Passport to freedom

by Anthony Leonard Laye

Synopsis Bracha, a 19-year-old Czech farm girl, throws off the shackles of her austere orthodox Jewish life, and runs away to Antwerp in 1936. Four years later, after a failed love affair, she finds herself alone and abandoned by all as the bombs begin to fall. A chance encounter with a stranded Italian merchant seaman, who becomes her lover, changes her fortunes as he helps her walk to freedom, avoiding the German advance across Belgium. Tragically though, after an arduous journey and a series of amazing escapes they are forced to part and she crosses into France alone. She is not long in France when an incredible coincidental meeting on a refugee clogged highway with an acquaintance from her past, changes both their fortunes – as forming a close friendship with her, they help each other and succeed in making it to Calais. However, Bracha finds herself separated from her friend, and all her sacrifices made getting there seem in vain as with hundreds of others she fails to get aboard t