The Children’s Train

The Kindertransport was finally about to leave. A woman suddenly climbed over the gate and bolted to the train, carrying someone’s forgotten basket, which she held up to the open window.

She shoved the basket gently through Hans’s window, and whistled softly to him. “Here, young man, take this, careful. Please, be very careful.”

Gingerly handling the surprisingly heavy basket, Hans pulled it inside. Stephen, sitting beside him, leaned over for a look. “Who’s it for?” Hans asked the urgent woman standing outside his window on her tiptoes.

“My sister will pick it up in Holland. Bless you.”

A Nazi officer ran over and pulled the woman away from the train, but the basket was already safely inside with Hans. The woman’s shoulders hunched, as if she was exhausted from the weight she had carried in that small basket.

Inside the train, Stephen and Hans stared at the basket. It was covered with a red-checkered cloth, like a picnic basket. “What is it?” Stephen wondered.

“Food, I hope. I’m hungry,” Hans said. “I think we’re rightfully entitled to part of it for the trouble of transporting it.”

Hans flipped off the cloth, prepared to see chicken and potato salad. But it was not a picnic basket filled with food. It held a baby girl.

Hans leaned out the window. “Wait!” he called, but the Nazi officer was dragging the woman roughly away behind the fence.

Hans looked at Stephen. “What do we do with it?”