Timeline Glossary The Kindertransport Association Read More Internet sites Critical Thinking Using the Common Core Bibliography Source Notes Index Copyright Back Cover
CHAPTER 1 TRAVELING TOWARD AN UNKNOWN FUTURE TOM BERMAN The Leather Suitcase They don’t make suitcases like that any more Time was when this case was made solid leather heavy stitching with protective edges at the corners
Time was when voyage meant train steamship distances unbridgeable waiting for a thinning mail weeks then months then nothing Children’s train across the Reich stops and starts again Holland a lighted gangplank night ferry to gray-misted sea-gulled Harwich again the rails reaching flat across East Anglia to London in my bedroom the suitcase a silent witness
with two labels Wilson Station Prague Royal Scot London-Glasgow Leather suitcase from a far-off country Czechoslovakia containing all the love parents could pack for a five year old off on a journey for life 1 Tom Berman saved by a Kindertransport The fog pressed at the windows of the train screeching down the tracks Outside night lay like a blanket over the German countryside The Nazis were out there They had destroyed Jewish shops They had shot Jewish men in the street They had burned the great synagogues of Frankfurt People were frightened No one knew what would happen to the Jews of Germany Inside the train car children leaned against each other in
