Hidden Children and the Holocaust at MTSU — Dr. Nelly Toll

Holocaust survivors who were forced to spend their childhood years in hiding shared some of their wisdom with middle school and high school students Tuesday, Oct. 15, at MTSU.

Dr. Nelly Toll told how they were spirited away from their birth families and placed with other families as Nazi Germany sought to exterminate Jews throughout occupied Europe.

The Tennessee Holocaust Commission conducted the gathering as part of the university's Biennial International Holocaust Studies Conference, which continues through Friday, Oct. 18.

Before an audience of youngsters and teachers interested in learning how to teach the Holocaust, Toll displayed some of the 64 watercolor paintings she created as a little girl hiding with a sympathetic family in Poland.

Toll painted vivid pictures of happy family moments while reserving her documentation of the horrors of World War II for verbal entries in a journal.

After she went to live with another family, Toll and her mother had a hiding place with a trap door. Since the door to the room stayed locked, the signal for them to enter the hiding place was for the lady of the house to say, "I can't find my keys. Where did my husband put my keys?"