As a historian, one of my favorite things is discovering fascinating stories of women that have largely gone untold. So I was very excited to read Rebecca Connolly’s Hidden Yellow Stars, which draws upon extensive research to fictionalize the stories of Andrée Geulen and Ida Sterno, two women who helped save hundreds of Jewish children in Belgium during the Nazi regime.

Andrée was a young schoolteacher, eager to make a difference and heartbroken by seeing her young Jewish children living in fear. Ida was a non-practicing Jewish woman, brought into the CDJ (or Comité de Défense de Juifs) by a friend. While the two had led very different lives before the war, they were united in their strong desire to save as many children as possible.

Connolly does a great job of describing the work of the CDJ by weaving it into her narrative in a way that’s easy for the reader to understand. The CDJ had multiple branches, but Andrée and Ida both worked for its Children branch, which found places for Jewish children to hide in convents, on farms, and in people’s homes.

Many of these children were young enough or Aryan-passing enough to be disguised as a family member come to visit or just another school border. While I’ve certainly read many works about children hidden during the Holocaust (including the most famous, Anne Frank’s diary), this was a very different perspective on the phenomenon.

I had no idea that in some countries, there were organizations committed to placing children in safe locations. Hidden Yellow Stars illuminates the secrecy and cleverness of those running the CDJ, like a series of notebooks to track the children, their new names, and their locations that had the information spread across them to ensure that if one was found, it was useless to the Nazis.

Connolly’s novel is written in the third person but switches perspectives between Andrée and Ida frequently so that the reader gets a sense of each of their activities. These range from doing wellness checks on the children who have been placed in different locations and actually taking the children from their parents to their hiding places, explaining their new names to them, and trying to remain calm while walking past Gestapo soldiers.

Connolly does a great job of describing the anguish that the women witness at the partings of the family, particularly from mothers who have asked the CDJ to send their children into hiding but struggle with giving them up when the day comes. Andrée’s heart-wrenching sympathy for these families, anger towards the Nazis for necessitating these measures, and warm care for the children despite only being with them for a short period of time while she transports them are beautifully described so that the reader feels them too.

She also illuminates Andrée and Ida’s fears about whether reuniting these children with their parents will be possible after the war, or if the children will even remember their families. Ultimately, these worries pale in comparison to ensuring that the children have a chance to live through the Nazi occupation, but occasionally witnessing parents they’ve interacted with get rounded up makes the uncertainty of the future all too real for the women of the CDJ.

There’s also the ever-present fear of being caught by the Nazis, or their Jewish informant “Fat Jacques,” which haunts every step that Ida and Andrée take. Andrée is protected by her Aryan looks, but Ida is even more vulnerable because she is Jewish herself. The tension of the risks they’re taking makes it hard to put the book down; I stayed up until 2 am reading it one night.

This story feels more relevant than ever, as we’re once again witnessing children being killed simply for who they are — whether that’s because they live in Gaza or because they are trans in the United States. It’s a reminder of the power of even one person to make a difference and to literally save lives, and of our collective responsibility to ensure the safety of children in our communities.

Hidden Yellow Stars can be a difficult and emotional read but feels like a necessary one, both to highlight what these children suffered through and to recognize the important and brave work of Andrée Geulen, Ida Sterno, and other women like them. Connolly’s deft prose and strong character building help bring to life an important story that has been largely overlooked.

I was given a copy of this book by Rebecca Connolly, Shadow Mountain Publishing, and Austenprose PR in exchange for an honest review and for participation in the Book Tour. You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble and find it on Goodreads.