Plot summary
Joseph Balicki, the headmaster of a primary school in Warsaw, was arrested by German soldiers, a few months into the Second World War, and taken away to a prison camp. His Swiss wife, Margrit, and three children (Ruth aged nearly 13, Edek 11, and Bronia 3) were left to fend for themselves.
Joseph spent more than a year in prison before escaping. Having fled his prison camp after knocking out a guard and stealing his uniform, Joseph took shelter with an elderly couple. They were at first confused by his Polish speech and German uniform, but they accepted him after he told them about what had happened to him and showed them the prison number tattooed on his arm as proof. German soldiers came searching for the escapee but Joseph had hidden up a chimney to avoid being captured or shot. Two soldiers had entered the house and they fired bullets up the chimney to discover if anyone was hiding there but they left (fearful of ruining their uniforms) after dislodging a heap of soot. Joseph spent two weeks in the house before beginning the long journey back to Warsaw.
When Joseph reached Warsaw he barely recognised the city owing to extensive bombing. He eventually found the ruins of his house and then found a paper knife – the 'silver sword' – that he had given to Margrit as a present. He was being watched by a boy who wanted the silver sword as the ruins were "his place". Joseph allowed the boy (who he learned was called Jan), to keep it on the condition that if he ever came across his children he would tell them that he had gone to Switzerland and they should also make for there.
Joseph learned from a neighbour that the Nazis had captured his wife and taken her away to work on the land and then set the house on fire after someone had fired at them from an upstairs room. The children had not been seen since and were feared to have died in the fire, although Joseph was still hopeful that they might be alive somewhere, since their bodies had not been found. Jan then helped Joseph find a goods train going towards Germany, on which Joseph made his escape from Poland to Switzerland.
Shortly after Joseph had been taken to the prison camp German soldiers had broken into the family house and taken his wife, after the Germans had called for one million foreign forced labourers to be taken to their country for the war effort. Edek had fired shots at the van in a bid to stop them from getting away. The children climbed along the rooftops and watched from a distance as their house was blown up by the Nazis.
The three children then spent the winter living in the cellar of a bombed-out house and the summer living in woodlands outside the city. Ruth started a school for children living in the vicinity, whilst Edek fell in with black market dealers and stole food and clothes for his sisters and the other children living with them until one evening he failed to return. Ruth discovered that Edek had called at a house where the Germans were searching for hoarded goods. They had captured Edek and the house owner.
In 1944 Warsaw was taken by the Soviets but there was still no news of Edek's whereabouts nor of the children's parents. Ruth and Bronia were still living in the city in a new shelter, and Bronia had found an older boy in the street. He introduced himself as Jan and in his possession he had a wooden box, the contents of which he kept secret.
Ruth befriended a Russian soldier who had been assigned to liaise with the civilian population. He gave her various supplies and became a friend. He eventually managed to find out that Edek was in Posen, having escaped from the German labour camp where he had been held. When he visited Ruth and Bronia in their bomb shelter home with the good news about Edek, he was attacked by Jan as he was a soldier and in the melee, his wooden box was broken. As a result, Ruth recognised one of the contents of the box, the silver sword. Jan then told them about meeting her father and his message of him going to Switzerland. Ruth, Bronia and Jan then made their way to Posen and eventually found Edek at a refugee feeding station; he was suffering from tuberculosis.
Once Ruth, Bronia and Edek were reunited they (in company with Jan) travelled by train to Berlin, intent on finding their parents. They arrived in the city during May 1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War in Europe and the death of Adolf Hitler. They stayed in a disused cinema, but Jan soon went missing in pursuit of an escaped chimpanzee, which had fled from the zoo. Jan was able to befriend the chimpanzee and help it to be recaptured.
The children made then made their way south through Germany. Edek, whose health was worsening with tuberculosis, was arrested while following Jan who had been stealing food from American trains bringing supplies to the troops. Both boys were prosecuted by a military tribunal, but Edek was cleared of any crimes whilst Jan led a spirited defence, claiming that certain American troops were equally guilty of stealing from the conquered Germans. Jan was sentenced to a week's detention. On his release the children continued south and were taken in by a Bavarian farmer called Kurt. All of the children work on the farm except Edek, who assisted the farmer's wife with light chores.
The children spent several weeks working and recuperating at the farm. During their stay the farmer heard of an edict by the Americans that foreigners in the area were to be returned to their home country. This task was under the authority of the burgomaster. One day the burgomaster crashed his car outside the farm. Edek volunteered to help, deceiving the man by speaking German, but Bronia unwittingly asked a question in Polish. The burgomaster later visited the farm and told Kurt that he knew that the children were illegally working on his farm and that they would have to be sent back to Poland.
To avoid sending the children back Kurt helped them escape in two canoes via the local river, a tributary of the River Danube. Before they left Kurt's pet dog had hidden inside Jan and Edek's canoe and stayed with them on their journey south. Intent on reaching the Danube, the children paddled along the River Falkenberg and overcame a series of hazards, including an encounter with a soldier who fired shots at Ruth and Bronia. They managed to escape and reach the Danube.
After their canoe journey Jan noticed that they had left the silver sword back at Kurt's house. This news caused Edek's condition to worsen. Jan and the dog went missing in the night but Ruth, Edek and Bronia continued south towards Switzerland, with Edek getting weaker day by day. They then met an American G.I. lorry driver who was originally from Poland. He gave the children a lift to a Red Cross camp on the north bank of Lake Constance, with Switzerland being on the south bank. He joked that a hyena and a bear were in the back of his truck, but when he opened the back of the truck a tied-up Jan and the dog were inside.
At the camp the children spoke to the camp superintendent and told him of their quest to get to Switzerland. He would not let them cross the lake without authority from the Swiss side. However he changed his view when he received confirmation from their father who was now in Switzerland. The superintendent had also received a letter from the International Tracing Service, which had received a letter from Kurt, along with the silver sword. Ruth was able to talk to her father on the telephone and he told her that he would come over on the ferry to collect them.
On the day that he was due to collect them it had not rained for several weeks and there were storm clouds in the sky. The children decided to walk to an outcrop along the shore of the lake to see the boat coming across. They crossed a dried-up stream to get to the outcrop, but Edek was feeling tired so they left him on the other side of the stream resting in an old boat. Before they could reach the outcrop a downpour turned the stream into a torrent. They then saw Edek in the boat out on the lake. They managed to get into a boat that had come downstream and rescued Edek.
Ruth, Edek and Bronia along with Jan were reunited with their parents in Switzerland. Jan's record was sent to the authorities but his family was never traced and the Balickis granted his request to adopt him.
In 1946 the Balickis were put in charge of a Polish House in an International Children's Village in Switzerland. Bronia developed a talent for art; Edek spent two years recovering from tuberculosis and went on to become an engineer; Jan mended his thieving ways and was regularly called upon to care for sick animals and Ruth became a teacher, married a Frenchman and started a family of her own.
