Becoming Janet is a worthy addition to the canon of Holocaust literature that recounts the experiences of hidden children. Drawing from her own memories recorded shortly after the war, her father’s written account of his experience during the Holocaust, and painstaking research conducted by a historian in Poland as well as by members of her family, Janet Singer Applefield — born as Gustawa Singer — provides a compelling account of how she survived the Holocaust as a hidden child. The book also offers readers insight into the little-known history of the violent antisemitism that was directed toward Jewish orphans after the war ended.
In August 1942, after almost three years of living an itinerant life with her family in order to escape the Nazis, Gustawa and her parents met a crossroads. An Aktion had been announced, requiring all Jews to report to a ghetto outside of Krakow for deportation. Fearing that seven-year-old Gustawa would not survive the Aktion, her parents made the agonizing decision to separate from her, leaving her care to a cousin’s nanny. This fateful decision by her parents saved Gustawa’s life — but at a tremendous cost.
Over the next three years, Gustawa was shuttled between family and strangers. She was forced to suppress her true identity in order to pass as a young Polish Catholic girl named Krysia, which took a real emotional toll. Like other hidden children of the Holocaust, she became “conditioned to believe that it was vital to [her] survival to keep secrets, hide, lie, and steal.” Applefield describes in heartbreaking detail the unspeakable cruelty and hatred visited upon her over this period, including by relatives entrusted to keep her safe. But she also details the incredible compassion shown to her by total strangers, often at great personal risk to themselves.
When the war ended, Krysia found herself in the care of a male cousin who used Krysia’s Aryan looks to have her confirmed in the Catholic Church. With her confirmation certificate in hand, which he used to pass himself off as Catholic, he callously discarded Krysia at an orphanage run by the Jewish Community Center in Krakow. Recounting her time in the orphanage, Applefield reveals the rabid antisemitism that endured long after the war ended. She describes in brutal detail the violent pogroms that erupted on the streets of Krakow and the mobs that would attack the center, attempting to kill the Jewish children housed inside.
Miraculously, Kyrsia’s father survived the war and eventually found her in the orphanage. Once reunited, they decided that there was nothing left for them in Poland, so they immigrated to the United States, where they had family. Once again, Krysia had to adopt a new name and a new life. This time, she became Janet.
Becoming Janet is a powerful and captivating story about how one little girl bravely hid her identity, battling and overcoming hate to survive the Holocaust.
