In August 1942, Alo­jzy and Maria Singer gave their only child, 7‑year-old Gustawa, to a nan­ny before report­ing to a manda­to­ry SS ​“Selec­tion.” With­in days, Maria was sent to the death camp Bełżec, Aloyse was tak­en for slave labor, and Gustawa was plunged into a clan­des­tine exis­tence with only the iden­ti­ty papers of a deceased Pol­ish girl and a well-rehearsed cov­er sto­ry. 

Passed between strangers with both hon­or­able and self-seek­ing inten­tions, the girl spent the next three years hid­ing in plain sight, nav­i­gat­ing sit­u­a­tions that would par­a­lyze most adults— beat­ings at the hands of a ​“care­tak­er,” Gestapo raids, and anti­se­mit­ic attacks on one of the orphan­ages where she lived. The girl who would become Janet Singer Apple­field, nev­er thought of her sto­ry in terms of sur­vival — how could she com­pare her expe­ri­ence to that of her par­ents? But rather than being a pas­sive recip­i­ent of her res­cuers’ immense brav­ery, Gustawa was an active par­tic­i­pant at every turn in the events that saved her life. This is the sto­ry of Becom­ing Janet.