During the horrors of World War II, many Jewish families in Belgium were forced to hide their children in the hope of avoiding detection by the Gestapo and ultimately surviving the war. In Belgium alone, more than 5,000 children survived the genocide by hiding and disguising themselves from the world. This is the story of Baroness Regina Slushny, one of Belgium’s remaining Holocaust survivors. hidden children.
Regina of Hemiksem, childhood, 1944.
My name is Regina Srushny. I was a little more than a year old when the war started in Belgium. I lived in Antwerp with my mother Genta, father Jacob, and two brothers Marcel and Eli. We were born into her Jewish family who immigrated from Poland in 1930. We lived very peacefully in Antwerp until May 1940 when the German army invaded Belgium. Their main goal was to eliminate and exterminate all Jews. Even the children. Soon after the occupation began, new laws were introduced specifically targeting Jews. The first law, implemented in 1941, stipulated that all Jews must be registered on a separate list called the Joodselijst, or Jewish List, located in the city hall. A copy of this list was given to the German officer in charge so that he could pick up all Jewish families and bring them to the Kaserne Dossin (detention and processing center) in Mechelen. From there, they sent him to an extermination camp in 27 trains from 1942 to 1944. More than 25,000 mothers, fathers, and children, including infants, were sent to be killed, and only about 1,200 returned.
In mid-1942, the parents realized that it was too dangerous to stay in Antwerp with their three young children. Her father had known the daughter of a woman named Poldin since before the war, when he was working in the market. Poldine ran a guest house with a pub and several rooms in Hemiksem, a small town about 15 minutes from Antwerp. She had two vacant rooms of hers in a guesthouse and offered them to us, so we all moved to Hemiksem. We had to be very quiet all day because there were guys in the pub downstairs having beers and chatting and they could hear the little noises we made. Poldin said she didn’t want anyone to know that people were hiding upstairs because she could be in danger. Luckily, I was blonde and didn’t look Jewish, so I was allowed to hang out in the courtyard. I was only two and a half years old, and Poldine thought no one would believe that I was a Jewish child.
From left to right: Anna, Marcel (Anna’s niece), Dora (Anna’s sister, holding Marcel’s infant daughter), Regina, Twan (Dora’s husband), Sharelle, 1943.
There was a hole in the wall between the two houses in the courtyard, the pub and the house next door and the grocery store, allowing access from one garden to the other. The people next door who owned the grocery store were named Anna Jacobs Van Dyke and Sharelle Jacobs Van Dyke. They were the best people I have ever known.
In 1944, during World War II, young Regina goes shopping in Antwerp with Anna’s two younger sisters, Dora and Fiense.
They had no children, but Anna had two cats that she loved very much. She fed them her freshly prepared food every day, the same as what she and her husband were eating. One day, after she put the food dish on the floor and before the cats arrived, I was hungry so I snuck through the hole and grabbed the food. I didn’t realize that Anna was standing behind the curtain from the kitchen window and could see me getting the food. She quickly realized that if a small child under the age of three was stealing food from a cat, the child must be desperate. This was my first meeting with Anna, who would become my war mother after my family was denounced by the Germans.
In Hemiksem there was a camp with German soldiers who were informed that Jews were hiding in a pub in Pordine. We didn’t know who knew that we and another Jewish family were secretly living on the first floor, but it didn’t matter. Mayor Hemiksem was instructed to bring the condemned Jews to Dossin, but we were lucky. Before coming, he sent his 12-year-old son to Charel with a message to go to Pordine’s pub and inform him of his impending arrival. When Sharel came to my parents, he took what he could carry, took my siblings with him, and I stayed with him and Anna until his parents found a safe place to hide. I said okay. My parents had no choice. They had to make a decision quickly, but they didn’t know where to go. So, at that moment, they agreed to leave me with Anna and Sharel and come back when it was safe. My stay with these beautiful people continued until the end of the war.
Living with Anna and Sharell was a dream. I was able to run around the house and go shopping whenever I wanted. I had my own bedroom, which was a luxury back then. And most importantly, I had love. They gave me everything I needed and more. It was not until many years after the war that I learned that everyone in Hemiksem knew that I was Jewish, but I was never denounced. When the war ended and I turned six years old, it was time for me to start elementary school. The kindergarten teacher told Anna and Sharel that it would be better for them to go to school in Antwerp, where the school’s curriculum was better. So Anna and Charel wrote to my parents and asked them to take me back to Antwerp. After hiding in 15 different locations for the previous three and a half years during the war, her parents and siblings returned to Antwerp. Sharel knew that. Because while I was with him and Anna, he brought food to different places where his parents and siblings were hiding.
