ROOTS & BRANCHES

Family history has a huge number of facets, and sometimes the most beautiful cut of the gem comes from one that’s unexpected.

That’s what I found when I recently attended the premiere at Gratz College in Melrose Park, north of Philadelphia, of “Hidden: A Musical,” which is based on the life of Holocaust survivor Ruth Kapp Hartz, who was born in Germany, fled with her parents to France before World War II, and eventually emigrated to the United States after the war.

But it’s her time in France as a girl during the Nazi occupation that is the primary subject of the musical. With the help of some French Resistance families in the countryside, Ruth survives even though she needs to separate from her parents by living in a convent whose brave mother superior hides Ruth and some other Jewish children by claiming they are Roman Catholic orphans.

A key part of the plot is that even before Ruth is sent to the orphanage, her name is changed to the more French-sounding Renee.

Ruth’s father and mother also manage to survive the war and are reunited with her toward its end.

Her father’s brother and his family are not as fortunate. The uncle dies at the Auschwitz concentration camp and his wife dies of typhus while being returned from the camp. Their daughter Jeanette, an older sister figure for Ruth and namesake of a doll that becomes Ruth’s companion through all her troubles, returns after the war traumatized and dies soon after it (it is mentioned that Ruth’s grandparents stayed behind in Germany when she and her parents fled to France but their fate is not revealed in the musical).

So, there’s a lot of family history in this musical. In addition to the actual family, there is a scene in which a Vichy French police officer decides not to take Ruth/Renee for questioning because he sees his own (presumably gentile) daughter in her.

From a technical standpoint, the musical was wonderful and spread around singing roles to a fair number of people in the cast, including not just the family but people like the police officer and Monsieur Fedou, the husband of the family who hid them in his own house and who sings “I’m Not a Hero.”

The final curtain call for “Hidden” was a rousing rendition of “never again means never again” that was punctuated by the woman whose true story inspired the musical, the now-87-year-old Hartz coming forward to the amazement of the audience—Hartz belies her years (she looks to be in her 70s instead of her true age!) and the trauma she endured, all dedicated to her grandchildren that she names in the musical’s program.

All in all, a story of a family’s triumph over adversity.