Many of the books that I have read about survivors of the Holocaust are about those who somehow survived the dire, heinous conditions of the camps. This is a different story. This is about a young girl whose fate saved her from the camps but yet, as a ten year old girl, experienced the separation from her family and her home in Austria. And while this fate is obviously so much better than having perished in the camps or having to live through the horrors and survive them, this is a story of being displaced, about loss of one’s identity.

Segal calls it a novel but if you read anything about the author's life, you realize that this "novel” is really her story. In the intro by Cynthia Ozick, she talks about the lack emotion in which the story is told. “Over the child’s survival and tenacity hangs a guilty awareness that her life, having been granted, must not be taken for granted. It is undoubtedly, this awareness which gives Segal’s book it’s extraordinary – one might say its peculiar tone. It is dry, sold, literal, even numb.” But it was precisely this tone that evoked emotion in me - the sadness of the story of a little girl separated from her family and her home and moved around for seven years after that.

Lore Segal, a ten year old Jewish girl is put on board the Kinder Transport from Vienna being sent to England by her parents in hopes of being saved from the Nazis who just taken over Austria. Lore is shuffled from her house to her cousin Erwin’s house, to her grandparent’s , to the train and a boat, and then over the next seven years to Hooper’s, the Grimsley’s and other families willing to take in this young refugee. Told in a matter of fact way , without much emotion , the telling makes for a rather chilling story as we see the effects on Lore. Even though her parents were allowed to come to England, they were only able to see their daughter one day a week since they were working as domestics in other houses. The impact of this life on her family is also told.

The part of the story before she goes to college depicts that life of displacement , was more moving to me than the last part of the book when Lore is reunited with her mother, grandparents, and uncle but yet it was a part of Lore’s story.

This was originally published in 1964 and I appreciate that Open Road Integrated Media is republishing this important story.

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Thank you to Open Road Integrated Media and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a book I may not have found.