Searching for Home: The Impact of WWII on a Hidden Child by Joseph Gosler is a Holocaust memoir which tells the life story of the author, a child who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. I always go into memoirs with some scepticism. I struggle to rate them because sometimes it feels like I’m rating that person’s life when I’m not, so it’s always a quite difficult topic to discuss and accurately rate. However, the first couple of pages of this book really drew me in and I liked the structure of this book, there were no chronological issues as I have seen in other memoirs where the stories jumps back and forth through the person’s life, and instead, here, Joseph Gosler narrated his life, events, feelings and emotions from his birth to the present day. I will say that it’s always complicated to review a book such as this. I found the writing style to be very fluid, I didn’t always find everything said to be necessary to bring the message across, but I did find the book to be well written and human. A lot of the time, in books talking about WWII and its impact on the individual as well as the whole world, I find that these events are described in a way that doesn’t really make sense, and knowing that this war and the atrocities done to people during it, especially to Jews and other religious groups and minorities, tended to dehumanise them to extremes never before witnessed, it seems strange to me that in writing a memoir about this time, the dehumanisation would continue. In this book, however, thankfully, there was no dehumanisation and I found myself understanding and empathising with the author all the more because he did not hold back his emotions or dehumanise himself and others. I really enjoyed the structure of this book, it was separated in a few parts, the biggest were separated by the places in which they were set. The first part of the story is set in the Netherlands, when Joseph was born, was “hidden” with another family, and then given back to his parents after the war was over. The second part of the story was set in Israel where the family moved to after the war was over and where they lived in a kibbutz, a type of community where everything is shared with all the members and the children live in dormitories together. The third part of the book was set in America, where the family and extended family members emigrated to after leaving Israel. This last timeline is the longest and most profound in my opinion because it encompasses Joseph’s adolescence, his puberty, coming to terms with anger, loss, pain and other psychological consequences of WWII learning about himself and his passions, discovering more to life and cultures, travelling, finding work and eventually settling down with a family. This book focuses more on the actual impact – hence the title – of the war rather than the war itself, and I found this really intriguing because it’s clear to see that the people who survived this war suffered profoundly after its end, whether physically scarred or mentally scarred. It really gave me an insight into the atrocities of the war on a more individual level and how Joseph has suffered from depression, anxiety, fear, loss, loneliness, hopelessness and many other feelings since his return to his biological parents after the end of the war. I don’t want to explain too much about the actual story of his life because I believe it needs to be experienced first-hand. I will say that it is a very emotional account and I found this to make this book special. I’ve read a lot of books set before, during and after WWII, not many nonfictional ones, but the ones I have read seemed lacking emotionally to me, and this one was very different for me. MY THOUGHTS AND RATING Overall, I really enjoyed this book and it brought me a lot of insight into what life would have been like and still is for Jewish survivors of WWII. It’s very important to understand the enormous consequences that this event had on the lives of so many people. We can possibly understand what people like Joseph went through while they were hidden children and the multiple feelings he has felt throughout his life because of that experience, but by reading about it and trying to understand the impact, we can do our best to not let anything like this happen again in the future. It was a really profound experience for me and I’ve enjoyed reading the books published by Amsterdam Publishers because of their focus on Holocaust survivors. I have learned a lot more about this period by the emotional narration by individuals than any history book or historical account I could ever read and I think that people need this side of the story to fully understand this event that changed the world. I gave this book 4 stars, again, it’s really hard to rate a book like this one, I enjoyed it immensely and am very honoured to have been able to read it.

