Forced to Grow Up

Fifteen-year-old Berta lives with her mother, her sister Grete and her cousins in Brussels in a five-room house full of Austrian refugees like herself. After she is caught in a raid and ordered to report to the Gestapo with a blanket and food for deportation to a concentration camp, Berta decides to flee yet again. She obtains a false French passport and, with very little money, leaves alone to find safety in Free France. Dressed in summer clothes and wooden clogs, Berta travels on foot and hops trains living by her own wits and the generosity of people she meets. Berta leaves her childhood far behind as she crosses into France only to eventually push onward across the Alps to Switzerland. When the war ends, Berta's flight from the Holocaust evolves into a story of immigration. Berta eventually settles in the United States and learns to adapt to a new and very different life. "Writing my story has cleansed my soul," she writes at age 92 in the epilogue.