The top­ic of Divid­ing Hearts is the sep­a­ra­tion trau­ma suf­fered by many hid­den chil­dren who were hasti­ly, often clum­si­ly removed from the Pol­ish Gen­tiles who had become sur­ro­gate par­ents, peo­ple who had will­ing­ly accept­ed the dan­gers placed upon them to pro­tect their lit­tle charges. Con­di­tions were dif­fer­ent for each child. Some­times they were absorbed open­ly into the fam­i­ly, but oth­er times they had to remain hid­den— even from oth­er mem­bers of the fam­i­ly. In the fam­i­lies where they were absorbed and con­tributed to the wel­fare of the fam­i­ly, as in rur­al fam­i­lies, the part­ing was espe­cial­ly painful. Pol­ish Jew­ish sol­diers in the Russ­ian army searched for Jew­ish chil­dren in what­ev­er town they reached. Some­times, sur­viv­ing par­ents or rel­a­tives who knew where their chil­dren were, returned and claimed them. Oth­ers remained in the neigh­bor­hood and tried to con­tact the child again and again or to get res­cuers in the form of the Red army, or the NKVD — the Sovi­et Secret Police — to obtain the child for return to a fam­i­ly mem­ber. Many of the Jew­ish chil­dren who spent the war years in Pol­ish Chris­t­ian homes were now anti-Semit­ic and could not iden­ti­fy with a Jew­ish envi­ron­ment. The Con­clu­sion and Appen­dices are extreme­ly help­ful in fur­ther clar­i­fy­ing an often mud­dled situation.