Finding Edith by Cord Edith Mayer;

Author:Cord, Edith Mayer; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Purdue University Press

The next day after breakfast we left the hotel with Mlle Anny and M. Raymond, two counselors I did not know, and took the train to Lyon. We spent the night in a filthy shelter in Lyon. I remember my revulsion because I had to sleep on a dirty mattress with scratchy blankets and a disgusting pillow. Early the next morning, a new counselor arrived. Her name was Marcelle, and she was not one of the regulars who had escorted me from one hiding place to another or hand-delivered mail from my mother. She took us back to the station where we took the train in the direction of St. Julien near the Swiss border.

At first all went as planned—that is until we got to Viry. It was a tiny train station and the train only stopped for three minutes, not long enough to let thirty youngsters get off. Half succeeded while the rest of us, including me, were stuck on the train. The fear I felt grew as each turn of the wheel took us farther away from Marcelle and the other children. Finally the train stopped, and we scrambled to get off.

We immediately walked away from the station’s platform because we didn’t want to attract attention. I didn’t even bother to look at the name of the station, which must have been St. Julien. We briefly huddled to decide what to do. We had to get back to the previous station, but we thought that taking the road was too dangerous because we knew it would be patrolled. So, we chose to walk back on the railroad tracks. The ties on the tracks were not evenly spaced and we had to adjust our stride with every step. We had a five-year-old with us who had to be carried, and we had to carry our bags too. We walked as fast as we could. I walked, my mind filled with fear and questions. How far did we have to go to reach the previous station? Would the others wait for us? Could we be seen from the road? We walked in silence, stopping briefly to transfer the little boy from one older boy to another, while someone else carried his bag. After what seemed like an eternity, we got back to Viry in about two hours. The station was in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by fields. There was no sign of the group. Eventually, someone came to meet us, and he led us to Marcelle and the rest of the children who were waiting for us, crouched behind a hedge near an open field. The two passeurs (guides) who were to lead the way were already there and so, without taking time to rest, we continued toward the Swiss border.

At first the paths we took were relatively comfortable. We crossed open fields by running across one at a time, ducking all the way to avoid being seen. At one point, we heard patrols marching on the road and hid behind hedges and shrubbery.

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