explored in depth in the documentary as well as in an accompanying teacher guide developed by New Jersey educators for classroom use.

The Hidden Child follows Dahme and the teachers to Vught, a Nazi concentration camp, and to the Anne Frank House and the old Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, recording their reactions to the retelling of the Nazi’s systematic destruction of Jewish life in the Netherlands. The program includes interviews with Pieter Meerburg, an 83-year-old Dutch rescuer whose Amsterdam 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; former US Ambassador to the Netherlands Clifford Sobel; and Eitan Margalit, Israeli Ambassador to the Netherlands.