Hidden Letters: Keeping Alive The Message Of The Holocaust

Aired 11/6/13 on KPBS Midday Edition.

Guests:

Deborah Slier Shine and Ian Shine, authors, Hidden Letters

Transcript

During the demolition of a small house in Amsterdam in 1997, a foreman noticed a bundle of papers hidden in the ceiling. They consisted of 86 letters, postcards and telegrams. They were written in 1942 by an 18-year-old Dutch Jew, Philip "Flip" Slier to his parents while he worked in forced labor camps in Holland during the Nazi terror in Europe in the 1940s.

The letters were turned over to his only living relative, a cousin who published them in the book Hidden Letters. Along with photos, maps and documents, the authors conducted interviews with those mentioned in the letters to create a broader sense of of it was like for a Dutch Jew in 1942. it also gives the family some answers.