In 1944, young Regina and her friend Robert in Hemiksem.
My parents agreed, but when my mom came to pick me up, I didn’t recognize her. Sharelle reassured me that she was my mother and that she would give me a ride home. For me, this was very strange because in Hemiksem I was at home. Mother asked Anna and Sharel. “How can I repay you for saving not only my daughter but my entire family?” For more than three years, you have delivered food regularly, and you have broken curfew and put yourself at risk to collect supplies. How should I thank you for smuggling me in? ” Her mother’s gratitude was immeasurable. But Anna and Sharel didn’t have children of their own, and because they loved me so much, there was only one thing they wanted. It’s about maintaining a relationship with me. This is to ensure that the “adopted” child is not completely taken away. She promised that my mother would come to visit them every Friday after school and that she would be with them until Sunday evening. And that’s how I lived the rest of my youth, until I met her husband.
During the week, he lived with an Orthodox family and attended a Jewish school, and on weekends he lived with Anna and Sharel like non-Jewish children. When I first moved back to live with my parents and siblings, life was difficult for me. Because they were going through the war together as a Jewish family, and I was going through the war with non-Jews. During the week, I had to learn to be Jewish again, including all the laws regarding food and behavior, but on the weekends I didn’t have to think about it at all. Over time, I regained my place in my family and in my faith, but still always cling to the otherness that allowed me to be because of the two lives I lived. I did.
Baroness Regina Slushny, 2022.
I was 20 years old when I married my husband Georges. He was also a hidden child who lost seven members of his family in the war. Anna and Sharelle welcomed him into their family. They came to our wedding and also witnessed the birth of our two children, whom I grew up knowing as Aunt Anna and Uncle Sharelle. Throughout the rest of their lives, they considered me their daughter and I considered them my second parents. It’s really part of my family.
Out of gratitude and remembrance, the title “Righteous Among the Nations” is given to those who contributed to the rescue of the Jews during the Holocaust, as established by Israel’s Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem, and the people they saved. should be honored. On July 13, 2010, at my request, Anna and Sharel received certificates of honor from Yad Vashem. For Anna and Sharelle, and for all the righteous, I will continue to tell my story so that they and their bravery will be remembered.
Baroness Regina Slushny uses pictures to explain her story to teenagers at a school in Antwerp in 2022.
For more than 20 years, I have been visiting schools and workplaces to share my and Georges’ war testimony. I have spoken on several occasions throughout Belgium and even abroad with 12-year-old primary school students, university students, and adults of all backgrounds and faiths. Our story is also told in the book “Children of the Forgotten War” by Paul de Kellener. Regardless of their age, most of the time the young people I talk to are unaware of the atrocities of World War II. This is living proof that it is as important as ever to continue telling the stories of hidden children so that future generations do not repeat history without being educated. Because without memory of the past, there is no future.
Despite extensive documentation of the genocide and detailed evidence of the atrocities committed during World War II, Holocaust denial continues. Anti-Semitic rhetoric and disinformation about this heinous historical crime spreads easily online and is exacerbated by social media and sophisticated but mainstream digital tools. But disinformation is not new. It helped make the Holocaust possible in the first place. The Nazi Party weaponized disinformation, propaganda, and the media to facilitate Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. Nazi disinformation campaigns targeted the most vulnerable groups in society in order to shape public opinion.
To this day, disinformation remains a powerful tool for intervening in society for malicious actors seeking to undermine values, democracy, and the rule of law. They use disinformation to sow division, sow chaos, exacerbate polarization, and undermine public trust in institutions. They also seek to shape attitudes and behaviors over time, influence the decisions of leaders and the public, and encourage real-world actions such as spreading hatred against minorities.
In this context, countering disinformation is extremely important. Because as NATO we must not only protect and defend our values, but also ensure that disinformation about the Holocaust means learning the facts, understanding what happened, and ensuring that such atrocities never happen again. It’s also because it interferes. . What can NATO do? First, NATO studies the information environment, especially to understand disinformation and enable a credible response. Second, NATO communicates and engages with the public. We believe that fact-based, transparent and proactive communication is the best way to combat misinformation. When the public is well-informed, it limits the potential for hostile narratives to distort perceptions of reality and allows everyone to form opinions and make decisions based on facts.