And my normal happy childhood continued until the day when I came downstairs in the morning, and I saw my family – my mother, my father, my grandmother, my nurse – all sitting listening to the radio. And there was such an atmosphere of fear and anxiety. And I said, “What’s happening?” And I think my father said, “England has let us down. The German troops are marching into Czechoslovakia, and nobody is stopping them coming.” And within, I think it was two days, my father was arrested. And my mother and my grandmother kept me home from school. My nurse had to go back to her village because she wasn’t allowed to work for us anymore.
My mother came and took me to a little park outside the school, sat me on a bench and said to me, “Look Vera, I’m very sorry, but we can’t leave Czechoslovakia. But you understand that it’s not safe for us to be here anymore. But you can go to a country called England. And you will go on the train, and you won’t know the other children. But they’ll all be children whose families feel that it’s not safe for their children to be here anymore. And you’ll go on the train. And you’ll go to a country called England. And we will- we’ve sent fifty pounds to the English government so that though we want to come to England, if we have a problem with that, what we’re going to do is we’re going to be able to go to any other country, and we will send for you. Because the money is there with English government and you’ll join us. And we’ll be together. But you have to be very brave. And until we come.”