Episodes

These are the true stories of two girls living through wartime. Both girls were born in 1939; one in Poland; the other in England. The Polish girl spent the war years under Nazi persecution, the English girl lived through the blackout and the Blitz. Each one describes episodes in their lives that shed light on the time and the place where they were living. There is no comparison between the horror and fear experienced by one girl, with the relative calm of the other one, whose famiy learned to deal with food shortages and rationing, while fearing a German invasion At the end of the war the girls started at different primary schools.The Polish girl was sent to an English boarding school and suffered the problems of a refugee child. The English girl merely had to contend with strange surroundings and difficulty making friends. Both were unsettled. When they were eleven they met on the steps of their new school, St. Paul's. From that moment they became firm friends, yet they never discussed the Holocaust or the Blitz till they were at least seventeen. Over the following years, for almost a lifetime, (sixty eight years), they have since revisited their wartime experiences: complete with the full horror and the minor embarrassments. Now with both nearing the age of eighty, they have written down their stories. There have been many Holocaust memoirs and many accounts of Britain at war, but this is the first time the two have come together, with personal stories illuminating what that time was like. With photographs and added thoughts from a modern perspective, there are also some historical notes and a Timeline showing the most notable events (not always the best known) of the period 1939 to 1945.