Finding Sophie

Prologue The Train, Berlin, Germany December 1, 1938 Just before the guard reached their compartment door, a woman threw in a rucksack, then lifted a little girl and stood her beside Marianne. "Please look after her! Thank you." She moved away without looking back. One of the boys put the little girl's rucksack on the rack for her. "Thank you," she said. "I'm Sophie Mandel. I'm seven." After lunch they practiced English phrases and taught Sophie to say, "The sun is shining." At the Dutch border, the Gestapo came on board. An officer pointed to the luggage. "Open up," he ordered. The children put their suitcases on the seat for inspection. The Gestapo officer, with a quick movement, overturned each case and rifled his black-gloved hand through the contents. He pulled out Werner's stamp album and flicked carelessly through the pages, then put the album under his arm. The officer stepped deliberately on Brigitte's clean white blouse, which had fallen to the floor. Josef's prayer shawl was thrown aside. Sophie's doll was grabbed, its head twisted off. Then the officer turned the doll upside down and shook it. Sophie cried quietly. After the officer left, Brigitte twisted the doll's head back onto the neck and said, "Good as new," and handed the doll back to Sophie. Liverpool Street Station, London, England December 2, 1938 "Come on, Sophie, keep up," said Marianne as they walked along the platform to the waiting room to meet their sponsors. She could see some women talking about them and shaking their heads, the way mothers do when their child has been out in the rain without a coat. "See them poor little refugees." "What a shame." "Look at that little one. Sweet, isn't she?" "More German refugees, I suppose. Surely they could go somewhere else?" "We'll have to try to speak English all the time," Marianne told Sophie, taking her hand. "But I don't know how. I want to go home," Sophie said. Marianne was too tired to answer. * The woman in charge called: "Sophie Mandel." "That's you, Sophie. Come on, you've got to wake up." "Hello, Sophie," said a lady in gray, picking up the rucksack at Sophie's feet. "I am Aunt Margaret, a friend of your mother's. I've come to take you home." Sophie put her arms around Marianne's neck and hugged her, as if she didn't want to leave her behind. "Good-bye Sophie. She looks very nice," Marianne whispered and kissed her cheek. ********** Chapter 1 Do people know the precise moment when their lives change? All I know is that, for me, it happened just before my fourteenth birthday. I've had six birthdays in England, five of those in wartime, and now at last everyone says peace is just around the corner. It's hard for anyone my age to remember a time before blackouts and rationing and bombing. I think of peace as being like one long holiday. Unless you count being evacuated, I've only ever had one real holiday. It was the last summer before the war. I think it must have been August 1939. I was eight. Aunt Em that's what I call Aunt Margaret and I went to Brighton and stayed in a brown-and-cream painted boardinghouse near the beach. She bought me a bucket and spaWatts, Irene N. is the author of 'Finding Sophie' with ISBN 9780887766138 and ISBN 0887766137.