Jews Who Hid From Nazis as Children Share Memories : Holocaust: They lived out the war in basements and convents, often pretending to be Christian. Conference allows them to speak of their ordeals.

About 1,500 Jews who were hidden as children from the Nazis gathered Sunday to share their memories, their suffering and their courage.

“Luckily, we survived, but we were not untouched,” said Nicole David, a conference organizer who was taken in by a Roman Catholic family in Belgium after her mother was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“We lived in fear of being found out. We were reunited with parents we did not know. And we were forced into hiding--emotionally--again and again. But we have been silent too long.”

Many of those who attended agreed that the term “hidden child” has a double meaning because they so rarely spoke about their traumas.

“For years I wouldn’t talk about it,” said Lila Kampf, a grandmother of four who lives in a suburb of New York City. “I was wearing dark glasses. I was afraid somebody would not like the idea of what I did.”

Like many hidden children, Kampf survived by pretending to be Catholic. As a 12-year-old at the start of the Nazi occupation in Poland, she was taught Catholic prayers by a family friend and given false papers and a cross. For the next five years, until the war ended, she maintained the false identity, working first in a labor camp for Polish non-Jews and later on a farm in Czechoslovakia.

Once, when the strain became too much, she told the village priest her story. The priest, confident that liberation was near, persuaded her to keep up the ruse. He began paying weekly visits to the farm to keep her spirits high.

“This man gave me life,” she said. “In such a horrible time, he just felt like he was saving a life. I’m grateful.”

She still has the cross that enabled her to hide.

Some hidden children remained silent about their ordeals because they felt no right to complain about living out the war in basements, convents and Christian homes. After all, many of their relatives perished and suffered under far worse conditions in concentration camps.

But camp survivors are now dying of old age, while those who were hidden children are only in their 50s. Many at the conference said they now feel an obligation to bear witness to the Holocaust.

“I’m going to a few schools to speak about my experiences,” said Renee Fritz of Bloomfield, Conn., who was hidden in Belgium in a convent, then on a farm and in an orphanage. “I’ve got to do this, to create an awareness of what happened.”

She attended the conference, because “there are other people here who have the same feelings. You fit in somewhere. It’s nice to feel for the first time that you’re not alone.”