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13 DENMARK Iama has told us how she went to the mountains in Switzerland when she was a young girl. She lived with a family high up in the mountains and got very healthy there. Mama loved living there, better than living in Frankfurt where she grew up. One evening, after tea and cookies, Mama asks whether I wouldn't like to go to Switzerland. Unlike Holland, Switzerland has a lot of good food and Daantje and I would get strong and healthy there. It seems the Red Cross is sending children from Holland to other countries: Switzerland, Sweden, and Denmark to live with foster families to eat good food and get healthy. I don't want to go anywhere away but Mama sounds as if she wants us to go. So finally, I say that I would be willing to go to Switzerland but absolutely nowhere else. We don't talk about it anymore and I forget about it. Then one evening in November 1945, Mama says that Daantje and I are going on a Red Cross transport. We are not going to Switzerland; we are going to Denmark. We leave tomorrow. I feel angry and betrayed. I don't want to go to Denmark. I don't want to leave my school again. The idea that I can refuse to go never, ever even enters my mind. The following day Mama takes Daantje and me to the Central Railroad Station of Amsterdam. We get registered and each of us gets a card hung around our neck to say who we are and where we are from. It is crowded with other children and everything happens too fast for me to really know what is happening. Before we leave Mama says to me that I must look after Daantje, "Take care of him, promise you'll take care of him." I feel insulted. Really, doesn't Mama know that I would do that anyway? She doesn't have to say it to me. 94 DENMARK The train is a regular one with compartments and sliding glass doors opening to the aisles. There are a few grownups from the Red Cross who will take us. But I have no idea where we are going. I don't even have a picture in my head of where Denmark is. All I know is that it isn't Switzerland, and I don't want to go but here we are already on our way! As it turns out, the journey takes two full days on the train, a boat crossing, and two overnight stays in barracks on the German-Danish border. But I don't know this to start out. There are a lot of boys and girls in each compartment. Some kids climb to the luggage racks and use them as a sleeping place. That's all right until the emergency brake is thrown some hours after we are on our way. Everyone goes tumbling to one side. We seem to be cushioned by each other, though . . . no one gets hurt. The train stops, goes slowly, goes out of the way because so much of the track is destroyed. I look around and see that I don't know any of the kids and so far I haven't noticed one other Jewish kid. Sometime later, we transfer to a bus and the bus travels through the dark, through Germany to the Danish border. I half lie on the back seat of the bus with another girl. When the bus stops German kids appear, begging for food. To my disgust the Red Cross lady gives sandwiches to the German kids. I sleep and when I wake I learn the kids had sandwiches. Now, none are left. Nobody woke me and they gave the rest of food to the German kids! I'm getting a bad, bad feeling about this trip. I go to the driver and all they have left to give me is a bottle of orange stuff to drink. I take a swallow and almost choke. It prickles and burns! What is this? Are they trying to kill me? No, no, it's an American drink and it's supposed to be prickly. I just never have had any so I don't know that it is all right. When we come to the border, we stop and are taken to barracks to sleep. The barracks are full of three-tier bunks, lined against the walls by width and...

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