The Secret Window Through drawings, Nelly Toll documented her hidden childhood. ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR F or 13 months, a young girl named Nelly lived in one room in an apart- ment in Poland. The room was always locked. Nelly's only escape was a set of watercolor paints, which she used to make pictures of happy families walking through parks, weekends in the country and exciting adventures on the sea. She never painted the Nazis, though that was the only reality around her. Today, Nelly Toll is the author of Behind the Secret Window: A Memoir of a Hidden Childhood During World War II, which features some of the 64 paintings she made during the war years (the largest collec- tion by a single artist to come out of the Holocaust). Ms. Toll will visit the Detroit area 2 p.m. April 25 at the Book Beat in Oak Park. Ms. Toll was at her aunt's home in Lvov, Poland, when she got her first glimpse of the Nazis. She was standing on the apartment bal- cony on a warm summer day in 1941. Red, yellow and blue balloons flew around her. Passersby threw handfuls of flow- ers at the feet of the approaching German army. The soldiers were, after all, the liberators, who had freed Lvov from the Soviets. Nelly was among those celebrating that day. Her happiness didn't last long. In 1943, Nelly's father arranged for DURING WORLD WAR Nelly Toll his wife and daughter to hide with a gentile couple in an apartment building he once owned. The action would save them from the Nazis, but it meant a sad, strange existence for 13 months. Nelly and her mother were confined to one room the entire time. When any stranger entered the apartment, the two hid behind a secret window in the bedroom. They had little news of their family (Nelly's father came to visit once, but barely escaped capture), and their protector was any- thing but predictable. Their host, Pan (sir) Krajterowie, allowed the two to stay in the apart- ment because he had warm feelings toward Nelly's father, Ms. Toll now believes. And while he offered safety to Nelly and her mother, Pan Krajterowie appeared to have serious mental problems (he insisted his heart could be found near his left hip), fre- quently beat his wife and made romantic gestures toward Nelly's mother. Nelly's days rarely var- ied. She woke up, washed, ate break- fast and dressed, then played dominoes with her mother, read or stared out the window. "It was often frozen over with ice," she recalls. "I would see the (SS) officers with beautiful. young Polish and Ukrainian women. I saw children play- ing. There were highly polished, black-lacquered car- riages carrying German officers. Buildings hous- ing the Gestapo were right near us." Then she received a gift: a set of paints and blank paper. She began to keep a diary and make pictures showing scenes from books or from life before the war. The family had lived an upper middle-class existence. Nelly's mother was a pianist and chess player who spoke French, German and English. Her father "was a handsome man who loved life, who laughed and danced and kissed me a lot." Such memories, Ms. Toll says, "produced a palate of images that became images on paper." Ms. Toll early on real- ized the implications of keeping a diary. "I understood the danger around me," she says. "I knew there was a hurri- cane outside of our win- dow. I was well aware that if I was too loud I would be (caught and) killed. I knew somebody would trade us in for a ration of potatoes. "If I were no longer here, I hoped the diary would be shown to the world at large so that others could see the tragedy that befell us, the Jewish people." After the war, Nelly's mother searched for any news of her husband. He was believed to have perished in a. ghetto. Nelly's mother remarried and settled in the United States. Today, Ms. Toll lives in New Jersey. She uses art therapy in her role as counselor for a public school. Eight of her drawings from the war are on display at Israel's Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem. ❑