This is the first book I have read about hidden children. It is an amazing story to hear. Joe was an infant when his parents gave him up to a Dutch family raise so that he would have a chance to live and they could try to manage to not be captured and killed by the Germans themselves. Joe was raised by the Dutch family like he was their own child. at the most formative time of his life he was living a safe happy existence with people who gave him a loving home. When he was about 3 years old his parents got him back. How do you tell a 3-year-old that he is a Jewish boy and the people he thinks are his parents are not and this strange couple taking him away from everything he knows are his real parents? Imagine how you would react to that. Joe tells the story holding back nothing. He speaks the truth of his life from birth to the present day. He shares with the reader his most intimate thoughts. it is a tale beautifully written that gets one to think about ones own life and how you would deal with this situation. It is a lesson on how to face up an extreme situation and not let it beat you down. Joe shows you what it takes to deal with how life confronts you. he show what it takes to keep growing from 3 to 78 years old. it takes a life time to make sense of it all. iI is definitely a book worth reading to learn how to face the problems of life and not let them beat you down. Joe lives a life that we can all admire and learn from.

Searching for Home is a wonderful addition to the literature of European Jewish World War II survivors. In a very poignant memoir Gosler traces his life as a hidden child in occupied Holland, and his subsequent journeys with his birth parents and extended family to a Kibbutz in Israel and finally on to the United States. The author describes each stage with stunningly truthful insight into how his early losses, fears and displacements defined his development as an otherwise average American child, teenager and then adult. We read how the author’s early sense of abandonment complicates the important relationships in his adult life and how he eventually learns to overcome his anger - helped over and over by his dogs who gave him a needed sense of security and love. This is a moving memoir by a man who, despite his difficult beginnings, learned to treat others with honesty, decency and kindness and to approach the world with trust and optimism.

In 1942 in Nazi-occupied Holland, Joe Gosler, a baby a few months old, was separated from his parents and given a home and safety by a Christian family, His birth parents managed to survive the war, and in late 1945 Joe was wrenched away from his foster family and turned over to his mother and father, strangers whom he did not take to at all. Joe describes the family's move to Israel, where he enjoyed the freedom of life on a kibbutz, and their subsequent emigration to the US, where he spent some of his teenage years working in the Borscht Belt. Yet he never lost his feeling of being abandoned, of not belonging anywhere. This feeling shaped his life, driving him to become hyper protective and almost obsessively responsible at home and at work. Joe tells his story with touching honesty and sometimes startling frankness to give an insight into his world. It is an inspiration to anyone who has struggled to overcome childhood trauma, and I found it fascinating.

The Hidden Child is a charming, insightful story of sorrow, joy and redemption and is well worth the read for folks interested in the Holocaust, personal development, travel, cooking and/or a good story. Joe Goslar portrays his life as a Hidden Child almost as an outside observer, making the dangers and disruptions accessible to everyone. This chronicle takes the reader on an interesting journey through time and contrasting places characterized by upheavals, followed by a settling in and another disruption. The details of family dynamics, friendships, dogs, food, adventures and misadventures enliven and engage the reader in such a way that the tale is both highly specific but also a kind of Everyman. Geographically, it begins in Groningen, The Netherlands, winds through Israel, Morocco, and New York and back again, as an Impressionist travelogue, using details to suggest a wide canvass: danger and intrigue lurk while marketplaces come to life. It is on this backdrop that the evolution of a Hidden Child is developed over time. This Hidden Child was born to a Jewish family during the Nazi persecution and this tale offers poignant insights into Nazi cruelty and its vast implications for family life and social structure; Goslar’s story is beautifully balanced between displacement/disruption and compassion/opportunity. And because this is a personal story of becoming whole and moving beyond fear, it is an Everyman story and is especially tuned for our current times. It is a good read.

