THE HIDING GAME This children’s story from the past reflects our troubled times
Book Review by Jody Jenkins
The current debates that swirl around ICE immigration raids and Sanctuary Cities have a particularly urgent flavor this Holocaust and Martyrs Memorial Day. And “The Hiding Game,” a new children’s book by Hampshire graduate Gwen Strauss, brings current events into sharp focus through a story of how others did the right thing, despite the potential repercussions, in a past that has certain parallels to contemporary America. It’s a children’s book, but the moral of the story is mature and universal and especially pertinent now.
Based on the true tale of Strauss’ great uncle, Danny Bénédite, a former police functionary and soldier, the story is a look at the French underground railroad known as the “Marseille Pipeline,” which operated for about eighteen months after the Nazis defeated France in 1940 and occupied much of the country. Funded by the Emergency Rescue Committee and led by journalist Varian Fry, the pipeline obtained papers and passage (often illegal and clandestine) for many European Jews, intellectuals and artists seeking to escape the Nazis. The pipeline was credited with helping shift the continent’s intellectual gravitational center to New York during the war. It aided such luminaries as surrealists André Breton and Max Ernst, painter Marc Chagall, musician Wanda Landowska, political philosopher and writer Hannah Arendt and many, many others, getting them through southern France and Spain to points West.
“The Hiding Game,” a new children’s book by Hampshire graduate Gwen Strauss, brings current events into focus through a story of how others did the right thing in a past that has certain parallels to contemporary America. It’s a children’s book, but the moral of the story is mature and universal and especially pertinent now.
Told through the eyes of Aube, André Breton’s daughter, it focuses on a family waiting to escape through the pipeline, fleeing for a life and freedom somewhere beyond the encroaching menace. As with Roberto Benigni’s “Life Is Beautiful,” it’s the story of how Aube’s family and fellow travelers turn the harsh realities of life around them into something joyful through the power of creativity.
The story centers around the Villa Air-Bel, a villa outside of Marseille where Danny and Varian and those waiting to leave the country gather on Sundays to play charades, sing songs and make art. At the villa, Danny teaches Aube how to watch birds through his binoculars and how to hide, just like in hide-and-seek, in case the authorities ever come. Her favorite entertainment, however, is Exquisite Corpse, a game invented by her father in which a person makes a drawing on a piece of paper and folds it, leaving part of the drawing exposed so that the next person may add on to it. The surreal artworks that result are her greatest pleasure. As Strauss says in her video above that accompany’s the book, “By insisting on joy and creativity, they fought fear and fascism.”
Life at the Villa has its privations — they have to hide their radio, which is forbidden, and they keep their cow hidden in the back yard because food is scarce. There is no meat, little sugar or bread and coffee is actually made from roasted acorns. The winter is cold and drafty in the large old villa. But everyone persists by keeping the magic of life alive. On the eve of Aube’s departure from the villa forever, her father invents one last game, a great piece of art that they create together out of a deck of playing cards.
Today Varian Fry is known as “The American Schindler.” Both he and Danny Bénédite, the author’s great uncle, were awarded the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest award. And Varian was the first American to receive the title of “Righteous Among Nations,” an honor given by the State of Israel to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“The Hiding Game” comes at a time when other such dramatic stories are no doubt in the making. With refugees fleeing conflicts in Syria and Iraq and flooding through Europe and beyond, this story reveals the universal hopes and dreams of those caught in extraordinary circumstances and the moral imperative — despite pressure to do otherwise — for all of us to remember their humanity. Books like “The Hiding Game” give us and our children maps to follow on our road through the present dilemma. And it reminds us that never forgetting means something more than just remembering what happened in the past.
Jody Jenkins is a writer and filmmaker living in Northampton. He is the Director of Field Production for Amherst Media.
