Happy (late) 80th, Nelly S. Toll! (Polish writer: "Behind the Secret Window")

[leno...@yahoo.com]

According to one source, she turned 80 in April (or late March).

She lives in Voorhees, New Jersey.

http://www.nj.com/indulge/index.ssf/2013/12/voorhees_author_nelly_toll_writes_book_about_aunts_holocaust_experience.html

First paragraphs:

Transporting the reader back to a time of horror in Poland, Switzerland and Vienna, the stories of a local author illustrate the nightmare of World War II and the Holocaust.

Nelly Toll, a Voorhees resident, painter and author, is herself a Holocaust survivor. She began writing when she was just a child hiding from the Nazis.

Toll's parents decided, after more and more people they knew were being taken by the Nazis, to go into hiding. Her father searched their village and finally found a man who once lived in their building to agree to hide her and her mother in a room on the third floor of their home.

Toll has written four books, and her novel, "Behind the Secret Window," as well as a lot of her artwork, was about her time in hiding. More than 50,000 copies of "Behind the Secret Window" were sold. And the book received eight awards...

(snip)

More later...

[leno...@yahoo.com]

WRITINGS:

(With W. Keedoner) Behind the Closed Window (play), produced at Princeton McCarther Theatre, Princeton, NJ, 1978.
(And contributor of illustrations) Without Surrender: Art of the Holocaust, Running Press, 1982.
(And illustrator) Behind the Secret Window: Memories of a Hidden Childhood, Dial Books, 1993.
When Memory Speaks: The Holocaust in Art, Praeger, 1998.

Imagining a Better World: Healing from the Holocaust, 2008
Beyond the Hidden Walls, 2013

From 1993:

http://articles.philly.com/1993-11-24/news/25945192_1_survivor-shares-russian-communists-poland

Excerpts:

...When the Germans marched into Nelly Toll's life 52 years ago, she cheered.

She was just 6, and standing on a balcony in Lwow, Poland, with her brother and cousins, she saw the conquering Nazis as her heroes. They would bring back all that the Russian Communists - who had ruled the country for nearly two years - had taken away.

Nelly Toll, a Jew, was mistaken.

Three years later, when Nelly rushed from her hiding place to greet the invading Russian army, her father and brother and cousins were dead, her home was gone and the life she had had was over.

Nelly, who survived with her mother by hiding for 13 months in the two-room apartment of a kindly Polish couple in Lwow, left Poland soon after. She says she will never return.

But she carried her paintings, her diary and her memories of those years away with her.

And, years later, after having the diary produced as a play at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, and hearing continued praise and encouragement from American professors and editors, Toll's memories, and her paintings, have become her book.

"I'm fortunate I can talk about it," Toll says. Her mother, who eventually remarried and came to the United States, died just a few years ago.

She was never able to talk to her daughter about the horrors they had been through.

Nelly Toll was born into a large, loving and well-to-do family in Lwow. Her early memories are of being coddled by grandparents and surrounded by luxury - her father owned a store and several buildings in Lwow, her mother wore furs, and Nelly had a governess.

Much of the trappings of wealth disappeared with the Russians; her father had to go into hiding and the family apartment was taken over by some officers in the occupying army.

That's why she was glad to see the Germans. She thought they would give back all that had been taken.

Instead, Nelly and her family, including her aunt, three cousins, and a grandfather, were soon relocated to the Jewish ghetto, cramped into a small house, living in fear of a raid...

(snip)

As it turns out, maybe she's in PA and not NJ right now - but I can't be sure.

From 1998 (long article):

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/19/nyregion/public-lives-painting-a-dark-time-in-the-colors-of-hope.html

Excerpt:

Her wish to keep where she lives and works out of the papers?

''There are all kinds of neo-Nazis and crazy people out there,'' Ms. Toll says. ''Why should they know where I live? Let them look for me.''

http://allreaders.com/book-review-summary/behind-the-secret-window-memoir-hidden-33798
(review summary of "Behind the Secret Window")


http://nellysstories.tripod.com/
(an overview of "Behind the Secret Window A Memoir of A Hidden Childhood During World War II," plus a good deal about her credentials)

http://www.tennesseeholocaustcommission.org/view_gallery.php?id=7
(ten examples of her artwork - in color)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwj1uRjPIiM
(12:02 video from 2013 - "Hidden Children and the Holocaust at MTSU -- Dr. Nelly Toll")

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%22nelly+s+toll%22
(a couple of videos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMRvHPsCQuI
(2:09 trailer for "Imagining a Better World: The Artwork of Nelly Toll" - she appears and talks in it)

https://www.facebook.com/TheNellyTollStory
(again, about the film)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/imagining-a-better-world-the-nelly-toll-film#/story
(more about the film)

https://www.google.com/search?q=%22nelly+s+toll%22&biw=1280&bih=833&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=dZ9gVaeaE4OayQSL74LIBg&ved=0CB0QsAQ#imgrc=_
(some book covers)

http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/multimedia.shtml
(audio interview - scroll down halfway)

Excerpt:

Nelly was born in Lwów, Poland (1935), to Rose and Zygmunt. After the Germans occupied Lwów in 1941, she was deported with her family to the ghetto. After Rose's and Nelly's attempt to escape in 1943 to Hungary failed, they managed to find a hiding place with a Christian family in Lwów.

