About five thousand of the nearly one million Jewish children survived Holocaust in Poland. Many of them found shelter in Polish families.
The Poles, who took care of the children, often became their parents later. In general, the fact of adoption was kept secret, some of them revealed the truth before they died, others took the truth to the grave. Children brought up in foreign homes, which they considered their own, had to face their history and create the identity connecting two families - the lost and the gained. They looked for traces of their Jewish relatives, names, and dates of birth – often for many years.
Those who failed to do so, still have hope.
The fate of fifteen survivors, born in the years 1939-1942, is presented on the boards seen above and below. The boards, first shown at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews POLIN in Warsaw in 2015, have been travelling around Poland and the world to bear witness to the boundless love of parents, who gave their beloved children away to foreign hands, as well as the courage of the people who recognized them as their own daughters and sons.