In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Belgium, my grandmother Flora M. Singer, along with her mother and two younger sisters, were forced to flee from their home and go into hiding. Miraculously, the four of them survived the war, though almost all of their relatives did not. Flora’s experiences left an indelible impression on her, and she devoted the rest of her life to education, becoming a teacher and frequently speaking of her experiences as a hidden child.
In June of 2014, a little over five years after Flora’s death, my mother and I decided to go back to retrace her journey. We had gone once before, when I was younger, but now I felt better able to comprehend her experiences; better able to understand the enormity of her and her family’s struggle to survive.
We were guided on our journey by her incredible memoir: Flora - I Was But a Child, completed only three years before her death. She wrote vividly and powerfully, often with descriptions so specific they went down to the exact street addresses of her various hiding places, but other times vague enough that my mother and I had to interpret her journey for ourselves.
Further aided by Flora’s extensive collection of documents, hand drawn maps and photographs, my mother and I were able to map our way around Belgium and France in an 11 day journey, retracing her steps, attempting to see as best as possible what she had seen.
She Was But a Child is not just the story of my grandmother and her incredible legacy - that has already been written. It is the story of my discovery of her journey. We cannot ever relive the past, but we can understand it, come to terms with it. Walking through the same streets she walked through while fleeing from Nazi soldiers, visiting the convent where she was hidden for months and speaking with one of the nuns who still lives there, we came to understand her story, and how it still resonates today.