Based on the award-winning book, Child of the Forest is a 7-part streaming series chronicling the life of Holocaust survivor and living witness Charlene Perlmutter Schiff. Known as "Musia" to family and friends, her life abruptly changes when Nazi forces occupy Poland. After SS soldiers murder her beloved father, Musia and her mother are forced into the Jewish ghetto where hard labor, systematic starvation and death are a daily threat. Her mother plans but does not survive a daring escape, leaving 12 year old Musia alone and orphaned. With only her imagination and wit to guide her, the child learns to hide and survive alone for two years in the dangerous forests of eastern Poland.—Anonymous
Before the German invasion of Horochow, Poland, there were 5,000 Jews. Only two survived. Meet one of them...
Child of the Forest is based on the true-life story of Charlene Schiff (Shulamit Perlmutter). She is known to her family and friends as Musia (pronounced Moosha). When Musia was just 12 years old, she fled the Nazis and spent two years hiding in the thick foliage and forests of Eastern Poland. As it turns out, she was only 50 miles from the Belzec death camp.
Child of the Forest follows the true account of her journey in pre-war Poland to her fight for survival against all odds. She first witnesses her father's abduction at the hands of the Nazis, loses her best friend when caught outside the ghetto walls, loses her sister during a brave escape attempt, and finally loses her mother while hiding along a riverbank in an effort to escape the eminent final liquidation. Her mother's plans for escape go awry. Only Musia survives.
Musia's survival is the result of her belief that her mother and possibly her sister are still alive, along with her undying faith and her tom-boyish agility. Musia would dig small pits in the ground to sleep in at night, covering herself with twigs and leaves. She refers to these pits as her "little graves." She finds safety in these pits, protecting her from animals and from capture by the many Nazi and Ukrainian soldiers assigned to hunt the Jews that have escaped their ghetto life. Musia finds herself adapting quickly, drinking from puddles, and eating insects, worms, rodents, and berries. Her biggest challenge becomes surviving the brutal winters, which forces her into the fringes of nearby towns and farms in search of food.
As stated in Charlene's own words, "Death was always one step behind me." Her encounters include a run-in with a Ukrainian soldier. She, as almost by instinct, bribes the towering soldier with a gold coin that her mother had previously sewn into the lining of her jacket. He is prepared to turn her in to a nearby death camp for a meager reward and keep the gold coin, but in a last-minute change of heart, he spares her life and exclaims, "You won't survive the winter anyway." In another close call, while hiding in a large haystack with six new-found companions, Musia is grazed by a pitchfork and survives only to realize her new friends weren't as fortunate.
At one-point Musia seeks shelter in a barn where she befriends a young servant woman named Paranka, who for a short time brings her food and clothing until one day Musia witnesses her brutal murder while peering through the wooden slats of the barn. The town's police suspected that Paranka was a Jew in hiding.
Musia is done fighting for survival and even for searching for her family. Her clothes are threadbare, she is freezing, and she digs one last pit. A Russian liberation army soldier accidentally steps on the pit and realizes there is an animate object at the bottom. He then rescues her only minutes away from certain death, as she is blue and barely breathing. The soldier cradles her and delivers her to a field hospital. He then places a note on her chest; "Please be kind. This is a child of the forest."
Accounts of this true story have been featured in Reader's Digest, Vanity Fair, and other major publications. Charlene died in December of 2013 and is buried alongside her loving husband Edwin in Arlington National Cemetery. She and Edwin are survived by their loving son Stephen and his wife Sharon, and their two sons Perry and Morgan. Charlene's wish is to have humanity eradicate the perils of evil; the four "I's": indifference, intolerance, ignorance, and injustice.
