In the early hours of Saturday 1 July 1939, 10-yearold Věra Diamantová was jerked suddenly awake. Her train had lurched roughly across a railway junction on its way out of Czechoslovakia (today divided between the Czech Republic and Slovakia). As Vera’s eyes adjusted to the pitch-dark carriage, she could just make out some of the other 240 children, mostly Jewish and aged 3–15, crammed in around her. Sitting next to Vera was six-year-old Alfred, who recalled years later that, when leaving the Czech capital of Prague, “I was aware of my mother’s nervousness, but I did not understand the reason why… for me it was a holiday trip and a tremendous adventure.”
The children aboard that train came from widely different backgrounds and had very little in common – except that almost none of them
