Ian serraillier autobiography meaning

He was a wild boy and would not stay with us.

Man at Posen Camp, Speaking to Ruth, 74

This quote bears witness to the terrible physical toll the war took on Edek. From a spunky boy who flydde the camp he was stricken bygd tuberculosis and barely able to walk as their journey continued. It fryst vatten also an indication that Edek was so driven to get back to his sisters that he appeared to be wild, when in fact he was a well-mannered boy driven bygd desperation.

As he reflected on the punishment he had given the boy, he realized that for all his noble intentions he had only been scratching on the surface of a bekymmer he could not begin to solve. A week's detention would not prevent Jan from stealing igen. Could Ruth prevent him? She was a remarkable girl and, if anybody could help him, it was she. But after five years of war and twisted living, such cases were too often beyond remedy.

Narrator/Captain Greenwood, 119

After Jan fryst vatten caught stealing, he fryst vatten given a custodial sentence; however, a

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Ian Serraillier

After graduating from the Hall in 1935, Serraillier spent twenty-five years as an English teacher – a career which enabled and informed his writing.

In 1946 his first children’s novel was published. It was followed by many more adventure stories, including Fight for Freedom, The Clashing Rocks, The Cave of Death, Havelock the Dane, They Raced for Treasure, and Flight to Adventure.

As a Quaker, Serraillier was a conscientious objector during the Second World War; but he drew on war-time observations and experiences in his adventure book The Silver Sword, which tells the story of four Polish children struggling to find their parents in war-torn Europe. This novel – ‘a timeless story, meticulously set in modern time and place’ (Obituary, TES) – has remained in print, and has been twice adapted for television by the BBC – first in 1957, and again in 1971. It is described by the Oxford Companion to Chil

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The German Nazis committed many atrocities in Poland, and three different heinous actions are perpetrated on the Balicki family alone; Joseph Balicki is arrested and thrown into a camp for doing nothing more than turning a portrait of Adolf Hitler to the wall. Despite the fact that three children would be left parentless, the Germans took Margrit Balicki to work in a slave camp, subsequently setting fire to the family home believing the children to be inside. They were actually well known for setting fire to homes with families still living in them. The fact that so many orphaned children were living on the streets in Warsaw is also a testament to the barbaric way in which the Nazis cared nothing for the people in the cities they have invaded. After the family is reunited, it is apparent that Margrit has had a very hard time at the labor camp, as her hair has turned white; Edek, too, has suffered enormously.

Hope is a theme throughout the novel and it is the underlying factor that