Vos, Ida.Hide and Seek. Translated by Terese Edelstein and Inez Smidt. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991.
When Holland was first invaded by the Germans, Rachel is 8 years old. Rachel is confused and angry at the German occupation. She cannot attend school and friends will no longer play with her. Eventually her parents decide that the family should go into hiding. During this hiding, the daughters are separated from their parents. Five years after the occupation, Holland is freed. Rachel and most of her family have survived. Liberation brings Rachel a new life: one filled with happiness of survival, but the hurt and question of why did this happen?
[This book was chosen because while Rachel simply tells her story, she is ever conscious of the loss she and her family have lived through. There are so many questions left unanswered. Where is the sense in a world where Hide and Seek is no longer a child's game, but real life game of survival?]
During the occupation, Rachel can only play with other Jewish children. Their games are the games of children struggling with a horrid, absurd the change in their world.
This is what I have to say,
Hitler, Hitler go away,
Hitler is a big fat swine,
You are "it" at this time.
This is the new counting-off rhyme Rachel has just learned. Nobody know where it came from, but it certainly is fun to sing. Rachel sings it whenever she plays hide-and-seek with the other Jewish children. They have agreed to sing the song only when no strangers are around. Imagine that an N.S.B.-er, a member of the Dutch Nazi Party, should hear it; such a person might become furious and tell the Germans about it. "Jewish children are playing over there," he would say. "They are calling Hitler names.