On a bitter cold Christmas eve in 1944, a little Jewish girl, 13 years old but with her diminutive size and Shirley Temple curls looked closer to 8, kissed her mother goodbye and alone began to make her way towards the Swiss border.
A short while earlier, they had fled from Hungary where Jews were facing deportation and death at the hands of the Nazi occupiers. The family had sought refuge in Switzerland, but the Swiss had expelled them. They had heard that children alone might be given refuge and so with fearful broken hearts, they said goodbye and this child walked with her little suitcase in hand towards the barbed wire of no-man’s land.
Mrs. Annette Lantos shares some of her story of that terrible night and how she survived to become one of our country’s great advocates for human rights all around the world.