Being a toddler in a world monitored and framed by grown-ups was probably never easy. To three-year-old Pietje Dijkstra, the final drop was when he in 1945 was told that his name was actually Joseph Gosler and that his Moeder and Vader were not his real parents, but kind people who had hidden him from the Nazis in the Netherlands during WWII. In doing this, Mr. and Mrs. Dijkstra had sheltered little Joseph from the Angel of Death that seemed to hunt his parents from place to place in their own country during the last phase of the war. The Angel itself was finally driven away, but the fear and emotional scars it left Joseph's parents with made them restless and seemingly unable to ever again find a place in the world where their whole family might thrive and heal simultaneously. To Joseph the shock of being separated from, and then re-united with, his parents influenced their relationship and his experience of the world around. Some people with a traumatic background may experience the past as a period hidden behind a veil; they can't really recall the actual events, or their childhood. Joseph's biography is highly detailed and each memory is described as accurately as possible, with the hindsight of the grown-up man analyzing the angry and bewildered child. He clearly sees the bad things that happened to him, simultaneously trying to be fair to the grown-ups involved. The book is a tale of many places and many events and people, plus some important dogs. The reader at the end of the book can finally draw one's breath, seeing how Joseph at this mature point in life manages to look back at his life and conclude that somehow he has not surrendered to the past but rather, through important close relationships and a lot of hard emotional and mental work through many years, has managed to use it all as a building platform for a life definitely bearing good fruit. The questions asked in this book are relevant for many, many children (and grown-ups) who struggle with fear and anxiety caused by circumstances that toss them around like a leaf in the wind. How to find a footing after such experiences? How can one dare to love others and oneself, and live one's life believing that something good will come out of it? How to build a functional relationship with parents you don't really trust anymore? In the aftermath of WWII, persecuted Jews were perhaps mostly considered lucky only to be alive. There was not much knowledge about post-traumatic disorders or how the second generation of survivor families might experience the scars their parents carried. This book is an important contribution to our knowledge about these processes. In addition, it could be read by many younger people with similar questions as those posed by Joseph, as the feelings described and the mental processes involved are timeless.

This beautiful poignant memoir of a very young Jewish child hidden with a Christian family in Holland during the Holocaust powerfully draws the reader in, while giving important historical and psychological context to the lifelong emotional devastation experienced by many child Holocaust survivors. The author’s inspiring journey of perseverance offers hope for redemption to others.

Joseph Gosler’s sensitive, affecting and beautifully written memoir belongs in the last chapter of the history of WWII. Yet, Searching for Home will be of equal importance in the annals of psychological studies on the subject of separating a small child from the only family he knows. The Holocaust initiates Joseph Gosler’s early distress, but it is the aftermath that perpetuates a lifetime of dislocation and trauma. Born in the Netherlands in July 1942, the serial uprooting starts in early infancy, when he is hidden from the Nazis by a loving adoptive family, the Dijkstras. But his ordeal occurs when he is returned to his war-scarred parents after the liberation. A succession of displacements resumes with his parents, first in Israel and then in the U.S., establishing a long-lasting rift between Joe and his parents and a perennial simmering rage. Each relocation heightens his sense of not belonging anywhere and his constant fear that “life can be snuffed out or diminished in a nanosecond.” Still, from an early age, Joe is determined not to be a victim. As he searches for a personal identity and a home, he is remarkably self-aware and brutally honest. It is this willingness to bare himself completely open that sets this memoir apart from many others.

A child's psychological and identity development are inevitably impacted by the various traumas endured during wartime. Gosler's psychologically nuanced account of his youth in Europe, Israel and then in the United States, is a riveting and beautiful story of resilience of the human spirit as he is separated and eventually reunified with his family of origin by the end of World War II. While he bends he does not break, and he manages to ultimately find contentment in life through his family, work, music, basketball, and his many dogs. As a child psychologist, I have not come across another book that better captures the psychological turmoil encountered by a Jewish child who is separated as an infant from his birth parents during World War II only to be given a new name and live with a non-Jewish family before being reunified years later. Gosler's road to psychological survival and recovery is unique and inspiring. I recommend this to professionals and laypersons alike.

Seventy-five years after Auschwitz was liberated, we continue to come upon new stories, unfathomable lived experiences. Joseph Gosler’s book is an important and moving addition to the history of the holocaust, giving us the perspective and trauma of a child reared in a Dutch family with a Dutch mother, only to learn after the war that he belongs to another family and mother.