Rose and Nelly hid in the house for 13 months, during which the mother encouraged Nelly to draw, write a diary and compose short stories. Nelly wrote The Lucky Incident and illustrated it with a series of paintings.

Nelly's illustrations combined fairy tale figures with pre-war memories in an ideal, enchanted world where children played freely, in contrast to her one-room prison. After liberation, they found out that Zygmunt had been murdered. Nelly and her mother immigrated to the USA in 1951...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1000036.Behind_the_Secret_Window

About "Behind the Secret Window," 1993:

"For thirteen months during World War II, Nelly Toll and her mother were hidden from the Nazis in the small bedroom of a Gentile couple in Lwow, Poland. Just eight years old when she went into hiding in 1943, Nelly began keeping the diary that would inspire this powerful and moving memoir of her childhood. In her small black journal Nelly wrote about the heartbreaking events she experienced in Lwow and her grief over the tragic losses of family members, as well as the day-to-day fears of life in hiding. In contrast, the exuberant, vividly colored paintings that Nelly also produced while in hiding transformed her grim reality into an enchanting fantasy world filled with school friends, bright skies, and happy families. Twenty-nine of these paintings are reproduced in Behind the Secret Window..."

http://www.jewishvoicesnj.org/news/2013-07-24/Local_News/Nelly_Toll_looks_beyond_the_walls_to_capture_a_Hol.html
(2013: more about "Beyond the Hidden Walls")

From 2012: "Holocaust survivor speaks out against bullying"

http://www.tnl-news.com/school%20news/2012/04/11/holocaust-survivor-speaks-out-against-bullying

Excerpts:

...Toll was one of the Hidden Children who went into hiding in Christian homes in Poland to escape the Nazis. She and her mother spent two and one-half years hiding in a small room in the apartment of a Christian couple, whom Toll refers to as Mr. and Mrs. W.

During that time, Toll was not allowed to go outside or see anyone other than her mother or Mr. and Mrs. W.

"I was just glad to be with her," Toll said of her mother, "because she became my support, she became my teacher, my nurse and my only companion besides those people who hid us. So I was bored and I was a terrible kid and I didn't want to stay in that apartment and she didn't know what to do with me."

To keep Toll occupied, her mother taught her to read and write, although the only books available to them were adult books, because to bring children's books into the apartment could raise suspicions. So Toll learned to read Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Her mother also taught her Greek mythology and English, and, one day, asked the Ws to bring her a box of watercolors.

"Once I got the watercolor box, a whole new world opened," Toll said.

https://ardentreader.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/behind-the-secret-window/

(Review)

Excerpts:

Another important aspect of this book -- one I didn't realize until after taking a class on the subject two years ago -- was that people didn't always help Jews hide and survive after the Holocaust. Toll's first "rescuers" returned her out of fear of capture; the couple had been demanding payments from Toll's father for her safe keeping. Even money could not keep this couple in their role as rescuer.

The second couple -- the ones who kept Toll and her mother safe for a year -- were emotionally abusive towards the little girl, and the husband asked to marry Toll's mother even before divorcing his wife and news reach them of her father's fate. Even after the Nazis lost the war, Toll's life did not go back to normal. The friends charged with keeping the Toll family's possession safe whilst in hiding suddenly could not find the items after the war.



http://www.americantowns.com/oh/massillon/news/exhibition-imagining-a-better-world-the-artwork-of-nelly-toll-18114574

Excerpts:

The compassionate family that harbored the Zygmunts bricked over an outside window opening and placed a decorative rug over the interior. When visitors came to the apartment, Nelly and her mother were forced to stand on the ledge of the secret window. Canton, OH, artist Kevin Anderson will recreate that hiding place within the Museum gallery to help visitors better understand the environment in which the paintings in the exhibition were created. Craig Joseph, Translations Gallery of Art curator, is assisting MassMu staff with the exhibit development, as are local artists and educators Gail Wetherell-Sack and Stephen Tornero.

After World War II, Nelly Toll immigrated to the United States. She pursued formal art training, earning a master's degree in art and art history and education from Rutgers University. She attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and received a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently teaching...


Lenona.