Irma Joubert · 2015 · exile

As the Second World War closes, six-year-old Gretl Schmidt is pushed from a cattle train to Auschwitz moments before a Polish resistance bomb destroys it; rescued and hidden by the young fighter Jakob Kowalski, she is later sent across the world to a new life and a buried identity in South Africa.

1. 1
   Czestochowa

   Torn from the ghetto with her mother and grandmother, Gretl is pushed from the Auschwitz-bound train just before it is blown apart, the only one of her family to survive.

2. 2
   Jakob's Village

   The resistance fighter who set the bomb, wracked with guilt, carries the orphaned girl home and hides her Jewish and German origins from his Catholic family for years.

3. 3
   Bremerhaven

   No longer safe in Communist Poland, Gretl is placed in a German orphanage and chosen for a scheme sending war orphans to adoptive families far to the south.

4. 4
   Cape Town

   After a long voyage down the Atlantic she steps ashore in South Africa, renamed and instructed to bury forever her roots, her faith and the Russian on her tongue.

5. 5
   Pretoria

   She grows up Afrikaans as Grietjie Neethling, until Jakob, fleeing Poland at last, crosses the world to find the girl he once saved.