As German officers and local collaborators began deporting Jewish populations from occupied territories, many Jews considered going into hiding. Most people — such as Bert and his family — realized that if they attempted to hide, there would be no one to shelter them. They had little chance of evading the search parties and police sweeps which accompanied deportations. In general, families with children or with older adults typically chose to stay together, even if it meant submitting to the German government’s orders.
Some Jews, however, chose to hide. Some went into the forests, and others took up clandestine residence in basements or attics, in barns, beneath floorboards, or even in cemetery graves. Some non-Jews were also willing to hide Jews as an act of resistance, as a gesture of solidarity, friendship, or sympathy, or even as a business proposition. Everyone involved in such an act lived in constant fear of betrayal and discovery, as the punishment for sheltering a Jewish person was imprisonment. In Poland, the punishment was death.
For many Jews in hiding, the war years were spent in total seclusion and isolation. In any public place, Jewish identity could be revealed in an accent or a gesture, by a slip of the tongue, or by a former acquaintance who would be rewarded for turning in a Jewish person to the police. For men, the situation was more dangerous: if searched, they were immediately identifiable as Jews by their circumcisions.
It is safe to assume that most Jews who went into hiding did not survive the war.
