Out of the Coal Bin: Memories of a Hidden Child

Out of the Coal Bin is an unusual Holocaust memoir of a childhood in Budapest during the Nazi period. Susan Charney tells a poignant and unsparing tale of a young girl living with a false identity during the war and coping with the confusion and dislocation that followed. She conveys the fragmentary understandings and intuitions of her younger self, as she revisits her questions and assumptions about her family's survival, recalling the moments at which fate might have altered the outcome of her life. The descriptions are detailed and vivid so that the full physical and psychological experience of that historical period is depicted. Charney takes us through a compelling account of courage and resilience required by parents struggling to save their children and of a sensitive and intelligent child coming to terms with loss that leaves an indelible imprint on their life. Part of Susan's story appears in the anthology Remember Us, a compendium of memoirs by thirty children hidden in Hungary.