Finding Sophie (12 page)

Prewar Berlin and the war years from 1939–45 in England and Wales is the world I grew up in. It was a world of disappearances and good-byes that no one had time to explain to a small girl. Perhaps the adults did not have the answers.

I was the same age as Sophie when I left Germany on a
Kindertransport
for Britain. Like her, I carried a doll.

Finding Sophie
is not my story. It is a work of fiction based on historical events.

Although most of the ten thousand children saved from Nazi oppression by the
Kindertransporte
were Jewish, they came from all kinds of religious and economic backgrounds.

After the war, many of the young people discovered they had lost one or both parents and decided to stay in the country that had sheltered them.

Copyright © 2002 by Irene N. Watts

Published in Canada by Tundra Books,
75 Sherbourne Street, Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

Published in the United States by Tundra Books of Northern New York,
P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2002101143

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Watts, Irene N.

Finding Sophie

eISBN: 978-1-77049-052-9

1. World War, 1939-1945 – Refugees – Juvenile fiction.     2. Jewish girls –
England – Juvenile fiction.    I. Title.

PS
8595.
A
873
F
55 2002      j
C
813'.54      
C
2002-900798-4
PZ
7.
W
336
F
i 2002

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

v3.0