THE STORY OF THE SQUARE

Artist: Ruth Adler

Memories of our Children’s Refugee Transport to England June 1939.

I clearly recollect the main Prague railway station, waving goodbye to the hundreds of parents and relatives our train was leaving behind, pulling out of the station, out of the occupied motherland into a vague, distant and very strange and uncertain future.

I very quickly realized that at the age of thirteen, I was one of the oldest on the train and that I had to take my share of responsibility for the younger children, as there were only two adults to look after more than 200 children. I remember sharing our compartment with a baby. The bottle of milk his mother had given him spilled when the train started to move. We had to feed him chocolate, which all of us had been given for the journey.

What left the deepest impression on my mind and in my heart was sitting in a greenish room in London. We each sat on the one suitcase we were allowed to bring, with a cardboard tag hanging around our neck, waiting for our future foster parents to pick us up. With this square I would like to thank those who saved us and those who cared for us, fed us and brought us up with so much love and compassion. I feel we can never repay our debt to them. In Czech we have an expression for such a “thank you”: Zaplat Pan Buh – “May the Lord pay you back!”

Ruth Adler
Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic