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    This Token of Freedom
    This Token of Freedom
    This Token of Freedom
    Ebook176 pages2 hours

    This Token of Freedom

    By Jon Helminiak

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    About this ebook

    In the summer of 1940, the German Luftwaffe was preparing to destroy London by bombing it for fifty-six consecutive days and nights.

    To spare British children from witnessing the carnage and from possible death, millions of youth were evacuated from their London homes and sent away to safe locations. For many boys and girls, their lives would start over in new towns and often with unknown families. Historically, the idea of evacuating an entire generation of children, separating them from their parents, was unprecedented.

    This is the story of one of those evacuee children, Jayne Jaffe, who at age nine, began witnessing the best and worst of humanity: war, love, death, separation, tears, euphoria, destruction and rebuilding.

    For the first time, Jaynes remarkable journey is told with compelling narrative by author Jon Helminiak in This Token of Freedom.

    This Token of Freedom is an extraordinarily well written and heartwarming story about family courage in a time of historic global strife. Its important reminder of the upheavals wrought by WWII on British parents and their children. The British Literary Society

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisheriUniverse
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781475943719
    This Token of Freedom
    Author

    Jon Helminiak

    Jon Helminiak earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In addition to managing Adventure Quest Productions, he is the executive director of the Aviation Heritage Center of Wisconsin, chief operating officer for Pax Media Corporation, and a part-time senior consultant with Lauritzen and Associates.

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    • 3/5
      During World War II millions of children were evacuated from London and sent away to safe locations to spare them from witnessing the aftermath of the German blitzkrieg. This is the story of one of those evacuee children, Jayne Jaffe, who at age nine left her mother and aunt behind to come to Milwaukee Wisconsin to live with total strangers.

      I’ll say up front that I know Jayne. Her children had urged her for years to write her story, but Jayne never felt up to the task. A few years ago her adult children hired author Jon Helminiak to tell their mother’s story. This book is the result.

      I knew about the evacuation before, but I never knew that Jayne was one of those children, so I learned quite a few things reading this story. I remembered the anxiety I felt as a child leaving my parents to go visit my grandmother in a different city, or to go to two weeks of summer camp. I cannot imagine how a child could take a week-long voyage to go to strangers in a strange city, not knowing when (or if) she would see her mother again.

      Helminiak relied on Jayne’s recollections and records, papers, and letters she had saved, but he also included historical background about what was happening in Europe (England in particular) and the United States during this time frame. I particularly appreciate his outlining the contrasts between war-time England and Wisconsin during that exact same time period.

      The experience was a life-changing one for Jayne. Not only because it kept her safe during the bombing of London, but because it introduced her to a different culture and way of life at a formative period in her development. After the war she went back to England, as did millions of other children, but she no longer felt British, she felt American. She could hardly wait to come back “home” to Milwaukee, and eventually she and her mother did come back.

    Book preview

    This Token of Freedom - Jon Helminiak

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