Patricia left the hustle and bustle of grimy Waterloo Station in London on a bleak rainy morning on the boat train to Dover. She was engulfed in a blur of smoke, loudspeaker announcements, and train whistles. Her mother bid her a hurried goodbye and pushed her up into a crowded compartment of the train. She asked a young man already seated and reading a newspaper, “Would you help my little girl find the ferry to Calais when you get to Dover?” The man nodded affirmatively,” Yes,” and didn’t speak again until they reached Dover some hours later.

She stared out of the train window at the bombed, war torn landscape, wondering where she was going. After traveling across Europe alone for three days she arrived in a mountain village in Switzerland to live with a Swiss family-an experience that changed her life. She was eight years old.