This is a fiction but some real characters are mentioned in the text. An afterword by Robin Scott-Elliot explains this.
The Schellberg cycle is a set of stories set in war-torn Europe in the 1940s: all about the Holocaust and life in Germany and England, from the perspective of one group of family and friends.
Monday 25 October 2021
Hide and Seek by Robin Scott-Elliot
Amélie’s
parents and older brother are taken by the Gestapo from their Paris apartment as
she hides in the wardrobe with her mother’s fur coat. She survives for a while by eating all the food
that is left in the apartment. She spends
her days in the museum. She has removed
her Star of David from her coat but Cécile who works there realises this. Cécile
takes Amélie in. Cécile works for the Resistance
and soon Amélie is doing the same.
However, there is a traitor in the network. Amélie and Cécile wrongly accuse Alain. It is
in fact Raymond, whom Amélie pushes form a train when she realises this. Amélie lies about her age and is eventually recruited
for the SOE (Special Operations Executive) after she has accompanied a British
airman back to England. There she goes first to a boarding school and then to a
government establishment where she is trained for SOE. That she is a native speaker of French is
very useful. This enables her to return to Paris where she also becomes involved
in rescuing Jewish children. Some are
hidden amongst families in Paris and the others are smuggled into Switzerland.
One little boy, Lou, doesn’t make it through the fence and returns to Paris with
Amélie where they both wait for the end of the war and for their older brothers
to return. The final scene is of Amélie meeting her brother Paulie at the station.
We do not learn whether her parents or Lou’s brother return.
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